Hans Reiser Leads Police To Nina's Body 1523
jlmcgraw was the first to alert us that Hans Reiser has led police to the location in the Oakland Hills where he buried the body of his wife Nina. (We discussed the rumor that he would do so last month.) SFGate.com reports that remains were recovered but have not yet been identified. Reiser is to be sentenced on Wednesday. CBS5 claims that Reiser made a deal for a reduced sentence, to 15 years, in exchange for revealing the body.
Sad (Score:5, Insightful)
I feel bad for the kids - that is such a messed up situation.
fooie (Score:2, Insightful)
There was always that little (irrational) bit of me that said he was innocent. Foof.
This makes me sad (Score:3, Insightful)
I held out so much hope all during the trial process that Hans wasn't guilty. And even after he'd been convicted, I held onto the cynical thought that Nina was alive and well somewhere in Russia, laughing at all of this, and that someday it would all be revealed as a fraud.
Good luck, Hans.
No more doubts about conviction (Score:5, Insightful)
Even after the conviction, given the circumstantial case some doubts remained. This certainly removes all remaining doubts.
R.I.P. NINA (Score:4, Insightful)
FINALLY
Re:This makes me sad (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This makes me sad (Score:3, Insightful)
I held out so much hope all during the trial process that Hans wasn't guilty. Good luck, Hans.
Why?
He duped the great majority of us... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Okay there you go (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. But you'd have to be bloody insane to think that maybe Hans didn't do it at this point. I mean, he knew where the body was buried.
Blah (Score:2, Insightful)
I hate the world.
Re:Okay there you go (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This makes me sad (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, because I'd have liked to have seen her turn up alive and well. A living person is better than a dead person any day.
Sadly, circumstantial evidence or not, the guy was clearly guilty as all hell from minute one. Even the weirdest, most anti-social geek I know doesn't do the strange shit he pulled in the days following her murder.
Re:Statistically, this was bound to happen. (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm just saying that given enough people in a community, you'll certain amounts of people who lie, cheat, steal and even murder.
Statistically, given enough people in a community, you'll find certain amount of people who are nice, moral, and respectful of others. This could have easily gone the other way.
The kids... (Score:5, Insightful)
No matter how much we argue or try to make "programming jokes" about this incident the truth is these kids' mother is dead, their father is going away for a long time and they are going to be the ones bearing one of the heaviest burdens in this particular case.
The Ends Justify the Means (Score:1, Insightful)
This whole case sets a terrible precedent, the more so now that the damn prosecutor can gloat about "being right all along." Hans was still convicted without a shred of real proof, and that is still a horrible tragedy for the justice system (if it can even still be called a system).
Here's the lesson, kids: you don't need proof as long as you *happen* to be right.
Re:This makes me sad (Score:4, Insightful)
Good luck? The man is a fucking murderer. I don't care if he's fucking Linux God and able to write programs just by looking at them, he's a despicable human being and deserves no luck at this point.
It makes me sad too, it makes me sad that he did it, it makes me sad that he thought he could get away with it, it makes me sad that he actually used the "I'm too smart to know what I did" defense, and now he's going to pay the price. I'm not sad for that.
This ain't no victimless crime.
Re:This makes me sad (Score:0, Insightful)
slashdot. where murderers are wished good luck.
Fuck you, ShaunC.
Minority, not majority... (Score:5, Insightful)
He duped a minority, methinks.
There were lots of us who thought he probably did it: the "she ran away" excuse just never floated, and there was too much stupid circumstantial excuses (I don't care HOW much of a geek you are, doing BOTh the seat AND flooding the car AND saying you slept in the wet sopping car is just ridiculous)
Re:This makes me sad (Score:4, Insightful)
Bad News for Geeks (Score:2, Insightful)
With things like this coming out, it is going to be much, much harder to find a wonderful woman. Let alone getting 1000 points in an hour playing Team Fortress 2.
Re:The Ends Justify the Means (Score:2, Insightful)
Closure (Score:3, Insightful)
-Matt
Re:Choice of file system (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Ends Justify the Means (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, come off it ... there was no reasonable doubt. Doubt that isn't reasonable isn't sufficient to let him walk, and the *jury* - not the prosecutor - got it right.
Bottom lne: Hans tried to bullshit them, and they saw through it. If he had shut his moutn, maybe he would have walked, but he thought he could "put one over" on a bunch of "dumb jurors."
He forgot that jurors don't have to be smarter than the accused - in his case, all they needed was a baloney-meter.
Re:I can only hope (Score:0, Insightful)
I'm not a Christian. I don't believe in forgiveness nor do I believe in rebirth. But I do believe in revenge.
Can you give one reason outside of Christian morality that this man shouldn't be tortured? Please note that the "he might be innocent" excuse just walked out of the door. And don't use the "we'll become monsters too" excuse because it is based on Christian morality (because there is nothing special about humanity).
The concept of justice requires him to be tortured and executed.
Re:I can only hope (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I can only hope (Score:5, Insightful)
Fixed that for you. Being a decent person has very little to do with religion.
Re:Okay there you go (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, and there was no reasonable doubt. They had physical blood evidence that Nina was murdered in his car.
Yes, but only because... (Score:2, Insightful)
This will impact future development in a negative fashion. If there were others that could seriously continue development, then sure, I'll keep using it. And I'll keep watching Chris Benoit wrestling matches.
Re:This makes me sad (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to have an attitude like that, but by definition anyone who behaves that way is obviously mentally ill, and probably a jail term is only going to make things worse for him. I'm not sure there is alternative though...
And that's what makes me sad, I don't think that there is an answer to the question 'what could have been done beforehand to prevent this?'. You can't just go locking people away because they are a bit (or a lot) arrogant and nerdy - slashdot's user base would disappear overnight! Maybe we need that 'voice in your head' ray gun pointing at people 24/7 with a message 'thou shalt not kill. thou shalt not kill. thou shalt not kill. (drink pepsi).'
Hopefully the kids are now in a more stable environment...
Why throw the baby out with the bath water? (Score:2, Insightful)
I hope you also don't wear anything with Cotton in it. I mean, unless you are pro-slavery of course. And I certainly hope you wouldn't drive a VW or other German car ... or are you pro-Nazi?
I can understand you being a bit emotional at the moment, but at some point you need to start to think reasonably. If you stopped using quality products because of the nature of some of those involved in their design and production, you'd probably be naked, and starving. The above was but a small sample of examples. Also, namesys is more than Hans Reiser, and throwing the baby out with the bath water is an expression for a reason.
Re:Choice of file system (Score:4, Insightful)
Does this whole situation affect your choice of file system?
Personally, I would have to say so. This is a very sad story. There is something very morbid about using the work of a murderer.
This doesn't affect my choice in filesystem, nor should it anyone. It doesn't invalidate the work that was done on the filesystem by Mr. Reiser or any other contributor.
That being said, if we were to find out that the murder of Nina somehow benefited the code, then I would find issue with it. If by looking at Nina's splattered blood, Hans was inspired to create a new tree sorting algorithm, then yes, I'd have a problem with that.
Once code has been written, it should stand on its own merits, and be scrutinized only for its own flaws.
Now that I've written this, I'm beginning to reconsider my position on NSA Linux.
\/\/\/
Re:I hear that (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope he gets his in prison.
As understandable as the sentiment is, that won't bring Nina Reiser back. I've lost a loved one to a drunk driver, and it isn't much comfort that the bastard went to prison. I hope his kids get a little bit of peace from the fact that at least they have a final answer on the matter, and that they'll be able to visit their mother's grave. This is just really sad; everybody involved loses.
and slashdot joins.... (Score:5, Insightful)
all the people from LA.
last time I saw that sort of hopeful thinking it was kobe and people saying he didnt cheat on his wife. And he did. We all love our heros, dont we?
Well, heros are usually only good at the one thing they are touted for... im not asking kobe to fix my car for sure.
With all the smart people around here, why would anyone think that a computer programmer is any less suceptible to violent acts than any other?
I mean, is it just because computer geeks are well known as the most well adjusted people on the planet? :)
Re:Okay there you go (Score:5, Insightful)
Wasn't it more a matter of reasonable doubt?
I think most thought it was more likely than not that he did it. Just that there were reasonable alternative theories (ran away to frame him, insane best friend that claims to have murdered people still alive are 2 that I can think of).
I think a lot of people here wanted to believe he was innocent, perhaps because of the open source connection, perhaps because they could relate to him, I don't know. I always thought that the alternative theories were pretty weak - there was no evidence that crazy best friend did it and no real motive for Nina to try to frame him by fleeing to Russia without her kids. On the other hand there was a large amount of physical evidence, which taken together (and considering Hans' complete lack of a plausible explanations for any of it) didn't leave a reasonable doubt in my mind. Or the juries mind. And now a lot of people here have to admit that the police and the jury were right.
Re:He duped the great majority of us... (Score:1, Insightful)
Blah. Life goes on. And you don't have egg on your face just because you thought that he couldn't possibly have done it. It probably says nothing about you either, or if it does, only good stuff. ... Let me hand you the clue-phone.
To all you guys who say "his poor children", and "a woman is dead"
A great many children are off far worse than Hans Reiser's children currently are. And lots of much more innocent people die in much more atrocious ways every day.
Furthermore, he isn't a despicable human being. Very few people are, if any at all. I'm pretty sure that you could drive anyone into killing someone, and even make it look like murder (per the juristic interpretation).
Re:I can only hope (Score:3, Insightful)
The object of justice is the dispassionate meting of a society-prescribed punishment. Vengeance and revenge never enter the equation; justice and vengeance are never the same.
Re:Still could be innocent (Score:5, Insightful)
He may have had knowledge of the murder, and use that to reduce the sentence.
I would be interested in your theories of how he could have had knowledge of the murder and not be guilty.
Re:So how many "But he's still innocent"... (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, here's a serious answer: his guilt or innocence does not, in any way, change the fact that he was convicted on scant evidence.
It's not the destination that matters, it's the journey. A broken system can send an innocent man to jail as easily as a guilty one.
Re:The kids... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that there are two important points here:
1) You can always joke about something (and often should).
2) That joking and laughter doesn't help the kids who are the real victims. (The mother was the victim, but the kids will continue to suffer for a while yet.)
So I ask this of Slashdot: Should the open-source/tech-community raise some money or do something nice for these kids?
We don't have any obligation to, but some one from our community has hurt his kids and his kids are suffering. Should we do something to help out? (Scholarships? I nice thing of flowers?)
I don't know the answer to this, but I think that it is worth some discussion.
Re:I can only hope (Score:3, Insightful)
Fixed that for you. Being a decent person has very little to do with religion.
But it has everything to do with not being a pompous asshole, and thus avoiding pompous asshole-like phrases such as "fixed that for you."
Re:Okay there you go (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Choice of file system (Score:2, Insightful)
The file system has a lot of merit, and I would love to continue to use it. However, I value my data more than I value speedy access to it.
It's sad that a woman is dead, but honestly, my biggest concern is something that affects countless thousands of people. Who's going to maintain the file system now? Murderer or not, he seemed to be a talented coder, and it's my hope that he can continue to work on the file system from prison, and try to repay his debt to society that way. Because there are still some showstopping bugs in Reiser4 that I would really like to see fixed before I start using it.
Re:This makes me sad (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Okay there you go (Score:2, Insightful)
If Reiser was less of an asshole during his trial he would have literally gotten away with murder, the prosecution barely had enough to bring to trial and it was all circumstantial.
wrong question (Score:4, Insightful)
You're asking the wrong question.
The question to ask is whether Reiser should have been convicted. At the time, I thought it was more likely than not that he had done it, but I also thought there wasn't enough physical evidence to convict him beyond a reasonable doubt.
Of course, one can't know what exactly went through the jury's minds, so we should give them the benefit of the doubt. However, I do find it worrisome that several jurors basically said that they convicted him because they didn't like him.
Re:Whatever (Score:4, Insightful)
Umm, I kinda doubt that's going to happen, can you imagine the response to his participating in discussion threads on kernel.org?
For similar reasons, I kinda doubt he'll be returning to Slashdot. Or at least, not with his current login.
Some people are better off dead. (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't want to sound like I'm defending murder here, but not I nor you nor anyone else know what Nina did to make him kill her.
Murder is illegal. That is a good thing. He got caught after killing someone, he pays the price. That is well and good.
But I don't think we should be saying things like "evil" and "I hope he dies of AIDS in jail" until you know the facts of the situation, and what she did to make him kill her. Sure, maybe it was nothing, and he's just a psychopath - but maybe it was years of abuse, in which case I have quite a lot of difficulty blaming him completely.
I've seen marriages so sick and dysfunctional I almost wish one of the parties would kill the other. Everyone's life would get better if one of them just did it. Some people lead such sick, disgraceful lives that I have little guilt in thinking the world would be better of without them in it.
Killing someone because you want their money, or you don't like the colour of their skin, is a crime against humanity itself and anyone who does that's life is forfeit, in my opinion. But killing someone after they inflict years of mental abuse? The matter is far less black and white. Illegal, yes. Wrong, too .. maybe. Certainly not optimal. But evil?
Some people have it coming. I'm not saying one way or the other here, OK. I don't know Mr Reiser, nor have I any emotional investment one way or the other. I just don't believe murder is always the heinous evil crime some might think. Sometimes, it's the wheel of karma turning. Sometimes, it's a public service.
Of course, we don't know, and will likely never know, what caused the murder. But have we all decided anyway?
Maybe Reiser is a sick psychopathic fuck who kills for kicks. Maybe Nina had it coming. Who knows? Not you or I. So let's lay off the fire and brimstone, what do you say?
Re:This makes me sad (Score:2, Insightful)
> Good luck, Hans
That man killed his wife, plotted to hide the body, and then lied in court. He has been noted to be both arrogant and highly anti-social.
That man deserves *NO* more respect, *NO* more well-wishing, and *NO* more attention in the media.
What he *DOES* deserve is time in jail to ponder his actions, as well as the right to return to society once he's no longer a threat. His was a heinous, absolutely evil act, and this kind of well-wishing is ill-placed in light of what he did to his wife and kids.
Re:I can only hope (Score:5, Insightful)
"We'll become monsters too" is not at all based on Christian morality, although it doesn't contradict it either. It's entirely orthogonal (I'm an atheist).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice [wikipedia.org]
Apparently you are a hardcore retributivist. I'm closest to a utilitarian by this scale.
Torturing him doesn't really help anything and is just an asshole manouevre. In my opinion, it's not that one becomes a monster by torturing another, it's that one already is a monster for wanting to torture.
I'm not happy for Hans Reiser's suffering. I'm happy to prevent him from causing any more suffering, and in all fairness, if somebody has to suffer it should be the one who forced the issue.
Re:Okay there you go (Score:4, Insightful)
And now a lot of people here have to admit that the police and the jury were right.
I have a feeling that a great many people won't step forth and own up to being wrong; it's just not in human nature.
Me, I never followed the case closely, but with what I did read, figured either he did it or he was a big idiot. Now I know the answer is "both."
Re:The kids... (Score:3, Insightful)
still plenty of doubts about conviction (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the conviction (first degree murder, i.e. preplanned) is still ridiculous. The evidence for preplanning was very weak. Part of it was that Hans bought a book about murder investigations--but he bought it AFTER Nina's disappearance. You'd think someone planning a murder and wanting to foil an investigation would buy the book BEFORE doing the deed. Another part was that he removed his cell phone battery to avoid being tracked--again AFTER the disappearance. I've been neutral about Hans's possible innocence (60% of Wired Magazine readers in a survey thought he was innocent) but I always thought the premeditation charge was ridiculous. If it was preplanned there are a million less crazy ways he could have done it, such as hiring professionals from Russia or at least making better arrangements to get rid of the body far away. I've felt it more plausible that he lost self-control in the heat of an argument, found himself with a dead wife and a potential giant heap of trouble, and then, after the fact, decided (unsuccessfully) to try to outrun/outsmart the police. That would be second degree murder rather than first, if I remember my Perry Mason reruns.
Re:Why throw the baby out with the bath water? (Score:2, Insightful)
I hope you also don't wear anything with Cotton in it. I mean, unless you are pro-slavery of course. And I certainly hope you wouldn't drive a VW or other German car ... or are you pro-Nazi?
I can understand you being a bit emotional at the moment, but at some point you need to start to think reasonably.
So to "think reasonably" means that all Germans are Nazis, or that all cotton (especially present day) is affiliated with slavery? It scares me that someone like you is arguing in favor of reason.
Re:I guess this means he falls under the messy typ (Score:5, Insightful)
The urge to divide everything into two -- black or white, friend or enemy, capitalism or communism, christian or heathen, disorganized or organized -- is a recognized mental oddity.
In most cases, there is not only a sliding scale (or shades of grey, if you like), but multiple axes.
That we so easily try place things in a two-bin system might be because it makes it easier for us to make decisions.
Hans Reiser is an odd man out in many ways, but can't be explained this easily. He's not just a disorganized person. He's a complex person. And if you'd ever talked to him, you'd know that in some things he is meticulously organized, while in others, not. Binning him like you did seems silly, but if it makes it easier for you to deal with, hey, whatever sinks your bathyscaphe.
Re:Okay there you go (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Ends Justify the Means (Score:3, Insightful)
His actions in court made it pretty obvious what he thought of the jurors.
Try sitting as a juror on a murder trial - it's quite an experience, not at all like on TV.
The man believed he could con everyone. He forgot that even the most brilliant people make mistakes, as well as that his own perspective may be untrustworthy.
Of course, when you're so full of yourself as he was, it makes it easier to "justify" killing someone else, since they aren't as "worthy" as you are.
Some people have said he's disturbed. No - he's just a conceited scumbag who has no empathy for others, and let his ego get the better of him, a la OJ Simpson.
Re:wrong question (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Whatever (Score:4, Insightful)
None of that justifies killing her. Only someone with an over-inflated ego would think otherwise.
Also, she had gone out and gotten herself a decent job to support herself and their children. Sounds like a responsible mother to most of us.
Plus in the end, his filesystem ends up a dead end because it's now unsupported.
Oh Great... (Score:2, Insightful)
Murder your wife and get a reduced sentence for showing authorities where the body of the dead mother of your children are?
15 years for murder?
This is insane. He should get life. Period.
I hope his children are kept safely away from him.
Re:Still could be innocent (Score:5, Insightful)
While there ARE certainly plausible ways that he could have been not guilty AND known where the body is, I would imagine that if he was innocent and knew where the body was that he would, oh, I don't know.... maybe.... CALL THE POLICE AS SOON AS HE KNEW WHERE THE BODY OF HIS DEAD WIFE WAS.
I mean, if it was me, I'd be trying to find all of the evidence to clear my name that I could - and if I hadn't done the killing, you better believe I'd be demanding the police go all CSI on her body and the crime scene before we even get to the point of me being arrested. The fact that he knew where the body was and kept quiet is an indicator to me of intent.
And while indicative of intent, it is not further proof of his guilt. At least it DOES bring closure to the family of the deceased.
Who the hell modded parent down? (Score:5, Insightful)
This AC is spot-on. I wouldn't go so far as say we need to raise money, but I do think Slashdotters should be aware that if they ever stumble across Hans and Nina's kids, they deserve a little extra consideration.
Re:I can only hope (Score:5, Insightful)
Why doesn't he deserve that?
Gandhi? "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind"? We are not barbarians.
The punishment is the prison time, not rape, let along the long, drawn-out suffering that is an AIDS death. Yes he's a terrible person for having killed his wife, yes he should be punished and no the 15 years he's getting probably isn't enough for someone who can kill their wife and then calculatingly lie to the police and a jury about it for so long. That doesn't mean he deserves to be raped. At the very least it's mob justice, and the reason we have courts to hand out punishment instead.
The sick individuals gloating at the idea of anyone being raped are no better than the people they wish it upon.
Re:Okay there you go (Score:3, Insightful)
Still I'm glad the correct jury came to the correct decision.
Re:I hear that (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Okay there you go (Score:1, Insightful)
It wasn't merely that he lacked plausible explanations for any of it; additionally, he had limitless implausible explanations for all of it.
Re:Some people are better off dead. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless she was pointing a gun at him and it was self-defense, there is *no* excuse.
If a woman makes you angry, are you going to hit her?
If she cheats on you, are you going to kill her?
Will you give her the same rights in return? How about if she just cuts your pecker off instead and feeds it to the dog?
How about if it's your kids? If they don't listen to you, are you going to wack them to "teach them a lesson"?
It's called murder because it wasn't justified. Blaming the victim is just fucked up.
Re:Still could be innocent (Score:5, Insightful)
If I were separated from my wife and bound by a restraining order, and she was having sex with her new lover IN MY HOUSE, I would probably kill her, too.
And if you admitted as much to the cops, and testified to such in court, the district attorney would likely seek no more than manslaughter.
Crimes committed in the heat of passion, when the murderer is truthful with the police and penitent, aren't always prosecuted as a capital crime. To do so costs the state much more.
Hans Reiser insisted on lying about every aspect of the disappearance of Nina Reiser from the moment he was questioned by police. The DA had no choice but to prosecute it as a murder case - and given the facts in evidence, he was convicted because he made a lot of stupid mistakes - typical for someone who commits a crime of passion and then thinks they can cover it up because they're so much smarter than the 'average bear'.
If Reiser had even pled guilty and recanted his story after lying to the police and being arraigned for murder, he might have gotten off with a much lighter sentence for murder. But he waited until the sentencing phase, after he'd lied to the court.
No, Hans was so much smarter than everyone else. Now he's going to go to prison for 15-to-life - and lying to the court as Reiser did means his parole hearings aren't going to go well for him, if he even survives 15 years in prison.
Re:Some people are better off dead. (Score:1, Insightful)
Okay, so we've gone from "HANS IS INNOCENT" to "yeah the bitch had it coming". Way to go, slashdot.
By the way, nice little appeal to ignorance, there.
Re:Still could be innocent (Score:5, Insightful)
Only on fucking slashdot does the one guy who offers a rational opinion NOT get modded up. So far the first page of comments is mostly jokes and inane - "I'd murder the bitch too" remarks - all getting modded up.
Assholes, this is a real person with a real family, not some fucking Manga or Anime or video game.
Re:Still could be innocent (Score:5, Insightful)
This doesn't prove he's guilty. He may have had knowledge of the murder, and use that to reduce the sentence. I still have faith that the real story will come out.
He is the O .J. Simpson of nerds. We can't believe he's guilty because he's one of us.
Re:Okay there you go (Score:5, Insightful)
They had physical blood evidence that Nina bled in his car. Doesn't mean she died there, nor that Hans killed her.
No, it doesn't, but look at it like a juror might....
I've had women, including my wife, ride in various cars of mine for over twenty years now. None of them have bled in any significant amounts inside any of the cars I've owned during that period. Also, no bleeding episodes in my car were followed up by the removal of half the seats in the car or the washing of the inside of my car.
Of course, no one who has ever ridden in my car has ever disappeared without a trace after obtaining a restraining order against me, either. Sure, it is circumstantial evidence - but people are convicted on less everyday for lesser crimes.
Re:Some people are better off dead. (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually women have been using the "he drove me to it" defence for murdering their husbands quite successfully for years.
Re:I can only hope (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not a Christian. I don't believe in forgiveness nor do I believe in rebirth. But I do believe in revenge.
Can you give one reason outside of Christian morality that this man shouldn't be tortured? Please note that the "he might be innocent" excuse just walked out of the door. And don't use the "we'll become monsters too" excuse because it is based on Christian morality (because there is nothing special about humanity).
The concept of justice requires him to be tortured and executed.
I'm an atheist, but I can give you some excellent reasons.
You will debase the people who carry out the punishment. It's lovely that *you* want someone tortured and executed. What about the person who has to carry out that act? What happens to them, year after year as they carry out revenge killings to make people like you happy?
You know what happens to them. They go insane and are themselves tortured. You commit a further crime by making someone torture another person. Do you know what most societies do to those who order the torturing?
Another excellent reason is that making this person suffer isn't impartial justice, it's emotional retribution. It has nothing to do with *why* we have a legal system. In fact, the legal system is partly created to stop this sort of thing happening. We don't want revenge killings and mob justice. We want fairness and impartiality in punishment. And why is that?
Well, sometimes the courts get it wrong. It happened a lot before blood typing and DNA evidence, and still happens today.
How do you recompense someone you tortured and killed when you made a mistake, or when people in the system manipulate evidence to ensure a guilty verdict?
In your retributive world, you'd have to torture and kill members of the bar, the police, the DA and maybe even the jury.
No, I'll stick with a world where there's an impartial, rational legal system, thanks very much. You can keep your torture fantasies to yourself.
Re:Have to repent for the sin... (Score:1, Insightful)
Which really sucks if you ARE wrongly imprisoned. I've been wrongly accused of stuff (though not imprisoned) in the past, and until the woman in question was unmasked as a complete psycho, I got a lot of "how can you sit there so emotionlessly? Have you no remorse?" - well, gee, because I didn't fucking do anything, no.
Re:Okay there you go (Score:5, Insightful)
You can also be found, that is the difference.
Re:wrong question (Score:5, Insightful)
I do find it worrisome that several jurors basically said that they convicted him because they didn't like him.
Gut feelings, intuition [myersbriggs.org], aren't just random whimsies, they can be your subconscious' way of communicating its' analysis of anothers' subconscious body language and uncontrollable facial subtleties.
Re:Some people are better off dead. (Score:2, Insightful)
You are blinded by your conditioning.
Abuse is abuse. It's case by case. Physical or emotional, it's abuse, and over time it adds up.
There are plenty of bastards killed every year by their battered wives who finally snapped at their abuse and just killed the sons of bitches. We let them off with manslaughter, suspended sentences, or don't charge them at all.
Those men had it coming. I don't shed a single fucking tear.
But you seem to say that just because of their gender, a woman can never, ever have it coming?
Bullshit. Women can be just as abusive, just as evil, as men. And just because abuse isn't physical doesn't mean it doesn't do long term damage - and gradually built up into an explosive finale.
Have some imagination, why don't you. If one of your guy friends is a prick to you, again and again and again, eventually you might just punch him - and rightly so. But you're saying there is nothing, literally nothing at all, that could possibly warrant the same for a woman, beyond her threatening him with a gun?
Women are humans with all the same possibilities for good and bad behaviour. Some guys are such living breathing shits that they deserve to just be shot. And if you can't imagine that there are also women who deserve the same, you're just an easily-swayed fool, brainwashed by political correctness that women are somehow immune for any consequence of their actions.
You have double standards, and shame on you.
reduced sentence? (Score:3, Insightful)
What I really don't understand is he gets to hold her location out like a trophy and then his reward is a better sentence? He did the time, he was convicted, who gives a rats ass if he lead them to the body (sentence wise). Were they afraid of an appeal? Or is just giving the closure to the family somehow outweighing him being in jail longer?
Re:Okay there you go (Score:5, Insightful)
I think a lot of people here wanted to believe he was innocent
Sure, but that wasn't the reason why there was so much opposition to his conviction. People didn't (and still don't) seem to be able to grasp the difference between probably did it and have proven it beyond reasonable doubt. It's entirely consistent to believe that he did it and that he shouldn't have been convicted. Not because he's a big contributor to open-source, but because the standard for allowing the state to take away somebody's freedom and ability to vote for most of their life should be fucking high and his trial didn't meet it.
I disagree. "Reasonable doubt" is not the same as "proven beyond any doubt", which seems to be your position. Reasonable doubt is not a couple of far-fetched alternative theories coupled with totally unreasonable explanations for the evidence. The jurors saw a lot more evidence than you did. They got to watch Resier as he made his case. According to their comments any reasonable doubt was removed when he took the stand. You may disagree with their conclusions, despite the much smaller amount of evidence (all second hand) that you have access to, but the fact is that they got it right. For you to persist in claiming that they got it wrong is simply the height of arrogance.
Re:Some people are better off dead. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Maybe Nina had it coming."
Maybe he made her make him kill her.
Maybe she made him make mer make him kill her.
Maybe he made hr make him make her make him kill her.
No, fuck you, a line has to be drawn, and it's drawn at the point where you fucking kill someone.
Re:wrong question (Score:3, Insightful)
This has been my single, begrudging damn point all along. *I* thought Reiser was guilty too, but despite following the court case closely (SFGate.com had liveblogging, basically), I felt D.A. Hora did a pretty miserable job of building a convincing case for *first degree murder* (of which Resier was convicted), which carries with it stipulations about things like premeditation. Hora never once came close to demonstrating, circumstantially or otherwise, that Hans Resier planned to murder his wife, much less that he killed her at all.
Despite luckily ending up with the right decision, justice was not served by this trial; contempt for a sad, aloof, kinda-crazy man was the only social mechanism that really had its day in the sun.
Re:Still could be innocent (Score:5, Insightful)
Or worse, we don't care if he's guilty because he's one of us.
I'm all for innocent-until-proven, believe me - but he's been PROVEN guilty at this point. Clinging to an idea of his innocence is a weird sort of cognitive dissonance I can't get behind.
Re:Sad (Score:1, Insightful)
Indeed. This is a terrible tragedy. I hope that the children can be put in a good home. And I hope that Hans is able to get help.
I also hope that the court will be intelligent in dealing with this. Society will be better off if Hans can still contribute to F/OSS. He doesn't necessarily need to work on ReiserFS. He could also work on educational software or software for hospitals. But ReiserFS is what he would be best at. It might not seem very important, but it's better for society than having him mope in his cell or weed gardens.
Re:This makes me sad (Score:1, Insightful)
Wow, how stupid were you? Even in the face of overwhelming evidence, you clung onto the sliver of hope that this murderer was innocent.
What makes you any different from people who believe that Creationism should be taught in schools? They WANT to believe that creationism is how the world works despite overwhelming evidence that it's not true. In the same way, you WANTED to believe Reiser was innocent even in the face of overwhelming evidence that he was guilty.
You are what is wrong with America.
Please remind yourself to never trust your objectivity or sense of judgement EVER.
Re:wrong question (Score:4, Insightful)
Gut feelings, intuition [myersbriggs.org], aren't just random whimsies, they can be your subconscious' way of communicating its' analysis of anothers' subconscious body language and uncontrollable facial subtleties.
They can be. But they are (demonstrably) not reliable enough to convict someone.
Re:This makes me sad (Score:3, Insightful)
"Criminals thrive on the indulgence of society's understanding."
I know Ra's Al Ghul is a fictional character, but damn he was wise.
Re:Okay there you go (Score:3, Insightful)
It's just more circumstantial evidence -- by itself, not very convincing, but all combined, enough to convict him even without a body.
Re:Minority, not majority... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hi Nick.
(As context, Nicholas was tangentally involved with Hans while we were all at Berkeley together, and I knew Hans more closely because I was there earlier / closer in age to Hans).
I'm not in touch with a whole lot of the rest of the crowd that knew him in the late 80s / early 90s at Cal. However, the people I am still talking to had a range of opinions... Hans was wierd, but not wierd in the way that would make you think he'd hurt or kill someone eventually. There was doubt - Nina was clearly wierd, too, as were several other people involved (Sturgeon, for one, made a better potential killer). Many other things could have been the underlying factual truth. I was personally hoping that I hadn't gone to school with someone who later became a murderer.
Plenty of innocent people have been caught up in situations that made them look guilty with various evidence and eyewitness reports... Hence the current spate of DNA evidence based overturned convictions. Think how many other innocent people were convicted of things but can't prove it because the real murderer didn't leave DNA that was found...
Yes, it was always suspicious. I don't know anyone who didn't at least put significant weight on the possibility he had killed her. I hoped not, and I'm very disappointed, and sad for his kids, and their grandparents, and for Nina.
This isn't a situation to be getting self-righteous over. No matter what the "right"/"true" answer was, it was a terrible situation, and this was not the best possible outcome. I know several geek community people that I hope this pushes into relationships counseling and anger management counseling.
Sad day.
Re:Some people are better off dead. (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop right there. There is no such thing as "making X kill Y". Reiser always had other options than murder, and phrasing it as "she made him do it to her" is blaming the victim for the actions of a murderer.
No, let's not lay off. Vast numbers of other people extricate themselves from fucked up situations like Reiser's without resorting to murder. Vast numbers of people don't get into fucked up situations like Reiser's because they see problems developing and deal with them rather than hiding behind a geek badge that reads "proud to be aspie". Vast numbers of people suffer through their problems and don't brutally murder someone, hide their body, maintain their innocence in court, and then use their knowledge of their crime to get a reduced sentence for something they're totally, 100% guilty of.
Well, you do.
Re:I hear that (Score:4, Insightful)
(by the way, I am a divorcee. Just for the record.)
I have never understood, and as time goes by, I become aware of how alien the mind of a murderer is to me. I am almost 40 and have seen and experienced many things in my life. I still don't get how can someone cross that red line - and take someone's life.
But apparently, I am a minority. You, for instance, seem to be able to cross that line? Or maybe you were just very cavalier in your wording?
Anyhow, the mind of a murderer is something I can not understand. I can get angry, sure, but to resort to violence, or worse, to have someone's life on my conscience, that's just unfathomable for me.
Re:I can only hope (Score:5, Insightful)
The punishment is the prison time, not rape, let along the long, drawn-out suffering that is an AIDS death. Yes he's a terrible person for having killed his wife, yes he should be punished and no the 15 years he's getting probably isn't enough for someone who can kill their wife and then calculatingly lie to the police and a jury about it for so long. That doesn't mean he deserves to be raped.
No one "deserves" to suffer at all as payback for committing a crime. Punishment for punishment's sake is barbaric and has no place in a civilized legal system.
That doesn't mean no one should be sentenced, of course. But the purpose of any sentence should be to prevent the criminal from reoffending (either by rehabilitating him or just by keeping him off the street), to make him compensate the victim (when possible, which it isn't in this case), and to provide a deterrent to other would-be criminals, not to take revenge on him for being a bad boy.
Now, it's true that the sentence has to be undesirable for it to work as an effective deterrent, but really, prison is undesirable enough on its own. You don't need to throw in the threat of prison rape or violence; the thought of being locked up for a few decades is enough to deter any rational person, and an irrational one won't be deterred by anything.
Re:Sad (Score:5, Insightful)
They should rename it PRONTO
Er, no. The people with the pull to attempt to promulgate that work under a different name know full well who they are dealing with; one of the biggest pricks currently walking the Earth. Anyone tries it and Hans will be filing copyright suits from inside whatever cage CA puts him in. Right or wrong that's what WILL happen. Hans is that big a prick.
Recent Reiser quote:
I have a compulsive tendency to say things that I know are true that people don't want to be true
Good luck with that in prison, Hans. That alphageek social misfit stuff works fine when the stakes are low; among other geeks squabbling over geekery. You will now receive the socialization someone neglected when you were 12.
Re:Sad (Score:3, Insightful)
"but that won't sell me on using a file system named after a murderer"
Named after?! He wasn't a murderer when it was written and named dumbass, it was named *before* he became a murderer by *years*.
I suppose you never buy anything made by any subsidery of coke [killercoke.org], put money into banks [banktrack.org]... you say you wanna switch another filesystem like JFS? From IBM? After their involvement with the Nazis?!!!! [ibmandtheholocaust.com]
Get real!
Re:Okay there you go (Score:2, Insightful)
"Reasonable doubt" is not the same as "proven beyond any doubt", which seems to be your position.
Not in the slightest.
They got to watch Resier as he made his case. According to their comments any reasonable doubt was removed when he took the stand.
Think about that for a second. Short of a confession, can any defence testimony remove reasonable doubt? What kind of doubt can be eliminated by such a testimony?
No, it's very clear that his personality quirks played a large factor here. For instance, the judge laughed at him when he described not liking to make eye contact. Some of the jurors said that the fact that they thought he was odd played a large part in their decision. That's not the kind of thing that should remove reasonable doubt.
You may disagree with their conclusions, despite the much smaller amount of evidence (all second hand) that you have access to, but the fact is that they got it right.
You have that 100% backwards. I agree with their conclusions. They concluded correctly that Reiser was guilty. But the fact is they got it wrong. They aren't supposed to return a verdict of guilty if they think he is guilty. They are supposed to return a verdict of guilty if they think it has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that he is guilty. These are two entirely different things, and confusing the two is what I complained about in my earlier post.
Re:I hear that (Score:4, Insightful)
"Don't be so hard on the man, until you yourself go through a bitter divorce!"
Yeah, because bitter divorces overwhelmingly lead to murder.
Wait...they don't? The vast majority of people involved in bitter divorces simply go on with their lives with some varying degree of contact with their ex spouse? That's impossible! That would mean that Hans Reiser is simply a murderer! That just can't be!
Re:Still could be innocent (Score:5, Insightful)
This doesn't prove he's guilty. He may have had knowledge of the murder, and use that to reduce the sentence. I still have faith that the real story will come out.
Yeah, because the "I didn't do it but I know where the body is buried" argument will look so good on appeal.
I will refrain from calling you "Jackass" on the basis that you are taking the piss.
Re:Some people are better off dead. (Score:5, Insightful)
>Who knows? Not you or I. So let's lay off the fire and brimstone, what do you say?
Lay off? He murdered a woman! There is NO excuse for murdering someone... ever.. He didn't kill her, he MURDERED her! Soldiers on the battlefield kill, people who work on death row kill, doctors who administer euthanasia kill... Hans MURDERED her. The evil and selfishness of a person who would murder another, just to make their own life a little bit easier, can never be justified.
Sometimes, things really are black and white, right and wrong, evil and good.
Re:Okay there you go (Score:3, Insightful)
Taken as one thing, none is strong enough to convict. Hell, even DNA evidence usually doesn't say "this is person X's blood", it tells you "the odds of this blood belonging to someone other than the suspect are 1 in 1xxxxxxx". Each piece of evidence brings the odds of it being someone else to such a ridiculously small number that a reasonable person would have no reasonable doubt that the suspect is guilty.
Re:I hear that (Score:3, Insightful)
I hope he is brutalized in prison. Brutalized and savaged.
Re:Still could be innocent (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I guess this means he falls under the messy typ (Score:2, Insightful)
There are two kinds of people:
All those that make generalisations ought to be shot.
Re:circumstantial going too far (Score:3, Insightful)
Equally? Wow. I don't trust most people to remember things right - there are so many people out there where when they don't know stuff their brain makes things up AND they don't know they are making things up. They actually believe what they are saying is true. I know so many people who are unreliable that way (they may be reliable and competent in other ways).
To me testimony has very very low weight unless backed by physical evidence. Or backed by evidence that the person testifying is likely to be telling truth - the sort of person with good memory, pays attention to detail, has integrity and an obsession for telling the truth (e.g. if they murdered somebody and were asked if they did, they'd rather admit to it than tell a lie).
I've had enough evidence over the years that most people's brains and consciences don't work well enough for me to risk some accused person's life on their "testimony".
Physical evidence in itself often isn't good enough to know what happened - it depends on what the evidence is.
Basically if a video recording shows A shooting B, and witnesses who aren't aware of what the video camera said (and thus aren't biased) are also sure that A shot B. Then I'll believe A shot B. But whether A shot B _first_ (which would be interesting for a "self defense" excuse), that could be hard to tell just from witnesses (forensics could help - if the B's gun was not fired recently, then A shot B first).
Re:Still could be innocent (Score:5, Insightful)
>>I'm all for innocent-until-proven, believe me - but he's been PROVEN guilty at this point. Clinging to an idea of his innocence is a weird sort of cognitive dissonance I can't get behind.
Yeah, in the previous Slashdot articles on this case, it was bizarre watching people defend him simply because he wrote a filesystem that some of us use. You're right, it is cognitive dissonance, as the human brain has trouble putting a person in two different boxes for Good and Bad.
Of course, now that he's admittedly guilty, a different mental mechanism will come into play, and half his defenders will post on here that they thought he was guilty all along, and what's weirder, they will actually believe it. Dunno what that phenomena is called - maybe it could be called a false memory.
Re:Okay there you go (Score:3, Insightful)
I think I understand how evidence works in a trial. I have some idea.
You might want to ask yourself what the importance of having an alibi is when... there is no body and no time of death established. You also might want to consider that Nina had a motive to flee the country without telling anyone. It is interesting also that someone the victim had been intimate with had confessed to killing several people... yet was never formally investigated.
No one is saying "without physical evidence, you cannot find someone guilty, because, as we all know, that's solid!"
Because you can get convicted on circumstantial evidence and testimony alone. It happens all the time. Some of us (yes, I'm not alone here) think he was guilty yet the standard of reasonable doubt was not met. I'm not saying the justice system is wrong. I'm not saying that there wasn't any physical evidence, and therefore he shouldn't have been convicted. I have opinions on that, but they don't apply here.
I AM saying... that from following the case (somewhat) I did not find the prosecution's case (which was, as it happens, mostly if not all circumstantial) compelling enough to find Hans Reiser guilty of PREMEDITATED MURDER, which is what he was charged with. Also, apparently the jurors felt that Hans' testimony was suspect as well. I don't think that's good enough... IN THIS CASE.
Feel free to disagree, but try to understand what I'm saying first. Do you understand now?
And... BY THE WAY... what you are describing as "how it works" sounds more like "preponderance of evidence" not... wait for it... "beyond a reasonable doubt." Here in the US we have both. Guess what, your "reducing the chances someone else did it" ideas are just fine... for a civil case. As a matter of fact, all you have to hit is 50%.
For Hans, we needed to apply the stricter proof test, and the way that is defined is not some kind of probability function nonsense, but rather the very freaking simple idea that a "reasonable person" through "common sense" would be "fully satisfied" that Hans is guilty. That's it. No probabilities, no chances. If a person feels "uncomfortable" with their verdict, because something is "bothering" them about it, because say, there was no body found and Nina might have fled to Russia and the prosecution didn't address that "convincingly", then, that is "a reasonable doubt."
IANAL, but I am open to correction if I have anything wrong. Your post didn't do it.
Also, not to be complete dick or anything, but there's no need for you to "excuse yourself" from a jury because you don't think you "understand the legal system"... they'll take care of that for you during jury selection. I suspect neither of us would make very good jurors. But for entirely different reasons of course.
Re:Okay there you go (Score:5, Insightful)
The rule for circumstantial evidence -- anything that's not eyewitness testimony, basically -- sounded pretty simple. For any given piece of circumstantial evidence, if there's a "reasonable" explanation for that evidence that supports innocence then the jury is supposed to accept that explanation even if it means erring on the side of innocence. If there isn't a reasonable explanation that supports innocence, then the jury can use it as evidence of guilt.
Except Reiser testified in his own defense and came up with some real bullshit to explain the circumstantial evidence. So the jury wasn't reaching for a "reasonable explanation", they were judging whether Reiser was credible or not.
Had Reiser said "Oh gee, my wife cut her foot once", he might have had a chance. Instead he made up some ridiculous story to explain why he had torn the seats and carpeting out of his car days after his wife disappeared.
Re:Oh Great... (Score:3, Insightful)
Also some misogyny (Score:5, Insightful)
There were some posts that contained it outright, others that you could see it in the subtext. It is something not surprising since there are an above normal amount of people here who have trouble dealing with women. It leads some of those people to dislike and distrust women. They believe Hans simply because they find it more likely that a woman would screw over a man than vice versa. Now combine that with the OSS hero status and you really have a situation that blinds them to the facts.
I think you'd find that had the situation been reversed (Nina killing Hans) that there would have been no doubt in their minds she was guilty, in no small part because of her gender.
Re:Choice of file system (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, my thinking about chosing a filesystem _has_ been affected by this case, but for a different reason. Hans getting arrested has raised strong doubts in my mind about the continuity of ReiserFS. It still remains my favorite*, but I will be watching the developments and see if a better choice comes along at some point.
Hans being found guilty of murder somehow doesn't factor into the decision for me. I can see how it would, but it just doesn't, for me. If the filesystem is the best choice, I don't see why I would go with a lesser option, just because an important contributor committed murder. That isn't _my_ fault, after all.
* Strangely, where many others report problems with ReiserFS and suggest various alternatives, for me, ReiserFS has been both the fastest and the most reliable filesystem I've ever used.
Re:reduced sentence? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Still could be innocent (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of people probably wanted Hans to be innocent because he's part of the "tribe", but if you look back, the evidence against him was a bit shakyâ"mostly circumstantial, plus the testimony of a nutcase who said he murdered eight other people. And let's not forget the procession of other men Nina had been in contact with, any one of whom could have been an internet stalker.
He was found guilty anyway, and now he's come clean, so I guess it was the right verdict. But that doesn't mean everyone who thought he was innocent in the past was experiencing cognitive dissonance, only that they weren't on the jury.
Re:Okay there you go (Score:4, Insightful)
The prosecution presents their case. The defense should refute the prosecution's evidence with science or with facts. Stories are meaningless. Anyone could just go out and kill their wife, destroy/hide the body, and assert the wife fled to Timbuktu. It means nothing. Stories about grandiose nutjobs pretending to be serial killers mean nothing. Stories about fleeing to Russia mean nothing. If they want to assert that's what's happeneed, they need to produce credible evidence.
Wait, wait. I know. Now you're thinking "but the prodecution has to prove things, not the defense!". Not true. The prosecution makes an assertion of guilt. They then proceed to prove that assertion. If the defense proposes an alternate theory, they must prove it somehow or at least make it something other than a story made up by the defense team.
As for probabilities, all criminal cases come down to probabilities. Every single one. We just don't think of it that way most of the time. What are the odds of all this evidence pointing to Reiser but him not having killed his wife? Close to zero. The jury, thankfully, understood that on at least a subconscious level. Many of you, despite numerous very clear explanations, still don't understand this very simple thing.
Seriously, talk to a reasonably intelligent judge or prosecutor about this sometime, or more simple just watch one of those shows about forensics cases. Most of the time it comes down to providing enough circumstantial evidence that it eliminates all other reasonable explanations other than the suspect's guilt.
Odds of W incriminating evidence happening and suspect being innocent: 1/500
Odds of X incriminating evidence happening and suspect being innocent: 1/800
Odds of Y incriminating evidence happening and suspect being innocent: 1/5000
Odds of Z incriminating evidence happening and suspect being innocent: 1/2000
Odds of W, X, Y, Z all being true and suspect being innocent: 1/4000000000000.
Hmm, I wonder if this defendent is guilty!! But, gee, no one piece of evidence is all _that_ incriminating! Pfft. Come on, now.
Re:Still could be innocent (Score:4, Insightful)
Part of it is the feeling that someone with asperger's may not be treated fairly by the court system. Something that seems rational to an aspergers sufferer, such as buying a book on police investigations when you're under police investigation, makes you look guilty.
In this case Hans is guilty - but up until now, I wasn't *certain* he hadn't been railroaded by a justice system ill suited to dealing with those who think differently to the majority.
Re:Minority, not majority... (Score:1, Insightful)
I would rather 1000 murderers go free than send 1 innocent man to jail for life (or, in Texas, given the death penalty).
If you have a problem with that sentiment, then you shouldn't object to being that man.
Re:Will the FLOSS community handle this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I can't speak for the FOSS community, but for myself: I can.
I don't really care what he did to his wife. It's first of all none of my business and it doesn't affect me. I don't care what someone does in his spare time if his code is good. Yes, it's a pragmatic approach.
Actually, if he started putting backdoors into the filesystem or created an elaborate scheme to rip the users of his software off, the crime would much rather turn me away from his software than the murder of his wife. Mostly because it does affect me.
Re:Still could be innocent (Score:2, Insightful)
Am I the only one that feels 15 years is too light (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Also (Score:3, Insightful)
That means is it REASONABLE to doubt that someone did it. The jury said no, it isn't, and it looks as though they are correct, it wasn't.
How does it "look as though they were correct"? The fact that a conclusion is found to be true doesn't do anything at all to prove that the conclusion was arrived at correctly. The jury could have flipped a coin and still have got the same result, but that doesn't mean that flipping a coin would then be vindicated as a good way of choosing a verdict.
Re:Still could be innocent (Score:5, Insightful)
If his ego was worth a damn, it wouldn't have bought a wife from a russian agency.
Re:I hear that (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope he is brutalized in prison. Brutalized and savaged.
I was with you up to this point.
There's this little part of the Constitution you are ignoring that forbids "cruel and unusual punishment". 15 to life in prison is not cruel and unusual punishment. Being brutalized and savaged is cruel and unusual punishment.
Why not just hand him to the mob to string him up and teach him a lesson?
Your comment makes me think that you (and whoever modded you insightful) are a bit of a sociopath who is willing to shred the Constitution and pull out that old canard, "think of the children!".
"Oh fuck off", indeed...
Re:He duped the great majority of us... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Still could be innocent (Score:5, Insightful)
While there ARE certainly plausible ways that he could have been not guilty AND known where the body is, I would imagine that if he was innocent and knew where the body was that he would, oh, I don't know.... maybe.... CALL THE POLICE AS SOON AS HE KNEW WHERE THE BODY OF HIS DEAD WIFE WAS.
Because of course the police wouldn't think it's you, they're all very nice and rational people. They haven't the slightest desire of pinning murder cases on someone who might be innocent, I mean it's not like their job isn't about locking people away and making examples out of them.
Re:Still could be innocent (Score:4, Insightful)
This is pretty much a ridiculous conspiracy theory.
Reiser's attorney flat out denied that he had Aspberger's, and Reiser never once raised any sort of mental illness defense.
Furthermore, his speech skills were fine, he is actually very articulate. I find it hard to believe that he had any sort of autism-related mental illness.
The myth that every nerd who programs computers has some sort of "cool" mental defect really needs to die. A lot of you are just poorly socialized and stupid, that is all. Like Hans Reiser.
Re:Okay there you go (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually OJ got off because of (a) Perjury on the stand (b) Planted Evidence (c) Courtroom theatrics that backfired.
And Reiser got convicted because of (a) Physical evidence (b) He testified in his own defense, and (c) He's an totally unconvincing psychopathic liar
In conclusion, ur dum.
Re:Still could be innocent (Score:2, Insightful)
If you think, another human being is your personal property who has to bow to your will even after friendship or partnership has come to an end, I wouldn't want to be your friend or partner.
And if you then think, you are morally justified in killing them when they don't comply, I'm glad that capital punishment is still available.
"Follow my will or I'll kill you" is not something I would expect from civilized people under the rule of law.
I admit there may be some moral leeway concerning the constitutional rights of child molesters, dicators and mass murderers, but that's not the case here.
You are not talking about killing people with heavy guilt and a huge bodycount, but about killing humans for lawfully and consensually having sex. That is morally depraved, shameful and if carried out highly against the law. And no, that wouldn't be manslaughter but pre-meditated first degree murder. And they'll fry you for that.
Re:Still could be innocent (Score:4, Insightful)
Then why did he bring multiple witnesses to suggest otherwise? [wired.com]
Thanks for the correction. Yes, only after Reiser's testimony had totally backfired, they brought in some shrinks to suggest he "may have" aspergers, based on tangential evidence. If he clearly had a mental illness, why wasn't he directly evaluated, and why wasn't this brought up before hand? Hmmm.
Shows what you know about Asperger's Syndrome. Being articulate does not rule you out. Those with Asperger's are often highly articulate when talking about their particular areas of focus.
Did Reiser have a particular focus on wife murdering? Because he seems pretty bad at it to me.
He wasn't talking about his filesystem on the stand for weeks you know.
Re:Okay there you go (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Still could be innocent (Score:1, Insightful)
I think you're oversimplifying, really.
Many - or at least some -, me included, while believing that Reise *was* guilty, also believed that not enough proof had been offered to actually convict him. Things may have changed now, of course (while it's possible to explain how he'd know where the body's located without having killed her, the whole case does look more clear-cut now, at least to an outside observer such as me), but back then, I at least thought a) he was guilty and b) he needed to be let go because his guilt hadn't been proven beyond reasonable doubt. The whole 'It's better to let a thousand guilty men go free than to put one innocent man into jail for something he didn't do' spiel.
Re:Still could be innocent (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no excuse for murder. Initially my take on this case was that maybe he did it, or maybe he didn't - we just don't know. And now I'm pissed I even gave Hans that much.
What dissapoints me about Hans Reiser is that he didn't do the right thing. He didn't confess and in an attempt to avoid taking responsibility he tried to get away with it. A remorseful, intelligent man would've realized that a life with a murder on your conscience i just as bad as prison, maybe even worse. It suggests to me that he didn't feel guilt for what he had done, and I think it's a testament of poor charachter. He only confessed when he had nothing more to loose.
To further your point - I appreciate humor, but when the reality of what happened to Nina sinks in jokes seems to be of very poor taste. Nina was strangled by the father of her children and then buried to rot in a 4x4 foot grave, nearly upside down. Conjure up an image of what she looked like when they dug her up after all those months and then crack a joke. What - not funny anymore? Assholes indeed.
Re:Still could be innocent (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you misunderstand something about the Right to Remain Silent. The warning from the police when you are arrested is "anything that you say can and will be used against you" not "anything you say may help exonerate you". It is NEVER helpful to talk to the police when you are a suspect, even if you are innocent. You can say things that are truthful when you are innocent and still make you look like a murderer. Always talk to a lawyer first. Always. No matter what your circumstances are.
Re:Still could be innocent (Score:5, Insightful)
Surely the time to decide to do the right thing would have been just before he murdered his wife, not during the aftermath, when clearly no amount of "right things" would rectify anything but the most comparatively trivial aspects of this situation.
Re:Some people are better off dead. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Still could be innocent (Score:2, Insightful)
A perfect example of this is Martha Stewart. They decided that she never did anything wrong with regard to why she was being investigated, but that she wasn't truthful when she spoke to investigators. So she went to prison for lying to them. To me, that is insane. And the most important lesson was exactly what you say - don't ever talk to the cops without representation present, even if you didn't do a single thing wrong.
Re:Still could be innocent (Score:2, Insightful)
So she's dead, he's in jail for life. The kids aren't likely to read up on the slashdot story about their dad killing their mom.
So where's the harm in joking about the murder?
So, the jury got it right? (Score:3, Insightful)
Basically? Not perfect, perhaps, but essentially correct? And most of the people here, who weren't in the courtroom to see and hear it all, and weren't part of the deliberations got it wrong? I'm shocked.
Re:Still could be innocent (Score:5, Insightful)
"And if you then think, you are morally justified in killing them when they don't comply, I'm glad that capital punishment is still available."
Do you want to examine this statement for a circular hipocrisy?
Capital punishment is the acme of "being morally justified in killing someone when they don't comply".
Note: I am NOT saying I oppose capital punishment. Merely that this nose-in-the-air pseudo-moralization is WAAAY out of place.
Re:Still could be innocent (Score:1, Insightful)
They have no basis in reality.
Re:Still could be innocent (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget that investigators will most likely lie to you, in an attempt to "trick" you into saying something to incriminate yourself. Its all ok for them them to lie to you, but you can't lie to them. Strange isn't that?
Re:This makes me sad (Score:2, Insightful)
"Not so much the 'trying to cover up his actions' stuff, more the expectation that the reasons he put forward for his actions were in some way plausible. He didn't come across as someone who had a sound grasp on reality."
There is a difference between mentally ill and having a grip on reality. The subprime mortgage mess in the US shows that there are whole large swathes of the population with irrational expectations and wildly overestimated personal capabilities - that doesn't mean there are million of candidates for therapy.
"do you think that makes him an evil person?"
No, actually I don't; I think very few people actually qualify as evil. But note that I said "bad or evil".
"Do you think a few years in prison is going to change him for the better, or do you think the idea is for him to 'pay for' his crime?"
There are 4 theories of punishment: retribution, rehabilitation, removal, and deterrence. I do not subscribe to the the theory of rehabilitation; pick any of the other three, and that will do.
Re:This makes me sad (Score:3, Insightful)
I was replying to what you wrote... I don't agree with prisoner "abuse," but I'd bet we have wildly different definitions of what it means to abuse a prisoner.
Secondly, prison IS primarily punishment, that's how it's supposed to be... rehabilitation, if it's even possible or worthwhile, should be secondary. That's what "society's understanding" is; oh you poor man, we know it was society that drove you to kill your wife, let us help rehabilitate you!
Re:Okay there you go (Score:2, Insightful)
"So yes you can have you wife bled in a significant amount in your car for a legitimate reason."
You say this like you're refuting someone who claimed otherwise. I believe his point was that bleeding inside a car is a rare and unusual event.
Your post only serves to prove his point, unless you're having miscarriages occur in your car on a regular basis.
Re:Sad (Score:4, Insightful)
Good luck with that in prison, Hans. That alphageek social misfit stuff works fine when the stakes are low; among other geeks squabbling over geekery. You will now receive the socialization someone neglected when you were 12.
Great. Now they're going to turn him into a hepatitis-and-AIDS-infested career criminal? I think we were safer when he was only killing one woman, and millions of innocent files.
Re:Bitterly admitting the cynics were right. (Score:5, Insightful)
Way to paint the victim as the villain.
Sorry, but there are enough broken marriages that dont end in a psychopatic idiot murdering somebody.
If you donate something, than help his children and not the scumbag.
Re:Still could be innocent (Score:1, Insightful)
Consider the reasons a woman takes another lover in the first place.
Hint: It's not because everything is hunky-dory in the bedroom in the first place.
Re:Okay there you go (Score:3, Insightful)
He's an totally unconvincing psychopathic liar
Psychopaths are, unfortunately for the rest of us, extremely convincing liars. That's how they manage to charm their victims (not necessarily murder victims - see the case of Christophe Rocancourt). Psychopaths have no problems saying even the most incredible, outlandish lie while looking you straight in the eyes, with the most relaxed tone of voice and body language.
Re:Still could be innocent (Score:3, Insightful)
There is and should be a big difference between what the peanut
gallery assumes and what actually goes down in a court of law.
"Everyone knows he did it" doesn't constitute proof.
Re:still plenty of doubts about conviction (Score:3, Insightful)
This was covered by an interview with a juror. She said the evidence pointing to premeditation was that Reiser stopped using his visa card, switching to cash only transactions in the weeks before the killing, as well as some pressure on a city councilwoman concerning his custody battle. While he may have given explanations for those, he pretty much lost the jury with the whole of his unbelievable testimony.
Re:Some people are better off dead. (Score:3, Insightful)
"I think the GP was just saying that until we know the intimate details (which probably nobody does except Hans now), we shouldn't make a moral judgment so quickly."
Pop quiz: which one of the two did something that deliberately resulted in the death of another person?
Re:Still could be innocent (Score:1, Insightful)
But the thing is, your position is not true and never was. The conviction was not against the principles of the system. If you're one of the people who think that Habeas Corpus means you have to have a corpse to try someone for murder, Habeas Corpus doesn't mean what you think it means. And convictions can actually be based on circumstantial evidence, provided the evidence is strong enough to leave no reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury.
Just think about history for a few minutes The basic principles of U.S. law you're claiming are being violated were codified in the 1700s. Did modern forensic evidence exist then? No. Could they have ever proved a murder well enough to satisfy you? Doubt it. Virtually every trial where there were no direct witnesses to a crime would've involved evidence of the same quality -- or worse -- as seen in this case. Do you really think they wanted a system where anybody with half a brain could get away with murder?
That's why the standard is 'reasonable doubt', not 'ironclad proof'. The legal system is not intended to be like formal mathematics.
Re:Still could be innocent (Score:3, Insightful)
Ya gotta wonder about the people who thought he was innocent.
What's to wonder? Lacking the whole story as told in the courtroom, they merely thought that there was not enough evidence to conclude that Hans was guilty.
Absent the body, absent any known murder weapon, and with the victim being a foreign national holding dual citizenship and with plausible motive to flee the country and frame Hans for murder, that's not an unreasonable conclusion. It may not have been the conclusion you came to, but different people have different ideas about how much evidence you need to convict a man of murder.
Now, of course, after a guilty verdict, a confession, and with the body right in front of us, it's pretty stupid for anyone to continue to maintain his innocence. I know I'm convinced. But before all this? "Beyond reasonable doubt" depends entirely on how you define "reasonable."
Re:Also some misogyny (Score:3, Insightful)
Um, the sort of people who would advertise their marital availability to men who don't speak their language, from another culture, whom they haven't met who just happen to be living in the wealthiest country of the world are probably the most mercenary subset of people you could imagine.
In other words, anyone who gets a mail-order bride shouldn't be surprised when they don't exactly get a soul-mate.
Re:Am I the only one that feels 15 years is too li (Score:3, Insightful)
This is not an extreme crime. Killing 50 hookers over a span of 10 years is an extreme crime. Shooting people randomly with a sniper rifle is also pretty extreme.
Killing your ex-wife in rage during an argument when she's also had an affair and embezzled from you is not that extreme. It, in fact, is sadly all too common a scenario (though the having an affair and embezzling bits are details that change from case to case). It is definitely criminal, and definitely deserves punishment. But reacting as if it's the most horrible thing in the world isn't particularly realistic.
Re:He duped the great majority of us... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, but I can only assume you haven't seen the list of evidence
No, I've seen the list. Now that there's a body and a confession, sure, you might have an argument for "overwhelming".
In the trial, though, what you had was a missing person (who held dual citizenship and had every plausible motive to want to disappear), a missing car seat, one spot of blood that was never determined to be Nina's, and two books on criminalistics.
That's not really overwhelming evidence of anything. It wasn't even overwhelming evidence that Nina Reiser was dead.
It's the murder equivalent of a cookie missing from the cookie jar and your five year old son saying he didn't do it while crumbs are all over his face.
Except that there weren't any "crumbs" on Reiser; there was nothing physical to tie him to the murder because until he produced the body there was no physical evidence of any murder.
And if we were talking about sending my five-year-old son to jail for 20-to-life, I'd want a whole lot more evidence than a few crumbs on his face. Which, again, we didn't even have in the Reiser case.
Technically, yes, the evidence is circumstantial, and yes, we don't have the body of the cookie, but it doesn't take a mind reader to know that a burgler probably didn't sneak in to eat the cookie.
Cookies don't walk off by themselves, but people do. Just because someone has disappeared doesn't mean they've been murdered. Often people disappear completely on purpose.
I like the analogy another poster made: if this had been Bill Gates and Melinda was missing, most Slashdotters would've convicted him instantly based on the evidence we had.
That's a bit of a stretch. Just from the comments in this thread it appears that Hans Reiser was liked even less than Bill Gates.
The evidence was clearly enough to convince a jury. In that sense, it was satisfactory. What we learned from the media was anything but, and only a great idiot would pretend that a missing person, a car with no seat, and two books about real-life CSI constituted "overwhelming evidence" of being a murderer.
Re:Still could be innocent (Score:3, Insightful)
Although we're all innocent until proven guilty, for those of us without access to all of the facts it certainly seems damning. He was already convicted of this crime, and now *on top* of that conviction, he is the only person who has been identified as knowing where the body is. I'd say that's pretty compelling.
Re:Still could be innocent (Score:3, Insightful)
*sigh* I'm aware that there are two separate issues theres.
First, I were to be raped... in order to protect "the people"* I'm forcefully married to him, and him to me.
Second, since he used a condom during the rape, that means that he is guilty of a crime, and is either punished, or put in jail for it.
They wouldn't have really cared that the woman was now married to a convict.. I mean, it's his property, and he's a doofus for having done something to acquire the property that ended up being illegal.
* Note that "the people" here, means "the patriarchal system." If a woman is raped, it's like dropping a glass at a department store, "Hey! You broke it, you buy it!" In the Old Testament, the law was to ensure that a father got a dowry for his daughter, who was now undesirable to anyone else. If she was married, then crap, if she has a kid, whose is it? No way to tell, and so a man might be raising a kid that isn't his... best to just kill her, and then you don't have to deal with potentially bastard children. Modern rape is a violent crime assaulting another recognized person... in old times, it was a non-violent crime of property damage.
Re:Still could be innocent (Score:3, Insightful)
Modern rape is a violent crime assaulting another recognized person... in old times, it was a non-violent crime of property damage.
Rape and promiscuity are two different things. The difference is that one act goes against the consent of an individual while the other is mutual.
Regardless of time periods in human history, rape is often emotionally and/or physically disturbing to the victim.
Of course the emotional harm done to a woman in old and modern times was the same. The difference is, in olden times that didn't legally matter. While rape was a devastating thing to happen to a woman in olden days, just as it is today (I wish I didn't personally know how devastating) the patriarchal society didn't give a s* because it was against a woman.
In much the same way, Nazis justified their death camps because Jews, Retards, and Gypsies were all defined as "sub-human", and thus not afforded the same rights or respect given to another German, and before Americans try to get all high on the horse, that was the exact reason justifying slavery in the United States.
Killing someone's slave in the United States was not a murder, it was property destruction... Nazi concentration camps weren't murderous, because it was vermin control.
It is naturally up to philosophical debate, as to whether these acts were fundamentally any more immoral than destroying someone's chair, (or in fact, killing their dog), or destroying cockroaches and rats that have infested a house... You're free to hold your own beliefs upon which way it was, but I'm talking about legal fact, and attested history... not morality.