Lawyers for Dharun Ravi are appealing his conviction for bullying and spying on Tyler Clementi, his freshman roommate at Rutgers University.
Ravi, 20, is serving a 30-day sentence in a New Jersey jail on a 15-count conviction for using a computer webcam to watch Clementi and another man kiss in September 2010. Clementi, 18, committed suicide soon after he learned that Ravi wrote on Twitter about seeing him.
Although Ravi surrendered to authorities on May 31, because he said he wanted to close this chapter of his life, his defense team quietly filed the notice of appeal on June 4.
The notice submitted to state appellate court argues that Ravi's conviction for bias intimidation was unconstitutional and that several of Superior Court Judge Glenn Berman's decisions "hindered the defendant's ability to get a fair trial," the Star-Ledger reported yesterday.
Besides the jail stint, Berman sentenced Ravi to three years of probation, 300 hours of community service, visits with a counselor and mandated a $10,000 donation to a charity that works with victims of bias crimes.
Prosecutors had already appealed the verdict too, contending that the judge didn't follow mandatory sentencing laws that would have put Ravi behind bars for five to 10 years.