Hans Reiser and the "Geek Defense" Strategy 738
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.'"
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
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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Desperate Twinkies (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Desperate Twinkies (Score:3, Insightful)
White's lawyers didn't claim that the Twinkies made him do it. They claimed that the Twinkies were proof that White (ordinarily a healthy eater) had gone off the tracks.
Re:Gem of a quote (Score:1, Insightful)
But then, you say that a guy names Linus wrote some OS.
I'll explain again, kids. Linus Torvalds wrote a kernel, a crucial tool for making an OS.
The resulting OS is GNU/Linux, and your confusion is the reason why calling the OS "Linux" is wrong, it gives credit to Linus, and the Linux project, for the work of GNU people. People say it doesn't matter, but it does matter, in free software, attribution is all.
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.
Re:What serious evidence is there against him? (Score:2, Insightful)
I am actually a bit appalled by societies continual desire to debase somebody and make them out to be sick and twisted simply because they choose to engage in slightly less mainstream sexual activities. Despite the fact that the majority of the population engages in BDSM of one form or another at some point in time, enjoying BDSM does NOT in anyway have any link to being deranged or twisted or mentally unstable. If anything, I would argue that the mo intelligent an individual, the more likely they are to engage in BDSM in the first place. That doesn't mean there aren't twisted, sick people who happen to like and engage in BDSM but then again, there are good Christians who also kill and maim and you don't see people making the link between that and antisocial acts.
Surely the "technogeek" Slashdot crowd is by and far more likely to engage in BDSM than sheeple at large. At least, slowly, attitudes are changing towards BDSM but we still have a long way to go. At least you can buy a sex toy in Texas. Only took what, 30 years to get that law off the books? And we had to go through judicial interpretation in order to do so. Thanks for nothing, Texas Legislature.
Re:"Geek defense", really? (Score:1, Insightful)
Slave society was once "normal", being normal is not always what it's cracked up to be.
Re:All geeks are the same (Score:3, Insightful)
Is this just speculation on your part? Or did he admit this to you? Or were you there when it happened?
I personally do not know if he is guilty or not ... because I was not there to be a witness. And I probably will not ever know because I actually do have some specific experience to know that courtroom procedures frequently do prohibit a fair and truthful trial from taking place along the lines of one ruling the judge in this case has already made.
Re:peers? (Score:4, Insightful)
That presumes they want to get out of jury duty.
Re:All geeks are the same (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:risky defense (Score:2, Insightful)
How many geeks here have bit their tongue when you had something to say - something that to you is infallible, cold hard logic - that you knew others would misinterpret?
If I were accused of murdering someone in a dumb way, I would immediately be thinking "Wow, that's dumb, I would never kill someone like that. This way would be so much simpler". I have no desire or intention of killing another, but that's just how I think - why would I go through all that trouble if there was an easier way? So it couldn't have been me. And it would make perfect sense to me, but I'm betting others would interpret it as the complete opposite.
So yes, it makes _some_ sense to me that someone could be intelligent but socially dumb, and trip up doing something others would think make you guilty. Most of us, I suspect, are just smart enough to not let that happen. Of course this Reiser case is just whacked out from all angles, so who knows what the truth is anymore.
Re:Desperate Twinkies (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Desperate Twinkies (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:All geeks are the same (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
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.
Re:peers? (Score:4, Insightful)
(I'm not sure if I'm agreeing with you, DNS-and-BIND, or not.)
Alas, they turned out not needing me. Maybe next time.
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'.
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.
Re:peers? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're innocent, these are the type of people you'd want to entrust your fate to. If you're guilty, on the other hand ...
Re:Gem of a quote (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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.
Re:My Suspicion (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh yeah, and why waste time investigating another possible lead when its easier to just mount a better case against the guy in question.
wait.
As i've said in other posts, i'm not saying i think he is guilty nor not guilty. The fact of the matter remains that there is no body, and the evidence is pretty highly stacked and yet localized in a slightly suspect fashion (IE: the books on crime in the vehicle?). Granted the circumstancial evidence is pretty damning, especially the removed seat and such that another post mentioned and the fact that he picked up his kids at school when it was supposed to be their mothers turn to do so.
It still all boils down to inference based on circumstantial evidence. Now, if there was further investigation into sturgeon and they found nothing to go on whatsoever, THEN it would all be downright damning.
What the hell has happened to the concept of justice, when did it become "once in the courts, its a versus b and ignore the rest".
Re:All geeks are the same (Score:4, Insightful)
All I'm saying is that as a defense, it sucks the big one.
Its not a valid defense. It may satisfy Reiser as a defense, but it won't satisfy the jury, who will see it as an attempt to manipulate or game them by someone who thinks he's smart enough to get away with it. (by "it", I don't mean murder - I'm referring to the attempted manipulation)
Here we have someone with much personal motive (his wife had left him, cleaned out his bank account, gotten custody of the kids, was having sex with someone else, etc), and this is the best defense the lawyer can come up with? It sounds like his own lawyer doesn't believe him.
Re:What serious evidence is there against him? (Score:3, Insightful)
In common parlance, "sadomasochism" refers to just about any kind of power play, and has absolutely nothing to do with clinical psychopathy.
Here's a tip: if you need to look up the definition of a sexual practice on Wikipedia, you are probably not entirely qualified to categorize the whole thing as a psychological disorder.
Of course, it all depends on what they actually mean by "serious" BDSM; given his other proclivities it could easily lie well outside the definition that most people who are actually into BDSM would use.
Let's put it in Slashdot-friendly terms: adding BDSM to the list of evidence of being a crazy person is about as justified as claiming that the presence of encryption software on a computer is evidence of criminal intent.
Re:Can't. Shut. Up! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:All geeks are the same (Score:4, Insightful)
"I'd email this story to Reiser's lawyers, but [...] I think he's guilty" - OP
Still looks like 'discounting contra-evidence because of his beliefs' too me. The OP may be a 'nice guy' and we are not selecting a jury however, that statement makes me think he would have a tendency to ignore evidence that goes against he prejudical assumption of guilt, so I reitterate, I don't wan't him on a jury.
Re:Desperate Twinkies (Score:4, Insightful)
Get over yourself. Anyone with a half decent CS degree and a few years of systems programming under their belt can/has designed and implemented file sytems, memory managers, job schedulers, etc. We know it's hard to improve on what exists because we know about what exists. That is why the OP said 'I could write a file system' rather than 'I will write a better filesystem'.
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.
Re:What serious evidence is there against him? (Score:3, Insightful)
I really, really wish they'd go into details about this.
The other day, I scratched part of my leg through my jeans. I didn't think about it until that night when I found a quarter-sized stain on my skin (and presumably on my black pants). Congrats, I now have blood-stained pants.
Blood on a sleeping bag seems probable enough. What's the alternative? He put her in a sleeping bag, drove to the middle of nowhere, disposed of the body after taking it out of the sleeping bag, and brought the sleeping bag back? (But did dispose of the car seat, because a missing sleeping bag wouldn't be overlooked, but a car seat would have been?)
Seems odd.
The blood in the garage could also be innocent or damning. Is it a few drops on a workbench? Or is it a few drops leading directly from the house to where the car is normally parked? Of course, the latter has innocent explanations as well (someone going to the ER to get some stitches, someone going to the car to grab a bandage from the car's first aid kit, etc).
Re:All geeks are the same (Score:3, Insightful)
Obviously. If you are rolling a six sided die and guess the result will be 4 you have a one in six chance of being correct. Where the roulette junkies get led astray is that they think if the result was not 4 then the chances of getting 4 are better on the next roll since 4 is "due" or if the result was 4 they think the chances of rolling a subsequent 4 are lower. Those are all false, if you have rolled twenty fours in a row your chances of rolling a 4 on the next toss are still just 1 in 6.
You are also suggesting that Hans has to provide reasonable doubt, Hans is innocent until the prosecution proves that he killed his wife beyond any reasonable doubt. Hans gets the benefit of the doubt.
Re:All geeks are the same (Score:1, Insightful)
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.)
Re:All geeks are the same (Score:2, Insightful)
According to OED, a peer is:
"A person of the same age, status, or ability as another specified person"
She was guilty, I have no doubt, and she deserved to be found as such. The outrageous penalty was similar to a harsh penalty given to reprobate or unrepentant murderer; e.g., a murderer's attitude and actions prior to and after the act are taken into account during sentencing.
Despite the juror's inelegant comments, he had a point: the fact that Jammie treated the case with such an attitude of entitlement should affect a jury's decision. It's kind of the way involuntary manslaughter is sentenced differently from first-degree murder.
Yes, I agree that the fines were an order of magnitude too high, but the issue is not nearly as one-sided as you make it out to be. N.B. that the trial took place ~10 blocks from my house.
-b
Re:Desperate Twinkies (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you notice this from the (Washington Post) article?