Altman said he may play a video of a nearly one-hour statement Ravi made for an investigator days before he was charged. In it, Ravi acknowledged using his webcam and seeing what was happening in his dorm room, but he said he meant no harm.
The trial captured in detail the actions of Ravi and his freshman roommate, Tyler Clementi, over a few days in September 2010, beginning when Clementi asked for privacy so he could have a guest over and continuing past when he committed suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge.
The suicide made Clementi a national symbol of the difficulties young gays can face.
Ravi is not charged with his death. He faces 15 criminal counts, including invasion of privacy and bias intimidation. Seven charges are related to allegations that he tried to cover his tracks by changing Twitter messages, deleting text messages and telling a witness what she should say.
Over 12 days, testimony was heard from about 30 witnesses, including students, Rutgers officials, investigators, and the other man in the streamed video.
Without a chance to hear testimony from Ravi, who told Judge Glenn Berman it was his own decision not to get on the witness stand, jurors may give more consideration to the one instance they did hear his voice. It came in a video of an interview he gave police on Sept. 23, 2010.
Ravi, then 18, looked composed and wore shorts, a T-shirt and flip-flops when he was brought to the police station. Word had spread that he used his webcam to view Clementi in a private moment with a man, just days before Clementi committed suicide.
He looked directly at the investigator, who accused him repeatedly of lying. He talked quickly, but his voice didn't trail off.
Ravi immigrated from India with his family as a child. He and his family live in the upscale central New Jersey community of Plainsboro.
The son of a computer software firm executive, he has designed some software on his own. He had a custom-made computer that functioned on both Microsoft and Apple Macintosh operating systems and was good enough at calculus that students came to him for help.
At Rutgers, Ravi intended to major in economics. The university assigned him and Clementi to be roommates at random. They met when they moved in in late August.
When he met with police, he was asked to explain a Twitter post in which he said: "Anyone with iChat, I dare you to video chat me between the hours of 9:30 pm and 12."
On the video, he said he meant that sarcastically. "When I'm uncomfortable about something," Ravi explained, "I joke about it."
To convict him on the most serious charge - bias intimidation - prosecutors must convince the jury that he acted out of animus against gays. Ravi faces up to 10 years in prison if he's convicted of bias intimidation, considered a hate crime in New Jersey. Most people convicted of the other charges he faces don't get jail time.
His lawyers have worked hard to show that Ravi didn't have negative feelings about gays. As prosecutors called college students to testify, detfense lawyers asked them all a variation of the same question: Did he ever say anything bad about gays? In each case, the answer was "no."
But some students said Ravi told them he was "uncomfortable" having a gay roommate.
