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Comments: 738 +- Your Rights Online: Hans Reiser and the "Geek Defense" Strategy on Saturday February 23 2008, @06:34PM
Posted
by
kdawson
on Saturday February 23 2008, @06:34PM
from the thinks-too-much dept.
from the thinks-too-much dept.
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lseltzer alerts us to a story in the Washington Post on the defense strategy in the Hans Reiser murder trial. "In the courtroom where Hans Reiser is on trial for murder, [the evidence] might appear to indicate guilty knowledge. But his attorneys cast it as evidence of an innocence peculiar to Hans, a computer programmer so immersed in the folds of his own intellect that he had no idea how complicit he was making himself appear. 'Being too intelligent can be a sort of curse,' defense counsel William Du Bois said. 'All this weird conduct can be explained by him, but he's the only one who can do it. People who are commonly known as computer geeks are so into the field.'"
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All geeks are the same (Score:5, Funny)
Re:All geeks are the same (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure enough, during the week I got pulled over for speeding. The cop certainly looked at me funny, but I didn't have a warrant out for my arrest, so all was OK.
I'd email this story to Reiser's lawyers, but for 2 things:
1) I had a VW, and the leak was idiosyncratic to that model. He drove a Civic.
2) I think he's guilty.
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Re:All geeks are the same (Score:5, Insightful)
Christ, I've still got a 100 MB SCSI hard drive in my parts bin that I haven't thrown away yet. Yeah, megabytes, that's right.
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Re:All geeks are the same (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, I believe you. I too have had to remove my passenger seat and hose down the floor board. Mainly because they were soaked in my ex-wife's blood...
Since then I always keep tampons in the glove compartment.
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Re:All geeks are the same (Score:5, Interesting)
Who the hell commits a crime with pair of books on crime in their vehicle, and then leave it all there for someone to find. Programmers know too much about allocation and management of objects to not destroy them when its detrimental they no longer exist.
I'm not saying I think he is innocent NOR that i think hes guilty. I simply think it all warrants much further investigation.
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Re:All geeks are the same (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:All geeks are the same (Score:5, Insightful)
So there's no such thing as a buffer overrun, or forgetting to mate every call to malloc() with a free()?
I don't buy the "programmer geek defense". It doesn't match up with the reality, which is that you don't have to be a programmer to be an asshole. They're orthogonic. Lets look at the excuses another way:
Do I believe he did it? I can't say - I'm not on the jury. However, I definitely don't buy into the defense tactic of 'geek nerds are "special" and "hard to understand"' as a "get out of jail" card.
Reiser's lawyer is making a big mistake. Sure, he's playing the "this guy is a creep" card to the jury - but he's also insulting the jury's intelligence by thinking that they won't see it for what it is - a ploy, and not evidence one way or the other. Not trusting a jury can come back and bite you - look at what happened with Jamie Thomas and the $222,000 copyright infringement award. The jurors were pissed that she lied to them [switched.com], and made it known both inside and outside the courtroom [wired.com].
Better to not take the stand, and let people suspect you're an idiot, than to take it, and prove them right.
Then there's the danger that the jurors will think - "If they really expect us to buy into this bs, they must think we just fell off a turnip truck. Sounds like what I'd expect a guilty know-it-all to do."
At the very least, the choice of tactics shows that the lawyer doesn't believe his client is innocent. Based on that, I'd say the jury will probably convict.
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Re:All geeks are the same (Score:5, Insightful)
There are two types of jury trials in the US-- criminal and civil. In a civil trial (where the punishment, if there is one, is in the form of a fine) the jury determines what the penelty is.
In a criminal trial (such as the one in TFA, which can result in imprisonment), all the jury decides is whether the prosecution has proven their case that the defendent is guilty. The judge then decides the penalties, based on guidelines, precedents, and his/her own judgement
The standard of proof required is also different. In a civil case (such as the one you quote), if a jury member is 60% sure the defendant is guilty, they are suppposed to find them "guilty". In a criminal case, the standard of proof is much higher, so the same 60% certainty of guilt should result in "not guilty", because their prosecution has not sufficiently proved their case.
The result is that the civil trial system is much more capricious than the criminal trial. Thus you should not hold up an example of a civil trial to complain about our criminal trial system. (There may still be things to complain about, but don't hold up an apple and complain about oranges.)
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Re:All geeks are the same (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:All geeks are the same (Score:5, Interesting)
You remember how their passports survived the fire that brought down two buildings by melting the steel support structures?
Yup. Just like that.
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Re:All geeks are the same (Score:5, Insightful)
And that is the problem, circumstantial evidence should not be enough to convict. And no, the defense doesn't have to 'explain' the seat, nor does anyone need to answer 'who did it' to aquit him.
Like many Aussies, I thought this woman [wikipedia.org] was guilty simply because she came across as an unfeeling religious zelot that couldn't explain other peoples' assumptions about dingo behaviour. By no means does that imply this guy is innocent but as the judge said 'the evidence is thin'.
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Re:All geeks are the same (Score:5, Insightful)
Circumstantial evidence is any evidence that is not direct. The phrase "circumstantial evidence" means that the evidence implies that manner in which the crime was committed. It says nothing about how strong the implication is. For a murder, pretty much only confessions and eyewitnesses are not circumstantial evidence. Scott Peterson [wikipedia.org] was convicted purely on circumstantial evidence. DNA evidence is circumstantial evidence. Finding the Mona Lisa in someone's bedroom is only circumstantial evidence that they stole it.
The evidence against Reiser may well be thin. Not sitting in the jury box, it is not for me to say one way or another. But that the evidence is only circumstantial has nothing to do with whether the evidence is weak or not.
If you refuse to convict on circumstantial evidence, you'll almost never convict anyone.
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Re:All geeks are the same (Score:5, Insightful)
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peers? (Score:4, Interesting)
Come on - the only place a half-crazed defense strategy can work is when pitched to computer geeks?
What what what?
-dave-
Re:peers? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:peers? (Score:4, Insightful)
That presumes they want to get out of jury duty.
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Re:peers? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:peers? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is how ALL the parties involved want it. The real decision makers want to get back to their decision-making jobs, not be one of twelve, so they find a way out. The prosecution and the defense attorneys do not want someone who makes decisions; they want someone who can be led and instructed. So does the judge.
The whole system is designed to filter in people who can be controlled and led.
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Re:peers? (Score:5, Informative)
I've been on a jury before, and contrary to popular opinion, it was not composed of people who had nothing but time on their hands. Nearly everyone there seemed to be a businessperson or professional of some sort. Even so, no one complained about the time it took, as we all knew a young man's future was to be greatly impacted by our decision. As such, we took our job extremely seriously (and it wasn't anything so dramatic as a murder trial). While I'd never hope to spend another day surrounded by arguing lawyers, I certainly wouldn't go out of my way to recuse myself if called up again.
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A curse I've had to live with . . . (Score:5, Funny)
But I guess it sorta goes with my outstanding good looks. :)
Gem of a quote (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Gem of a quote (Score:5, Insightful)
Linus named it FreakOS I believe. It was someone else who convinced him to rename it to Linux.
Cheers,
Ian
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Actually, Linus originally picked "Freax" (Score:5, Informative)
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/. defense (Score:5, Funny)
My Suspicion (Score:4, Interesting)
It's like a child hiding cookies behind his back and assuming that, since Mom can't see what's in his hands, she can't know that he's got cookies.
There's a quote about how circumstantial evidence *is* evidence to smart people, because smart people of capable of making inferences and deductions.
Re:My Suspicion (Score:5, Funny)
Well, at least some symbolic links.
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risky defense (Score:5, Interesting)
personally i find it strange they aren't looking closer at the cross dressing lover who has admitted to killing people in the past.
also there is no body yet, so i don't understand how exactly they are mounting a murder case against him? for all they know this is all staged by his bitter russian bride in an attempt to get back at him, stranger things have happened.
Re:risky defense (Score:5, Insightful)
those could be explained easily in normal circumstances, even easier with his wifes known affair with a BDSM freak. maybe at some point her and her lover got freaky in the garage before the divorce?
so we have that and we have a book on famous murder trials. wow really compelling case there, you can't even prove she's dead let alone who killed her.
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Re:risky defense (Score:5, Informative)
What really sucks is that at the conclusion of the prosecution, Hans' lawyer asked for the case to be dismissed on the evidence. Because this is a standard thing for the defense to do, the judge didn't even consider it. He has publicly said that the case has no evidence, but he won't throw the case out on two separate occasions.
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The Geek Defense Argument (Score:5, Funny)
2. the accused is a geek
3. geeks cannot have wives
4. the defense rests
Re:The Geek Defense Argument (Score:5, Funny)
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What serious evidence is there against him? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sean Sturgeon confessed to killing eight people [wired.com]. If I were the homicide detective, you damn well better believe I'd be urging the prosecutor to dismiss the charges without prejudice so that the scope of the investigation could be brought to bear on HIM, now. The guy is into "death yoga," serious BDSM and confessed to killing eight people. The guy is a total loon based on what has come out, and he'd probably score very dangerously high on a sociopath scale. Hans might be the killer, but if I were a cop, I'd have spat my coffee out all over the report in shock when I read that Nina had gotten herself involved with a guy who sounds like a real nutjob who probably killed her.
Unless they found Nina's blood all over Reiser's car, they don't have much to go on. Even then, it's not unrealistic to think that Sturgeon might have tried to frame Reiser.
The details of this case are very sordid. I wouldn't put it past the prosecutors to be ignoring sturgeon's high probability of guilt out of pride because they "have their man." This is one of the reasons why I unabashedly support making it impossible to give a life sentence or execution without a minimum of two credible witnesses, and serious penalties (that can include execution in murder cases) for those who commit perjury.
Re:What serious evidence is there against him? (Score:5, Insightful)
'Serious BDSM' is what I do sometimes, but it has nothing to do with being a sociopath!
If BDSM is not your piece of cake, fine, but do not put it at the same level as killing people because you simply do not understand it.
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Re:What serious evidence is there against him? (Score:5, Funny)
If BDSM is not your piece of cake, fine, but do not put it at the same level as killing people because you simply do not understand it.
*sighs*
You OS X people are all alike. And it's "BSD", not "BDSM."
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Re:What serious evidence is there against him? (Score:5, Interesting)
Strangely enough though, this is one case where i would expect it to warrant further investigation as A) Nina Reiser was a physician and B) as the GP stated, Sean Sturgeon is one frightening fucking individual. That gives the knowledge necessary for such things to be possible, combined with a nature that has done such things before.
I'm not saying for sure one way or the other, but don't you think the friggan BOOKS ON CRIME they found along with it all as rather like someone padding the bill? (Plus what kind of programmer wouldn't think to properly destroy those objects so no one finds them wasting in memory heh). Not certainty by any means, but worthy of investigation.
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beyond the shadow of a doubt (Score:5, Funny)
Imagine if they looked in our basements... I can hear the cross examiner already: "sir, can you explain to us what made you so angry that you shot this Compaq server 382 times with a
Fortunately, we are innocent until proven guilty...
Sense and Circumstance (Score:5, Interesting)
So this is what the defense has to rally against. They have a client who is his own worse enemy. They have to remove the focus on irrational, unexpected behavior and shift it back to the strength of the real evidence presented by the prosecution's case. In short, they have to defeat a strategy that may give circumstantial evidence more weight than it would otherwise be given by people who don't share the same sensibilities as the defendant.
I've known plenty of technical folks (engineers, coders, sysadmins, screwdriver slingers, etc.) who are just odd birds. I've got a whole host of weird stories based on experiences working with and around these folks. Many of these stories could (and sometimes are) taken out of context to imply a lot more about the individual than they really should. I'm not at all surprised that such an issue might rear its ugly head in the aggressive atmosphere of a court of law.
From the hood.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, I tell ya. I live in Han's hood, and let me tell ya a thing or three..
I personally am not convinced since I know a few Russian women, and for the most part they are pretty normal, well until you piss them off, then all bets are off because they are some pretty vindictive women. Prior to his wife going missing and him getting arrested I had seen Han's around the village a few times, picking up his mail, the grocery store, the usual stuff and he never really impressed me one way or the other, so I don't know him as a person.
One thing I will say is that from the live blog coverage of the trial, he is certainly not doing himself any favors with his courtroom antics. I might stop by the trial this coming Wednesday. If I do I will srop you all a line back to let you know my thoughts.
In the meantime, I am not sure I would start any long term projects that rely on his file system brilliance...
Can't. Shut. Up! (Score:5, Interesting)
The judge has asked him if he wants to fire his lawyer, but he says "no". If he wants to try the case himself, he should. If he wants to talk to his lawyer about things, he should ... at the appropriate time. But his constant interruptions have apparently antagonized everyone in the courtroom. Now apparently, his lawyer is going to try to explain that away with "well ... it's because he's just that much smarter than everyone else!"
It's obviously nonsense, because if you go back and look at any of the times he was badgering people on the LKML, they are experiencing exactly the same sort of annoyance with him. He just won't shut up, and won't stop pestering everyone with his ridiculous, delusional ideas that he can't let go of (like when he said ReiserFS would become the new VFS layer, with VFS implemented "on top of" it). Is anyone really prepared to claim he's not only smarter than everyone in the courtroom and day-to-day life, but that he's smarter than everyone on LKML too? Maybe he's just annoying and can't stop talking. Maybe he's just got something like Tourettes. It certainly doesn't sound like it has all that much to do with his intelligence.
A wide spectrum of possibilities. (Score:5, Interesting)
The whole trouble with this case is that the evidence we have seen so far allows one to mentally conjour up so many equally valid scenarios. To wit - all equal possibilities, ranked in seriousness:-
- A nasty, skilled, pre-meditated killing.
- No 'Smoking Gun', or actual witness.
- A crime of passion. Nina's previous behavour had so sensitized Hans that he struck out in an uncontrolled, mindless rage and killed her in a few seconds using a Judo chop of some kind.
- Rory said his mother gave him a hug and left the house.
- Nina left the house, and proceeded to a 'Professional Appointment' with Sturgeon. She died, possibly accidentally, during the 'treatment'. Hans may or may not have been involved with the disposal of the body.
- None.
- Nina, a pleasant looking chick, and alone in her car, got hijacked, dragged off to some unknown place, gang raped, killed, and dumped in the sea to be eaten by sharks.
- Judging by what I read about the Oakland neighbourhood, this is no more a fanciful scenario than any of the others.
This whole parody of a trial seems to me to be something straight out of 'Alice Through the Looking Glass'. The defendant and his parents are all as mad as the Hatter. The forensic DNA technician is incompetent. The prosecution has spent 3 whole months spouting a cloud of largely irrelevant waffle. While they have demonstrated that Hans could have done the deed, and that he had a degree of motive, there has been not one jot of independent expert evidence that, at the time of the alleged crime, he was sufficiently sane to form the intent to murder, that he was fit to plead, or that he actually did the deed. This is the sort of crime, and resultant investigation, which cries out for a "Not Proven" verdict,Evidence for the prosecution:
- Hans knew that Beverly Palmer was going to be away for the whole week-end.
- Hans arranged for Nina to come to the empty house in the middle of a long holiday, when few of the neighbours would be around.
Missing Evidence:-For:
- Han's behavour immediately after Nina's disappearance.
Against:For:
- It's happened before in other Jurisdictions.
- Sturgeon has confessed to having been involved with many deaths.
Against:For:
Re:Desperate Twinkies (Score:4, Interesting)
i.e. "an exceptional natural capacity of intellect, especially as shown in creative and original work in science, art, music, etc."
Granted I couldn't design and implement my own file system, but I hardly think that deserves the label 'genius'.
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Re:Desperate Twinkies (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Desperate Twinkies (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, no shit.
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Re:Desperate Twinkies (Score:4, Interesting)
I put my time and energy into things I find important, which does not include file systems. However, any CS department should have a fielsystem course like mine did, and I've read practical file system design [letterp.com] by the guy who wrote the Be Filesystem (great book btw). It's hard, but nothing particularly special if you put the time and energy into it. In short, I see it as like someone building their own electric car. If you've got the time and energy, it's cool shit. But it won't put food on the table.
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Re:Desperate Twinkies (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not the Twinkie Defense. Hans is claiming he didn't murder her, not that some bizarre psychological condition associated with being a geek should mitigate his action in some way. The psychological aspect is used only to explain why he acted so strangely and why those strange actions are not indicative of guilt. Basically, it didn't even occur to him that those actions might be seen as acting guilty.
From what I can tell, the prosecution has absolutely not proven Hans' guilt beyond the shadow of a doubt. They have not met the standard of proof required for a criminal conviction. All they have is some fairly flimsy circumstantial evidence.
But that's a separate question from whether or not I think he's guilty. And given the available evidence I can't decide either way. This case just is too bizarre. I can actually believe that Nina has managed to escape back to Russia and finagled the courts through the rest of her family into letting her children go back too. But I can also believe that Hans murdered her. Both scenarios fit the available evidence.
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Re:Desperate Twinkies (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Desperate Twinkies (Score:5, Insightful)
"There is no clear motive for Hans to of killed his wife."
There are motives aplenty:
People have killed their former spouses over much less. There's plenty of motive.
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Re:Desperate Twinkies (Score:5, Insightful)
A defense of desparation is no worse than a prosecution of desparation. From what I understand of the article, the prosecution has (1) no dead body (2) no murder weapon (3) no suspects outside of "the usual supects" and (4) no evidence outside of peculiar behavior. So, if your evidence of a crime you can't prove even ever happened is peculiar behavior of a suspect for the hypothetical crime, don't feel short changed when the defence turns out to be the defending of said peculiar behavior.
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Re:Desperate Twinkies (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you notice this from the (Washington Post) article?
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Re:Desperate Twinkies (Score:5, Funny)
William Du Bois
Imagine a Turing Machine and a set of instructions. Can anybody tell, if the machine, running those instructions will ever stop? And more important: can we program a Turing Machine, so that it decides whether a set of instructions would cause a Turing Machine to halt eventually? But more important, you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with this case? Everything. Ladies and gentlemen, this case completedly depends on it! It does make a lot of sense! Look at me. I'm a lawyer defending a software engineer, and I'm talkin' about Alan Turing!
Now how can it be, that this halting problem is undecideable? Because, if we hypotheticaly have a Turing Machine that solves the halting problem, we could use it to construct another Turing Machine that does not halt when it should, and thus, when given to itself to test for halting, would contradict its own behavior!
Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am making perfect sense! And so you have to remember, when you're in that jury room deliberatin' and conjugatin' the verdict, do you know wheter you will ever stop deliberatin'? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, you will never know! If the jury doesn't halt, you must acquit! The defense rests!
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