Hemera/Thinkstock(CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.) -- The fate of accused murderer George Huguely V is in the hands of a Charlottesville, Va., jury. Deliberations began Wednesday morning.
Two female alternate jurors were dismissed by the judge after being chosen at random, leaving a final jury made up of five women and seven men. The alternates were permitted to leave, but remain under oath until the conclusion of the case.
Huguely, 24, faces six charges, including first-degree murder, in the death of former girlfriend Yeardley Love. He pleaded not guilty to all of the charges.
Over 10 days in court, jurors listened to testimony from nearly 60 witnesses and saw a video of Huguely's police statement, graphic photos of Love's battered body, and read text and email correspondence between the two.
Though charged with first-degree murder, the judge gave jurors a menu of lesser charges they can choose from: second-degree murder, voluntary manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter. He could also be found not guilty.
Neither the prosecution nor the defense denies that Huguely was in Yeardley's room the night of her death and was involved in an altercation with her. They differ on the severity of the encounter and whether Huguely was directly and intentionally responsible for Love's death.
Over the course of the trial, prosecutors painted a portrait of Huguely as a violent and enraged man who savagely beat Love in her bedroom and left her there to die. Prosecutors claimed that Love died from blunt force trauma to the head.
The defense depicted Huguely as a troubled young man whose problems with alcohol spiraled out of control. They described Huguely and Love's relationship as mutually tempestuous, with both of them jilting and betraying each other. They maintained that Huguely went to Love's bedroom with the intention to talk to her and that, while things got heated and he pushed her around a bit, he did not do anything severe enough to kill her.
Depending on the jury's verdict, Huguely could be sentenced to anywhere from one day to life in prison.
Huguely has been in jail for about 21 months and could get credit for time served, so a sentencing of anywhere up to roughly 21 months could allow him to go free.
ABC News(NEW YORK) -- The mother of the former U.S. Marine sentenced to death in Iran was allowed to visit her son, who she said looked gaunt and terrified on death row.
Amir Hekmati's mother, Benhaz, went to Tehran in late January, according to a report posted late Tuesday by The New York Times, three weeks after an Iranian court sentenced the 28-year-old Arizona-raised Iranian-American to death for, "cooperating for a hostile country...and spying for the CIA."
"While he is disappointed by the circumstances he finds himself in, he is hopeful that the truth will be known and he will be able to come home very soon," Hekmati's mother said in a statement, according to The Times. She described the Iranian officials she met as "hospitable" and "respectful," but said her son looked thinner and shocked by his ordeal.
Hekmati's family has publicly maintained his innocence, as first voiced by his father Ali to ABC News in an exclusive interview before the death sentence came down.
"My son is no spy. He is innocent. He's a good fellow, a good citizen, a good man," Ali said in December. "These are all unfounded allegations and a bunch of lies."
Hekmati, an Arizona-born Iranian-American who served the U.S. Marines as a rifleman from 2001 to 2005, was arrested while visiting his extended family, including two elderly grandmothers, in Tehran on Aug. 29, 2011, according to the family. The family said they were urged by the Iranian government to keep quiet about his arrest with the promise of later release, but then in December, Hekmati was shown on Iranian television allegedly confessing to being an undercover agent of the Central Intelligence Agency on a mission to infiltrate the Iranian Intelligence Ministry.
"It was their [the CIA's] plan to first burn some useful information, give it to them [the Iranians] and let Iran's Intelligence Ministry think that this is good material," Hekmati says calmly in the video.
Contrary to claims made during the initial Iranian broadcast, Hekmati's military record, provided to ABC News, shows that he never had intelligence training and the U.S. State Department said in early January Iran's claims that Hekmati "either worked for, or was sent to Iran by the CIA are simply untrue."
"The Iranian regime has a history of falsely accusing people of being spies, of eliciting forced confessions, and of holding innocent Americans for political reasons," State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said then.
With the exception of the rare family statement criticizing Iran's previous lack of cooperation, Hekmati's kin, now represented by a high-powered attorney and a public relations firm, have been quiet in their dogged efforts to free the 28-year-old.
"By remaining discreet, you are not ruling out the option to be more public later," the family's lawyer in America, Pierre-Richard Prosper, told The Times. "A more visible campaign has not been ruled out."
Shortly before Benhaz's visit, Hekmati's lawyers in Tehran filed an appeal with courts there.
Eric Volz, a spokesperson for the family, did not immediately respond to ABC News' request for comment on this report. A website set up by representatives of the family, FreeAmir.org, posted The New York Times' story in place of a new family statement.
AbleStock/Thinkstock(ATLANTA) -- Several people are dead after a shooting Tuesday night at a health spa in Norcross, Georgia.
Police say the incident at the Su Jung Health Sauna resulted in five fatalities, including the shooter, in what appears to have been a murder-suicide.
Details about the victims and the shooter have not been released. Investigators are uncertain about the relationship between the perpetrator and the victims.
Krista Kennell/AFP/Getty Images(LOS ANGELES) -- With the city of Los Angeles and even the nation outraged at the alleged sexual abuse accusations against elementary school teacher Mark Berndt, his attorney Victor Acevedo asked Tuesday that people not find his client guilty until he's had his day in court.
The lawyer made his request on the same day that Berndt, who has been charged with 23 counts of lewd acts on children at Miramonte Elementary School in south Los Angeles, pleaded not guilty.
Berndt, 61, is alleged to have taken pictures of children who were blindfolded in his classroom and in some cases, reportedly fed them spoonfuls of his semen among other lewd acts. The youngsters were not aware they were being victimized, according to prosecutors.
Acevedo claimed during the arraignment that jail staff announced over a loudspeaker that Berndt, who's currently being held on $23 million bail, was a child molester and in which dorm he was staying.
Child molesters are at particular risk for being attacked in prison.
In response to Acevedo's allegation, L.A. County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Steve Whitmore said, "We don’t do that kind of thing, but we're going to do an investigation of it."
The case against Berndt began in October 2010 when a drugstore photo processor turn over photos he said were from the teacher that showed children blindfolded and gagged.
While Berndt was removed from the classroom in January 2010, there are questions about why it took a year to file charges.
Chris Kleponis/Bloomberg via Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- President Obama showed off his vocal abilities once again Tuesday night, singing a few lines of “Sweet Home Chicago” during the finale of a blues concert at the White House.
“We were trying to get you to help us sing that because I heard you singing Al Green,” blues great Buddy Guy urged the president from the stage, referring to Obama’s infamous performance at the Apollo last month when he sang a few lines of “Let’s Stay Together.”
“So you’ve started something. You’ve got to keep it up,” Guy said.
A reluctant Obama ultimately obliged.
“Come on… Baby don’t you want to go,” Obama sang, mic in hand, as the crowd swayed around him and the first lady cheered him on. “Oh come on, baby don’t you want to go.”
The president then held the mic up briefly for the legendary B.B. King to sing the line “… that same old place,” before Obama brought it home, “… sweet home Chicago.”
The president joined the band in the closing moments of a concert by music legends and young stars in the East Room that was part of the White House Concert Series.
B.B. King, “The King of Blues,” dressed to the nines in a shimmery jacket, kicked off the celebration with a rousing rendition of “Let the Good Times Roll” followed by “The Thrill Is Gone.”
The president and Michelle Obama, joined by first grandmother Marian Robinson and members of the administration and Congress, listened to the music of Trombone Shorty, Shemekia Copeland, Keb Mo and Jeff Beck, among others.
Jagger took to the stage roughly half-way through the concert and lived up to expectations, belting out “I Can’t Turn You Loose” and “Miss You.”
Tuesday night’s salute to the blues was in recognition of Black History Month.
“This is music with humble beginnings -- roots in slavery and segregation, a society that rarely treated black Americans with the dignity and respect that they deserved,” the president said.
Earlier Tuesday, first lady Michelle Obama hailed blues music as “deeply American” and “deeply human” at a workshop for several dozen middle and high school students in the State Dining Room -- an event held as part of the ongoing White House music series and in recognition of African-American history month.
“This music wraps all of our emotions -- whether it’s love and loss, joy and sorrow, heartbreak and celebration -- it wraps it all into an art form that stirs our souls and it helps us rise above all our struggles,” the first lady said.
She was joined on stage by singer-songwriter guitarist Keb Mo; vocal artist Shemekia Copeland; and trombonist Troy ‘Trombone Shorty’ Andrews. Mo has won three Grammys, while Copeland and Andrews have both been nominated.
The first lady told the young audience that the career paths of the artists and her husband, President Obama, illustrate what can be achieved through hard work.
“The President didn’t start out at the top either. Neither did I, but let’s talk about him for a little bit since he’s not here,” she said, drawing laughter. “He had to work hard, and get a little focused -- and he wasn’t focused all the time. It was later in life that he got a little focus, right? So even if you mess up a little bit, you can get right on track.”
Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg via Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- Jonathan D. Libby does not dispute the fact that his client, Xavier Alvarez, told a "whopping" lie when he announced publicly that he had been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Alvarez was one of the first people to be prosecuted under the federal Stolen Valor Act, a 2006 law that makes it a crime to lie about receiving military awards.
He was prosecuted because, as an elected member of the board of directors of the Three Valley Water District Board in California, he introduced himself in 2007 to the audience by saying, "I'm a retired Marine of 25 years. I was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor."
Alvarez had never even served in the military.
But Libby, a deputy federal public defender, argues that Alvarez's speech was a lie, not a crime. The U.S. Supreme Court will take up Alvarez's case Wednesday and his argument that the Stolen Valor Act is unconstitutional under the First Amendment.
"Exaggerated anecdotes, barroom braggadocio and cocktail party puffery have always been thought to be beyond the realm of government reach and to pass without fear of criminal punishment," Libby writes in court papers.
He says that unlike other categories of speech such as defamation and fraud, his client's false factual speech is protected by the First Amendment.
The Obama administration argues that the law fits into a "discrete and narrow" category of speech that is unprotected by the First Amendment: "knowingly false representations that a reasonable observer would understand as a factual claim that the speaker has been awarded a military honor."
Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. says the law is necessary to protect the military awards system against claims that undercut its purpose to confer honor and foster morale in the armed forces. He says the law does not chill truthful and other fully protected speech.
"Prohibiting those false statements," Verrilli writes, "poses little risk of chilling any protected speech or allowing the government to punish disfavored viewpoints or act as the arbiter of truth and falsity on matters subject to public debate."
Libby says Congress' effort in passing the law was "laudable but does not warrant the intrusion on speech it causes, and thus goes farther than necessary."
A lower court ruled in favor of Alvarez saying that while society would be "better off if Alvarez would stop spreading worthless, ridiculous, and offensive untruths" the law was "unconstitutionally applied to make a criminal out of a man who was proven to be nothing more than a liar, without more."
The issue of exaggerating military service came to the forefront in Richard Blumenthal's 2010 race to fill the Senate seat vacated by Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT). Connecticut's then Attorney General was found to have lied -- repeatedly -- about having served in Vietnam. In actuality, Blumenthal did not. Instead he obtained five deferments, and eventually snagged a spot in the U.S. Marine Reserves at the time of the Vietnam War, which all but guaranteed he didn't have to fight overseas. Instead he helped collect donations for Toys for Tots and performed other duties stateside.
Comstock/Thinkstock(CHICAGO) -- A 17-year-old boy with Down syndrome and autism fell to his death down a garbage chute Monday night in a high-rise Chicago apartment building. Police discovered the body of Charlie Manley inside the building’s trash compacter.
He apparently climbed into the trash chute and fell 46 floors to his death, according to police. Residents say the chutes are about four feet off the ground and covered with a metal door.
Police say the boy’s parents were awakened by an alarm in their apartment -- set off when the boy left -- but then could not find him during a frantic search.
Neighbors described the teenager as a friendly, upbeat boy who was well known in the building located in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood just north of downtown. "He was always out, talking to everybody in the building," said Carolyn Licata, a building resident.
Neighbor Barbara Georgans wondered how he was able to climb into such a small opening, estimated at less than two square feet. “Maybe they should have had some kind of a shield to prevent something like that.”
The Chicago medical examiner’s officer conducted an autopsy on the boy and ruled his death an accident.
The boy’s father, John Manley, is a Chicago hedge fund investor who has supported the Special Olympics over many years.
Photodisc/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- A spurned boyfriend planned to flee the country after allegedly running over his girlfriend three times and killing her, Bergen County, N.J., prosecutors said Tuesday.
Charles Ann, 26, was arrested at a friend’s apartment in Flushing, N.Y., early Tuesday morning with a passport and a large sum of cash.
Prosecutors said Ann allegedly ran over his girlfriend, Aena Hong, 25, three times on a Fort Lee, N.J., road Monday evening and left her for dead at the scene. Hong died an hour later from her injuries.
Hong was seen walking next to Ann’s Hyundai Sonata while the two were embroiled in an argument, Bergen County prosecutor John Molinelli said in a statement. He described the pair’s relationship as “tumultuous.”
“Just before the incident, the vehicle was observed to drive away from Ms. Hong and turn around. As the victim was crossing the road, [Ann] rapidly accelerated his motor vehicle, striking Ms. Hong,” Molinelli wrote.
Ann put the car in reverse, driving over Hong’s body, then drove forward over it for a third time, prosecutors said.
Ann, a native of Korea, has been in the United States since 2009.
He is being held on $3 million bail while he awaits an extradition hearing from Queens, N.Y., to New Jersey.
Dunwoody Police Dept(ATLANTA) -- The murder trial of a Georgia engineer charged with killing his colleague and alleged lover's husband began Tuesday in Atlanta with starkly different tales of romance, betrayal and insanity in attorneys' opening statements.
Hemy Neuman, 48, was a high-level operations manager at General Electric when he shot and killed Andrea Sneiderman's husband Rusty Sneiderman, 36, in the parking lot of Sneiderman's son's preschool.
Andrea Sneiderman worked for Neuman at General Electric and they were allegedly involved in a hot-and-cold affair.
Neither the defense nor the prosecution denies that Neuman pulled the trigger and killed Rusty Sneiderman, but they tell divergent stories of what led to the killing.
Neuman pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
Neuman's defense attorney Doug Peters said in his opening statements that Neuman believed he had been visited by an angel and demon in the forms of Olivia Newton-John and Barry White, respectively, that told him that Sneiderman's children were his and that he needed to protect them by killing her husband.
Peters said mental illness runs in Neuman's family and his troubled past could be traced back to his family being taken to Auschwitz by the Nazis, a violent father and boarding school.
Neuman eventually married and became the father of three children -- 21-year-old twins and an 18-year-old daughter.
Andrea Sneiderman worked for Neuman at GE and in May 2010, they took their first business trip together and began having conversations about their personal lives. Peters went on to describe numerous romantic business trips, hours spent on the phone and hundreds of personal text messages exchanged between the two.
The defense contends that although Andrea Sneiderman at times said she would never leave her husband, she encouraged Neuman to envision a life with her and her children. These messages and his troubled background, the defense said, were what led Neuman to hear demons and angels that commanded him to murder Rusty Sneiderman.
Andrea Sneiderman was in court and shook her head and let out sporadic sobs as Peters spoke.
"Marry me," Neuman wrote in a text message read by Peters. "You think I'm crazy and your intentions are clear. Sleep on it. I will give you, Sophia and Ian the world. Together we can make it all work. Marry me."
In an email, Andrea Sneiderman wrote to Neuman, "Desire versus reality is a world I'm trying to ignore because I have to. So sorry, not fair to you, I have other thoughts but not the time right now."
"We know what happened; this case is about why. ... How could this have ever possibly taken place?" Peters asked the jurors. "This man should not be released, he should be confined as the law provides, and held as the law provides. This man is not guilty by reason of insanity."
The prosecution told a very different story.
"It's a case of violence where a man wanted someone else's wife, so he killed her husband," DeKalb County Chief Assistant District Attorney Don Geary said in opening statements Tuesday. "He got caught."
The prosecution painted Neuman as a calculating killer who planned Sneiderman's shooting for months -- going to gun shows, taking a gun safety course, going to target practice, renting a car for the shooting and wearing a disguise.
Geary also painted a picture of Rusty Sneiderman's last morning and how unsuspecting he was as he dropped his 2-year-old son Ian at a Dunwoody day care.
"Ian enjoyed spending time with his father and spending time with his friends at day care, didn't know that shortly his loving father, his hero, would be gunned down," Geary said. "Ian didn't know that he was about to see his father for the last time. Ian didn't know that there would be gunshots and that would be the end."
"As Rusty walks to car, Hemy Neuman approaches him, walking towards him, and shoots him three times -- here, here, and here," Geary said as he demonstrated the motions. "As Rusty falls in the parking lot, dying, Hemy Neuman isn't satisfied. He walks up and at contact puts the 40 caliber on Rusty's neck and fires one last time."
Geary expressed his skepticism at the idea that Neuman, an engineer who managed more than 5,000 engineers and an $800 million budget, decided to kill a man without question after being visited by angels and demons resembling celebrities.
Geary said Neuman "doesn't come close" to meeting the requirements for legal insanity.
Creatas/Thinkstock(CHICAGO) -- Forget watching the clock, chewing gum, or slouching. At the Noble Network of Charter Schools' 10 Chicago campuses students are on their best behavior-- otherwise it will cost them.
"Students tell us by and large they don't like the whole system as most teenagers would, but the proof is in the pudding," said Michael Milkie, CEO and superintendent of the Noble Network of Charter Schools.
Last year, the schools collected an estimated $190,000 to help defray the cost of having teachers stay after school to supervise detention. Students earn demerits for everything from having flaming hot chips, which Milkie said have been shown to being addictive, to having their shirts untucked.
After earning four demerits, the student is sent to a three-hour detention. Admission fee: $5.
"These are schools of choice. We have thousands on the wait list and we do communicate [this policy] really well with parents," Milkie said.
But Noble's unique approach, which it has relied on for the past 13 years, has drawn scrutiny from some parents and eduction advocacy groups who said it's being used to push out students.
"These extremely punitive, nitpicky programs are not the ones that really work," said Julie Woestehoff, executive director of the Chicago-based advocacy group Parents United For Responsible Education. "The students need to feel they're not like dogs or 2 year olds. They're actually maturing human beings who need some guidance and not someone to jump on top of them."
Donna Moore said her son, who is a second-year freshman, has been hounded at the school for everything from not having his eyes on the teacher at a given moment to having his shoe untied.
"He was retained because of detention. He was told his first year that at that time he had hit 33 detentions and had to retake his freshman year," Moore said, adding that it was impossible for students to keep up on school work when they keep being punished.
But Milkie said the school's unique system of fees -- he doesn't call them fines -- has yielded dividends.
Not only is more money now spent on education and less on paying teachers overtime to supervise detention, but test scores have also improved.
The average ACT score across Noble's 10 campuses last year was 20.3. Chicago Public Schools students scored an average of 17.2. The school's scores have consistently climbed since 2003.
Even though Donna Moore isn't happy with the way her son has been treated, she said she plans to keep him in the Noble school system.
"I send him there because there are not really many choices," she said. "It's the decision to deal with the devil I didn't know versus the devil I did know. Now I want to stay and make it better for all students."
Hemera/Thinkstock(CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.) -- On Wednesday, jurors in former University of Virginia lacrosse player George Huguely V's murder trial will begin deliberations to decide the 24-year-old's fate -- and two legal experts have told ABC News that it is possible that Huguely could be free by the end of the week.
Huguely faces six charges, including first-degree murder, in the death of former girlfriend Yeardley Love. He pleaded not guilty to all of the charges.
Though charged with first-degree murder, a Charlottesville, Va., judge gave jurors a menu of lesser charges to choose from: second-degree murder, voluntary manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter. He could also be found not guilty.
Neither the prosecution nor the defense denies that Huguely was in Yeardley's room the night of her death and was involved in some altercation with her. They differ on the severity of the encounter and whether Huguely was directly and intentionally responsible for Love's death.
Depending on the jury's verdict, Huguely could be sentenced to anywhere from one day to life in prison.
Huguely has been in jail for about 21 months and could get credit for time served, so a sentencing of anywhere up to roughly 21 months could allow him to go free.
The jury is made up of 14 people: 12 main jurors and two alternates. There are seven women and seven men, ranging from their late 20s to early 50s.
Court will reconvene at 9 a.m. on Wednesday for the jury to being their deliberations. The two alternates will be released Wednesday morning.
Jurors could reach a verdict as early as Wednesday. If the verdict is guilty, the jurors will reconvene as early as Thursday for a sentencing hearing.
Joseph Devenney/Getty Images(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) -- Cops searching for victims of the "Speed Freak Killers" are digging in the wrong well, according to a bounty hunter who says he convinced one of the killers to confess where they hid the bodies.
Wesley Shermantine, who is on death row for his role in the death of as many as 20 people in the Sacramento area, drew a map of two wells for bounty hunter Leonard Padilla after Padilla promised to pay Shermantine for the information.
Police digging in the first site found the bones of two missing women that Shermantine and his accomplice Loren Herzog were suspected of killing in the 1980s and 1990s.
Digging in a second well has turned up 1,000 bones over the past week, but Padilla told ABC News that those bones are from cattle and the police have not read Shermantine's directions correctly.
"We told (the sheriff's officers) you're digging in wrong place. It looks good on television, but actually there could possibly be another body just a quarter mile east of where he dug," Padilla said. Padilla said he had gone over the map that Shermantine drew meticulously to ensure that he knew which well the serial killer was describing. There are thousands of wells in the area, Padilla noted.
The sheriff's department did not return calls for comment.
Since Shermantine began disclosing where he dumped the victims of his drug-fueled killing spree, police have located the bodies of Chevelle "Chevy" Wheeler, 16, and Cyndi Vanderheiden, age 25.
In 2001, Herzog was released from jail on charges of manslaughter for his role in one of the murders. But he killed himself last month after finding out that Shermantine was preparing to disclose the locations of their victims' bodies.
Shermantine, who is on death row, provided the information first to Padilla and Scott Smith, a reporter for the Stockton Record, leading to the sheriff's excavations.
NASA/AFP/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- Researchers are looking for six able-bodied volunteers and two backups to be cooped up for 120 days and nights in a make-believe Mars base early in 2013.
The experiment is called HI-SEAS -- short for Hawaii Space Exploration Analogue & Simulation -- and would have the would-be astronauts live in a habitat amid the volcanic rubble on Hawaii's Big Island. The researchers are interested in finding out what real astronauts might eat, and whether they would cook and consume enough to sustain themselves on a long mission.
"Anyone eating a restricted diet will soon get tired of it," said Jean Hunter, a professor of biological and environmental engineering at Cornell University and an organizer of the experiment. "Astronauts on long missions generally don't eat enough. That's good for a diet on Earth, but bad in space, because all the problems of microgravity, like bone and muscle loss, are exacerbated if you don't get enough calories."
The researchers would make the experiment fairly realistic -- the crew members would have limited communications with mission control, and wear makeshift spacesuits whenever they went outside. Inside, they would be limited to the food supplies that had been packed in their habitat -- long-lasting staples such as flour, sugar, beans, rice, olive oil, dehydrated meat and cheese.
Even though NASA has no specific plans for a Mars expedition, it is funding the preliminary research.
Applications for HI-SEAS will be accepted until Feb. 29. Candidates must be nonsmokers in good health, between the ages of 21 and 65, with bachelor's degrees in engineering, math or appropriate sciences. Special consideration will be given to those who could use the four months for related experiments in geology or long-duration spaceflight.
"This could make a difference for Mars missions, or it could be helpful to future astronauts at lunar outposts, who might spend most of their careers there," said Hunter.
Tyler Clementi/Facebook(NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J.) -- Jury selection begins Wednesday in a New Brunswick, N.J., courtroom for the trial of Dahrun Ravi, the Rutgers University student who, with a silent flip of his laptop webcam secretly watched his roommate in a moment of gay intimacy, and unwittingly set in motion a series of events that would make him a national symbol of cyberbullying.
The trial, which will be broadcast live across the country and as far away as India, will culminate a criminal prosecution that many believe would never have happened if not for the fact that Tyler Clementi, Ravi's gay roommate, jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge on Sept. 22, 2010 -- just three days after Ravi electronically captured him kissing a man in his dorm room.
While authorities were only beginning their investigation, the media and public readily connected the dots, and Clementi's death struck a growing anti-bullying nerve in America and became a blog-driven lightning rod for outrage in the gay community.
Although the court of the public opinion condemned Ravi in the immediate aftermath of Clementi's death, two former New Jersey prosecutors say it will be a much more challenging case in the court of law.
"Pressure from gay rights groups, and global media attention made this case one that had to be prosecuted," former New Jersey prosecutor Robert Honecker said. "Yet the charges themselves are very difficult to prove."
Ravi, now 19, faces up to 10 years in state prison if he is convicted on the multiple counts of invasion of privacy, witness tampering, hindering prosecution and bias intimidation.
He rejected a plea deal in December that would have allowed him to serve no jail time, but require him to perform 600 hours of community service and receive counseling. The state also assured Ravi, an Indian citizen, that they would recommend to immigration officials that he not be deported.
"The fact that the prosecution offered this plea deal in the first place indicates that they are worried that they might have a tough time in court," said John Fahy, another former New Jersey prosecutor familiar with the case.
Referring to why his client rejected the plea deal, Ravi's attorney Steven Altman said, "Simple answer, simple principal. He's innocent. He's not guilty. That's why he rejected the plea."
The Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office has declined to comment on any aspect of the case.
Hemera/Thinkstock(WYOMING, Mich.) -- A Michigan man whose son died in Iraq burned the state flag of New Jersey after the Garden State flew its flags at half-staff in memory of Whitney Houston last week.
"They're watering down the term of what a true hero is these days," John Burri told ABC News. "I thought it was offensive to every family's fallen soldier out there, and it cheapens the meaning of lowering the flag."
The 60-year-old's decision to torch the New Jersey flag on his Wyoming, Mich., patio grill came after New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie ordered flags flown at half-staff to honor the singer Whitney Houston, a Garden State native who was buried in her home state on Sunday.
Burri believes flags should only be lowered for those who died serving their country.
"My intention was not to hurt anyone, especially the residents of New Jersey," he said. "My intention was to show Gov. Christie how offensive it was."
The governor has defended his decision, calling Houston a "cultural icon."
"Her accomplishments in her life were a source of great pride for many people in this state and for the state as a whole, and so on that basis I think she's entitled to have that recognition," Christie told reporters last week.
After seeing Christie's comments on the local news, Burri said he set out on a mission to honor his son, Army Spc. Eric Burri, who died in 2005 when an explosive device detonated near the Humvee in which he was patrolling.
He bought a replica New Jersey flag, tied it to the back of his car and drove around two veteran memorials in Grand Rapids, Mich. He then stopped at his son's burial site before going home and burning the flag.
"Best $12.95 I've ever spent," said Burri. "Sometimes, you have to do something drastic and extreme for people to listen. I just hope it made a point that maybe someone will pick this up and get a new law made for flag etiquette."
Federal law gives governors of American states power to have flags lowered for residents or state officials. There is no law requiring that person to have served in the armed forces.
ABC News(NEW YORK) -- The mother of the former U.S. Marine sentenced to death in Iran was allowed to visit her son, who she said looked gaunt and terrified on death row.
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