Hans Reiser and the "Geek Defense" Strategy

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.'"

All geeks are the same

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of us have soaked our floorboards after we removed the passenger seat.

Re:All geeks are the same

[R2.0]

Believe it or not, I have been in a situation where I had a removed front passenger seat and a soaked footwell. I was having a problem with water getting into the car and couldn't find it. It was coming from under the dashboard, so I removed the seat so I could get my head in there to look closely. But then I ran out of time, so I just left it like that till next weekend.

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.

Re:

[Skapare]

2) I think he's guilty.

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:All geeks are the same

[TapeCutter]

I agree, it isn't relevant. You are simply missing my point...

"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:All geeks are the same

[dubl-u]

Believe it or not, I have been in a situation where I had a removed front passenger seat and a soaked footwell. [...] I removed the seat so I could get my head in there to look closely. But then I ran out of time, so I just left it like that till next weekend.

That's surely plausible. But the notion that Reiser then threw out the seat? No way. Every geek I know has a giant collection of old parts that they will use "someday". A real geek would have kept the seat. Even if there was something wrong with it, there were plenty of good parts on that sucker.

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:All geeks are the same

[that this is not und]

Hell, Apple recycled the NeXT OS.

Re:All geeks are the same

[spintriae]

Believe it or not, I have been in a situation where I had a removed front passenger seat and a soaked footwell.

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.

Re:

[noidentity]

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.

Just curious, if you had evidence related to a case but thought that the defendant was guilty, would you avoid reporting it? It seems you should let the court make the determination, since it sees all the evidence, including some those outside the courtroom never know about.

Re:

[Wordplay]

There's nothing idiosyncratic about a heater core leak, which is what usually dumps water/coolant into your floorboards in a failure. Heaters usually work by routing the coolant through another miniature radiator (the heater core) on your side of the firewall. When you turn the heater on, it opens a valve that starts routing coolant through that loop. Fans blow heat from the core into the cabin. This is why turning the heater onto full can lower the temperature on an overheating car--you're actually put

Re:

[unitron]

There's nothing idiosyncratic about a heater core leak...

As a matter of fact, I learned the hard way that late 60s Fords were especially prone to having this problem.

When that radiator fails, it will leak from under the dash onto the floorboards.

Except that if the leak is near the top of the heater core it won't necessarily leak until the engine is hot enough for the thermostat to open, at which point it will exit the leak as steam and deposit a thin film of anti-freeze all over the inside of the windshield.

Of course if you want a Ford with a wet floorboard, get one of the ones that ran the brake line to the rear wheels through the passe

Re:

[aussie_a]

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.

Right, except was your wife also murdered?

See, having your car flood and removing the passenger seat is pretty uncommon (more common for some apparently, but still fairly uncommon). Having your wife murdered is also fairly uncommon. Again, it happens (more common for some), but on average its uncommon. Now both of these events happening at the same time in the order of the car flooding and then the wife being murdered?

I'm no mathematician, but surely this doesn't happen often enough to be considered "reaso

Re:

[shaitand]

'I'm no mathematician'

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

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the best piece of evidence is Hans arrived to pick up his children from school when Nina was supposed to, the monday after she disappeared. Nobody but the killer would know she wasn't going to arrive to pick them up.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless:

1) She didn't come home the night before
2) She wasn't feeling well (and I don't mean because she was dead)
3) She asked him to pick up the kids

I see what you're saying, it's just too easy to come up with alternate possibilities that provide a reasonable doubt, just on that one item, I can't speak for the others.

Granted, I have not been following the trial, so I'm just making shit up.

Re:All geeks are the same

[Anonymous Coward]

He killed her because he didn't like the ReiserFS-less version of OpenBDSM that she was running.

Re:

[R2.0]

Mostly it is the seat.

Like I said, I had a perfectly good reason to have the seat removed, and I could explain why, when, and how the seat was removed. I could even recreate the leak. But my understanding is that Reiser hasn't offered a plausible explanation for the seat removal. Someone offered that street racers often remove their seats for weight savings, and they also favor Civics. But there's no evidence he was a street racer, and why wasn't the back seat removed?

There's a sizable amount of circums

Re:All geeks are the same

[Adambomb]

Despite the fact that Sean Sturgeon is a known killer, Nina Reiser was a physician, and the fact that apparently they found "Books on Crime" along with the sleeping bag and blood samples on the pillar in his garage? With no body, no witnesses, and no direct evidence?

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.

Re:All geeks are the same

[Asztal_]

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.

Maybe he was foiled by non-deterministic Garbage Collection.

Re:All geeks are the same

[tomhudson]

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.

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:

1. The books - a "reverse psychology" ploy - figurng that he's so much smarter than everyone else, and that they'd buy into his "well, if I were guilty, why would I have such books? I'd be stupid!" Narcisssists are very much likely to think along such convoluted lines, and to believe that others will fall for their "explanations"
2. The front seat - well, if it had blood on it, he had to dispose of it, since he wasn't smart enough to know that its possible to destroy the dna evidence (if he hadn't been into reading popular books about crime scene technology, and instead read up on the subject properly, he'd have known this). The last murder trial I sat on, the dna expert said he couldn't mention the techniques that could be used to destroy the evidence (you can buy the needed stuff at your local grocery store, btw), but that no such destruction had taken place.
3. The $8k and passport. That doesn't need much of an explanation, and could be quite innocent. His wife had already grabbed $$$ from the bank account. Wouldn't YOU want to stay "liquid" in such a case? Passport - why leave it around for someone to grab when you're living in your car?

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].

"She's a liar. We wanted to send a message. I don't know what the fuck she was thinking."

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:All geeks are the same

[tomhudson]

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:

[kdemetter]

Think 'hd encryption key' . Most people that had the key , and put the key in their signatures , where never going to use it to create a program that can decrypt hd-dvd's . They just did it because , when something is outlawed , it becomes valuable (and cool).

So having certain information , in no way implies that you will use it.
It's even more likely to be the other way around : if you are planning a murder , you would be cautious not to let that information lay around , while someone without that intention

Re:All geeks are the same

[Lijemo]

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]. "She's a liar. We wanted to send a message. I don't know what the fuck she was thinking."

Wow, reading stuff like this makes me really glad I don't live in a country that has something as stupid trial by jury. I wouldn't want my fate to be decided by a bunch of random idiots. Isn't the jury supposed to decide if the accused is guilty of the deed they are accused of ? Instead of "sending her a message" because she hurt their feelings ? That statement by a member of the jury alone should have been enough to nullify the judgement.

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:

[Taevin]

Isn't the jury supposed to decide if the accused is guilty of the deed they are accused of ? Instead of "sending her a message" because she hurt their feelings ?

It may sound bad, but that's the jury system working as intended. If all we wanted was a strict logical interpretation of the law, we'd have criminal cases decided by a panel of judges who know the law inside and out, with the final verdict decided by a majority vote. However, in contrast to what judges and prosecuting lawyers will tell you, jur

Re:All geeks are the same

[jbengt]

According to reports I've read, he bought those books after he was treated as a suspect by the cops, not before the crime.

Re:All geeks are the same

[killjoe]

You remember how the 9/11 hijackers left a video tape of flying lessons in their car? Yea just like that.

You remember how their passports survived the fire that brought down two buildings by melting the steel support structures?

Yup. Just like that.

Re:All geeks are the same

[TapeCutter]

"There's a sizable amount of circumstantial evidence that he did it, with little plausible explanations in his defense."

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:All geeks are the same

[ucblockhead]

Please read up on circumstantial evidence [wikipedia.org]. If a someone is seen entering a house, the victim is heard screaming "oh my God, he's killing me!!!!" and that someone then is seen fleeing the house with a bloody knife, then there is only circumstantial evidence that he committed the crime.

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.

Detective fiction

[CustomDesigned]

If a someone is seen entering a house, the victim is heard screaming "oh my God, he's killing me!!!!" and that someone then is seen fleeing the house with a bloody knife, then there is only circumstantial evidence that he committed the crime.

And if you read this in a good detective story, you would immediately know that the man fleeing the house with a bloody knife is almost certainly *not* the killer. Near the end of the book, you will be gratified to learn that indeed, it was not the poor bloke fleeing

Re:

[TapeCutter]

"There were dozens of instances where my arse was tanned because it was 'clear' I had done something wrong when in fact I was innocent."

Bill Cosby was right - "Parents aren't intrested in justice, they just want quiet".

Re:

[dgatwood]

I think you'd call that manus rea. :-D

Sigh. Maybe the lawyers will laugh, anyway.

Re:

[jimdread]

Why are they picking on Hans Reiser for strange behavior? Read this quote from the article about what his father is doing:

"His undergraduate thesis is on how if you change the perspective, the reality is different," said Ramon Reiser, the defendant's mathematician father, folding a pair of pants in the courtroom hallway as he waited to testify.

Ramon Reiser was waiting in the courthouse to testify in his son's murder trial, and he was folding a pair of pants. Who takes their laundry to the courthouse?

Re:All geeks are the same

[HeavensBlade23]

I wouldn't vote to convict based on that, however damning it may look, anymore than I would vote to convict of a computer crime because they were using encryption. Maybe he did kill her, I don't know, but there's some serious doubt about whether she could be hiding out in Russia or dead at the hands of the ex-boyfriend who admitted to killing nearly a dozen people.

peers?

[vDave420]

The effort will be watched and appreciated down the breadth of Silicon Valley, perhaps the only place a computer genius might find a jury of peers. There, Hans Reiser's actions appear fairly reasonable, at least to people who spend much more time with computer code than with other humans.

Come on - the only place a half-crazed defense strategy can work is when pitched to computer geeks?
What what what?

-dave-

Re:peers?

[DNS-and-BIND]

If they were so smart, they would have thought of an excuse to get out of jury duty.

Re:peers?

[Skapare]

If they were so smart, they would have thought of an excuse to get out of jury duty.

That presumes they want to get out of jury duty.

Re:peers?

[DNS-and-BIND]

Let's see: go back to my code and my cubicle, or deal with a problem that is purely judgement and requires a lot of thinking about and dealing with other people?

Re:peers?

[dougmc]

Dunno, when I was called up for jury duty, I was looking forward to it. It was something different, something I'd never done before. (Or, perhaps I could have tried to avoid it, so I could keep working on code in my cubicle ...)

(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:

[tomhudson]

If they were so smart, they would have thought of an excuse to get out of jury duty.

The jury is middle aged, middle class, small-C conservative. It draws people who make decisions in society - wield real power - simply because they are able - and willing - to put in whatever time and effort is needed to get the job done.

... or its composed of people who are uncomfortable with the idea of lying to get out of having to perform what many people consider an onerous duty.

If you're innocent, these are th

Re:peers?

[Harmonious Botch]

The jury is middle aged, middle class, small-C conservative. It draws people who make decisions in society - wield real power - simply because they are able - and willing - to put in whatever time and effort is needed to get the job done.

Sorry, but I've gotta call you dead wrong on this. It draws mostly from people who are NOT decision makers. The people who end up on juries are the mostly the compliant ones who leave decision making up to others.
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.

Re:peers?

[Dutch Gun]

The entire point of being on a jury is to weigh available evidence and come to a *decision*. Sure, the defense attorney would love to get indecisive people, but the prosecutor will be looking for those who can think and come to a reasonable decision based on the available evidence. The judge is looking for people who can work within the rules of the system, but that surely doesn't preclude decision-makers either.

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.

Re:

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Sorry, but I've gotta call you dead wrong on this. It draws mostly from people who are NOT decision makers. The people who end up on juries are the mostly the compliant ones who leave decision making up to others.

I think you are the one that is "dead wrong" and basing your opinion on a stereotype. (You may want to cut down on the number of court room dramas you watch on TV)

Yes, it is true the prosecution will strike the jurors who may be sympathetic to the defense, and the defense attorney will strike t

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[account_deleted]

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Re:A curse I've had to live with . . .

[gbjbaanb]

I guess you would have mentioned your immense modesty too, if you weren't so modest :)

Re:A curse I've had to live with . . .

[tomhudson]

Sure it makes sense. Most people have an over-inflated idea of how intelligent they are - the majority claim they're more intelligent than the average person - which simply can't be true.

Then again, the majority of Americans believe that God created human beings [ncseweb.org]: 45% believe god did it within the last 10,000 years, and a further 38% believe that god guided it over the last million years (intelligent design). Only 13% believed in Darwin's theory of evolution.

Contrast that with what people believe just north of the border [angus-reid.com] - only 22% agree that god created humans within the last 10,000 years. 59% believe in evolution.

In this set of findings [foxnews.com] Iceland, Denmark, Sweden and France, 80 percent or more of adults accepted evolution; in Japan, 78 percent of adults did. Turkey, on the other hand, had results akin to the US. Kind of telling, I would say ...

Re:

[tomhudson]

the majority claim they're more intelligent than the average person - which simply can't be true.

Of course they can. Intelligence is not a scientific term, it's not something that can be measured, and you can evaluate it in a very narrow context. It's perfectly valid for an individual to judge his own intelligence in a different way from some other individual, with all of them correctly judging their intelligence to be greater than an arbitrary 'average' intelligence decided by a third party.

**snort**

Desperate Twinkies

[milsoRgen]

The old Twinkie Defense [wikipedia.org] upgraded for the year 2000.

Re:Desperate Twinkies

[milsoRgen]

Also why is he constantly referred to as a genius?

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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[account_deleted]

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Re:Desperate Twinkies

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm no genious

Yeah, no shit.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:Desperate Twinkies

[TapeCutter]

"Put your money where your mouth is then. Designing a file system is harder than it looks"

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:Desperate Twinkies

[Plutonite]

I hope you were joking with reference to "IQ" being in any way important. Please read on Richard Feymann and what he got for a score.

Re:Desperate Twinkies

[Omnifarious]

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.

Re:

[erlehmann]

Both scenarios fit the available evidence.

In dubio, pro reo.

For those born anno domini

[Nazlfrag]

Translation: When in doubt, favor the accused.

Re:

[Captain Nitpick]

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.

The standard of proof in a criminal case is 'beyond a reasonable doubt'. This is far less than 'beyond a shadow of a doubt'.

Re:

[tverbeek]

Try reading the article you linked to.

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:Desperate Twinkies

[LaskoVortex]

because this seems like a defense of desperation

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:Desperate Twinkies

[JavaRob]

I'm always leery of using media reporting to follow any court case, though perhaps Wired will do better than the average general-consumption newspaper.

Did you notice this from the (Washington Post) article?

His signal adult achievement was ReiserFS, a file system he named for himself, unusual in the programming world. The system organizes data on Linux, the "open source" operating system.

Ah, unusual in the programming world (this guy's a freakish egomaniac!) -- and in the next sentence they mention Linux, which as we all know was created by Bob Torvalds.

Re:

[cuantar]

Actually, the jury need not necessarily vote one way or the other. Even if there is no shadow of a doubt that Reiser committed the crime, the jury is still well within their rights to give a not guilty verdict. Perhaps in the case of murder, jury nullification is the wrong thing to do, but it's still very much an option. The jury is not bound to support the law.

Re:Desperate Twinkies

[ucblockhead]

If you are in the jury pool for a trial involving the "crime" of breaking encryption, you will almost certainly be asked, under oath, if you believe such a thing should be considered a crime. If you say "no", there is no way in hell you will end up serving on the jury. If you lie to get on the jury, you will have committed perjury. If you refuse to vote for conviction based on your belief, your perjury will be obvious and it will almost certainly cause a mistrial. The person will almost certainly face another trial and you will be facing charges. That helps nobody.

If I were in such a situation, I would merely announce my reasons why I think such a "crime" is complete bullshit when asked, knowing that those who will eventually serve on the jury are all within earshot, and then happily go home when I am booted, knowing that I've broken no laws and done the best that I could.

Re:Desperate Twinkies

[BiggerIsBetter]

You forgot to mention the other guy, Sean Sturgeon, who was also close to the victim. The dude who has confessed to killing 8 (yes, eight) people, and was dating Nina (Hans' wife). IMHO, it's more likely that Hans was reading up on how to kill Sean (or even how to avoid being killed by Sean) than how to kill Nina.

Re:

[DavidTC]

I believe Hans actually purchased those books after the police started questioning him about his ex-wife's disappearance. In other words, if he's innocent, he was either a) trying to figure out what happened to her, or b) trying to figure out why the police thought he did it. (If he's guilty, he's trying to figure out if he missed anything.)

Looking up how a murder investigation works, once you become a suspect in it, is exactly the sort of behavior you'd expect from a geek. It would be my first impulse, to

Re:Desperate Twinkies

[tomhudson]

"There is no clear motive for Hans to of killed his wife."

There are motives aplenty:

1. She cleaned out his bank account
2. She got custody of the kids
3. She was sleeping with someone else
4. She had called an end to their marriage
5. She had gone out and gotten herself a job where she specified she was now single

People have killed their former spouses over much less. There's plenty of motive.

Re:Desperate Twinkies

[tomhudson]

She had taken a job interview, was accepted for the job (after negotiating an extra few grand because she was now going to be a single mother - you don't bother negotiating if all you're doing is setting up a story line), etc. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/07/BAOFUTA27.DTL [sfgate.com]

(02-06) 12:48 PST OAKLAND --

Two days before she disappeared, Nina Reiser accepted a $50,000-a-year job with the San Francisco Department of Public Health to help Russian immigrants, the woman who hired her testified Wednesday.

Prosecutors hope Patricia Erwin's testimony will help persuade the jury in the murder trial of Reiser's estranged husband, Hans Reiser, that the missing woman didn't vanish voluntarily - a theory the defense has advanced.

Nina Reiser eagerly discussed the job, to help fellow Russian immigrants with their health concerns, during two interviews in August 2006 and accepted it Sept. 1, 2006, said Erwin, a project manager for the Public Health Department. Reiser was last seen two days after that, and never showed up for work at the San Francisco agency.

"She was very outgoing, friendly," Erwin said in Alameda County Superior Court. "She was easy to connect with. She seemed down-to-earth, and she also seemed very committed to working with us."

Echoing an opinion voiced by other witnesses at the trial, Erwin said the mother of two, then 31 years old, didn't seem to be the kind of person who would abandon her children. "My impression was they were a major part of her life," she said.

Prosecutors say Hans Reiser killed his wife after she dropped off their children at his Oakland hills home Sept. 3, 2006. Her body hasn't been found. The 44-year-old defendant has pleaded not guilty, and his attorneys have suggested that Nina Reiser is alive and hiding in Russia.

Also Wednesday, Richard Wilson of the TransUnion credit bureau testified that Hans Reiser was $90,000 in debt as of late last month. The figure includes $29,000 in unpaid child support, he said. Nina Reiser was about $30,000 in debt, Wilson said.

Other witnesses have testified that Hans Reiser complained that his wife was a financial burden to him.

In other testimony, Michael Caniglia, an employee of AT&T Mobility, said Hans Reiser's cell phone was dormant between Sept. 1 and Sept. 5, 2006, when his voice mail was checked at 5:02 p.m.

At 5:04 p.m. that day, an eight-second call was made on his cell phone to Nina Reiser's cell phone, the phone records showed.

Caniglia said Hans Reiser's cell phone received several incoming phone calls in the days after his wife disappeared. But the phone was either out of range, turned off or had its battery removed, he said.

Caniglia testified that the location of cell phones can be determined if they are on - even when no calls are being made - but not if they are turned off or the batteries are removed.

Prosecutor Paul Hora has told jurors that Hans Reiser's cell phone's battery was detached when police detained him several weeks after his wife disappeared and that her cell phone's battery was detached when police found the phone in her abandoned car.

Also, Nina wasn't a "mail-order bride".

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/02/hans-reiser-m-3.html [wired.com]

he 44-year-old popular Linux programmer has pleaded not guilty, claiming his wife abandoned their children, now 6 and 8, and left Oakland for Russia, where the couple met in 1998 while Hans Reiser was overseas developing software.

So let's recap:

1. Hans owed Nina $$$ - $29k at that point. Nina was about $30k in debt - which balances pretty much with the $29k Hans owed her in child support.
2. Nina had no need to leave the country - she had a job, custody of the kids, if

Re:Desperate Twinkies

[tomhudson]

You're wrong about the "nobody knows" part. Hans Reiser knows, one way or the other.

Unfortunately, we don't have mind-readers yet, so all we can do is look at the evidence and make a decision.

The government is making the case that Reiser killed his wife. The defense is making the case that Reiser didn't. The jury's job is to deide what the facts are, based on that evidence. In other words, is there a reasonable doubt that Reiser killed his wife? Not "a certainty".

I hadn't really been following the case, but the more I look at it today, the more it looks to me like a reasonable person would conclude that Reiser is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. He had means, motive, and opportunity. The explanations offered for his actions are patronizing, to say the least. Taken as a whole, his story gets less credible as time goes on, and the "geek defense" or "tortured genius" act is lame.

His story also fails Occam's razor, big-time. The simplest explanation that fits all the facts is that he did kill her. His explanation doesn't fit all the facts, and it rings false. More and more, it sounds like someone with too big an ego, who is in the process of losing everything, and finally throws caution and civility to the winds.

Re:Desperate Twinkies

[Ozan]

No, I would think more of an inverted Chewbacca defense:

William Du Bois

Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, the district attorney would certainly want you to believe that my client killed his wife. And they make a good case. Hell, even I almost think it was him! But, ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, I have one final thing I want you to consider. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Alan Turing. Turing was a Mathematician from England. He came up with what is now called a Turing Machine. Now think about it: that does make perfect sense!

Paul Hora

Damn it! He's using the Turing Defense!

William Du Bois

Now why would Alan Turing, a Mathematician from England would invent something like a Turing Machine? Because it helps to show that some problems are never solvable by computing. Does that make any sense? Yes it does.
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!

Gem of a quote

[Anonymous Coward]

His signal adult achievement was ReiserFS, a file system he named for himself, unusual in the programming world. The system organizes data on Linux, the "open source" operating system.

In the same breath, they say naming something after ones own name is unusual, and refer to the OS written by a guy named Linus. Hows that for irony.

Re:Gem of a quote

[mccalli]

In the same breath, they say naming something after ones own name is unusual, and refer to the OS written by a guy named Linus. Hows that for irony.

Linus named it FreakOS I believe. It was someone else who convinced him to rename it to Linux.

Cheers,
Ian

Actually, Linus originally picked "Freax"

[Richard_J_N]

http://www.freax.org/ [freax.org] has a little more info

Re:

[RobBebop]

when in doubt, Wikipedia! [wikipedia.org]

Linus Torvalds originally developed the Linux kernel as a hobby OS for the Intel 80386 CPU, incorporating elements from MINIX, although with entirely new code.[12] Initially Torvalds wanted to call the kernel he developed Freax (a combination of "free", "freak", and the letter X to indicate that it is a Unix-like system), but his friend Ari Lemmke, who administered the FTP server where the kernel was first hosted for downloading, named Torvalds' directory linux.

Of course, nothing on Wikipedia should be taken as fact unless it can be backed up with supporting references, but that's how it goes.

/. defense

[tverbeek]

I'm too anti-social to be a threat to society.

Re:/. defense

[ShakaUVM]

Nah, the Slashdot defense is: I couldn't possibly have had a wife!

My Suspicion

[jjohnson]

Assuming he killed Nina (a pretty safe assumption, on the face of it), I suspect he's making an error of reasoning that hyper intelligent people and small children are prone to: Because there's no direct evidence, he can't logically conclude his own guilt from his actions, therefore no one else can.

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

[MightyMartian]

Nina *may* have gone to Russia. Didn't her family supposedly have some "connections"?

Well, at least some symbolic links.

Re:

[Adambomb]

Yeah, I hate believing people are innocent until proven guilty too.

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 i

risky defense

[timmarhy]

it's very risky this type of defense. it might be seen that he's so smart, that maybe he KNEW he could use this kind of defense and planned on hiding out in the open so to speak.

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:

[tverbeek]

You don't need a body for a murder trial and conviction. Think about it: that would mean that successfully getting rid of the body would be a Get Out Of Jail Free card. All they need is 1) enough evidence of a crime to persuade a grand jury that it's worth trying, and 2) enough evidence that he did it to persuade the regular jury that he's guilty. It doesn't have to be a logically sound proof, just a convincing one.

Re:risky defense

[timmarhy]

I can't believe you can go to a murder trial with so LITTLE evidence she is dead though. they found some small blood samples in his car and garage.

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:risky defense

[QuantumG]

I believe the reason the judge let the case go ahead was because Hans was demanding a speedy trial (as is his right) so the judge wanted to give the prosecution time to get their case together.. even after getting Hans to waive his right to a speedy trial and delaying it so Hans' lawyer could go on holidays, the prosecution still couldn't come up with any more evidence.

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.

Re:

[jbengt]

More to-the-point details from TFA:

The cross-dressing bondage and discipline enthusiast had been "maid of honor" at their wedding.

Sturgeon, who in addition to his role as Hans's friend and Nina's lover, told investigators that he killed eight people.

The Geek Defense Argument

[mincognito]

1. killing ones wife requires having a wife to kill
2. the accused is a geek
3. geeks cannot have wives
4. the defense rests

Re:The Geek Defense Argument

[Renderer of Evil]

OK, so you've established that Reiser is not a geek... So what is he?

Hans Reiser is a general-purpose, journaled collection of cells that relies on DNA metadata to reduce internal fragmentation.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:What serious evidence is there against him?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

'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?

[Anonymous Coward]

'Serious BDSM' is what I do sometimes...

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."

Re:

[glwtta]

BDSM is also a sign that something is not quite right in your head, but presumably not to the degree of homicide. You might want to ses a psychiatrist, sadomasochism is considered a psychological disorder.

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

Re:

[jjohnson]

The guy is a total loon based on what has come out

I suspect that's why they dismissed him as a suspect--after investigating him, they decided he was a total whackjob. The fact that he hasn't been charged with the eight murders to which he confessed (AFAIK) suggests that they don't find him credible.

Re:What serious evidence is there against him?

[Adambomb]

No, they found items containing her blood (sleeping bag), and there was blood samples in Reisers garage.

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.

Re:

[dasunt]

No, they found items containing her blood (sleeping bag), and there was blood samples in Reisers garage.

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 mi

beyond the shadow of a doubt

[hxnwix]

I and many of my geek friends would have a hard time proving our innocence if such accusations were leveled against us.

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 .22 rifle? Do you usually shoot things that annoy you? You said that computers are important to you - so important that you like to shoot them repeatedly. Was your wife important to you? Did she sometimes annoy you? No further questions."

Fortunately, we are innocent until proven guilty...

Sense and Circumstance

[_Sprocket_]

The issue seems to come from the apparent weakness of the prosecution's case. The most damning part of the case seems to be that Reiser acted strangely; did odd things, said odd things, behaved in unexpected ways. That kind of thing works well to tie together strong evidence to show motives and behaviors that link the evidence to the suspect. But lacking that, the case becomes little more than "he sure SEEMS guilty." And that is, as the article mentioned one judge noting, a very thin case indeed.

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.

Re:Sense and Circumstance

[Dogun]

Whether or not he's guilty (I for one don't take his behavior into account), my understanding thus far:
  A) The prosecution has failed to show Nina Reiser is dead.
  B) The prosecution has failed to produce any physical evidence linking Hans Reiser to Nina's death. Tiny flecks of blood found in places where Nina may have reasonably been in the past under normal circumstances in the past haven't even been found to be Nina's.
  C) The prosecution has failed to produce circumstantial evidence tying Hans Reiser to Nina's death, just that he acts funny when he's convinced he is being followed by police and everyone thinks he killed his wife. Despite several attempts to guide Hans Reiser's children into a declaration that they witnessed an argument, nothing has been said that is consistant to that effect.
  D) 8-time confessed serial killer Sturgeon was romantically involved with Nina.

I hope Hans didn't do it. If he did, though, I hope that the jury fails to find beyond a reasonable doubt that Hans Reiser murdered Nina Reiser, unless I've missed some vital piece of evidence somewhere, or they find their smoking gun. The evidence as I've seen it is too thin for someone to convict in good conscience.

From the hood....

[FlyingGuy]

Well, I tell ya. I live in Han's hood, and let me tell ya a thing or three..

• Silicon Valley is on the other side of the bay.
• The jury of his peers came from Alameda County, not San Mateo or Santa Clara County, which comprise 95% of what is considered Silicon Valley and most of them probably came from the city of Oakland, a Blue Collar city for the most part.
• The guy who owns the local hardware store went to High School with Hans ( Skyline High School ) and is also a Deputy Sheriff. He personally thinks that Han's did the deed and well, for the most part so do most folks that live in Montclair.

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...

Re:From the hood....

[bikerider7]

I also live in the neighborhood (2 blocks from the last known location where Nina was seen). Indeed, this is not Silicon Valley, it is (basically) the North Oakland area -- which in the past 2 years has experienced a huge increase in homicides and other violent crime. Even California's Senate President Pro Tem (i.e. 2nd most powerful leader in the State) isn't safe as he got carjacked in broad daylight on a busy street. Without any direct evidence linking Hans to the crime, I am no more inclined to believe that it was him, and not some gang of thugs out cruising Montclair.

Can't. Shut. Up!

[Apotsy]

The Wired blog about the trial mentions him constantly arguing with his lawyer & the judge. His lawyer is constantly asking for things to be repeated because Reiser is pestering him, even when he's busy questioning a witness!

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.

Re:

[phorm]

This would lend credence to why he would have bought all the "incriminating literature" though. Simply put, the guy couldn't sit down and let somebody else deal with things, he's obsessive compulsive and had to start digging into it himself.

A wide spectrum of possibilities.

[chris_sawtell]

A disclaimer: I am not a US citizen and live thousands of miles away, but thanks to Wired, SFGate.com and Jay Gaskill, I have kept myself as well informed about this sad state of affairs as it is possible to do with out actually being in the Court.

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:-

1. A nasty, skilled, pre-meditated killing.
   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:-
   • No 'Smoking Gun', or actual witness.
2. 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.
   For:
   • Han's behavour immediately after Nina's disappearance.
   Against:
   • Rory said his mother gave him a hug and left the house.
3. 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.
   For:
   • It's happened before in other Jurisdictions.
   • Sturgeon has confessed to having been involved with many deaths.
   Against:
   • None.
4. 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.
   For:
   • 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,

Perfectly Reasonable if Explained Properly

[istartedi]

I've experienced this myself, although it was particularly bad in elementary school. Many geeks have Asperger's syndrome, and others, although not diagnosed Aspergers's, have traits that put them on the "autistic spectrum".

I have some of those traits, and the one that tends to cause the most problems in this context is "innapropriate affect". This is where you have an unexpected reaction or facial expression that doesn't match up with what "normal" people expect. In my case, I would smile and feel a bit giddy when I was getting dragged to the principal's office. It didn't mean I was happy, it just meant that my mind dealt with the whole deal by minimizing it to the point of meaninglessness, and that was very amusing. The "normals" interpreted this as a "guilty grin", and I got punished for it on more than one occasion when I was perfectly innocent. As I got older, I learned somewhat how to provide the correct "output" for various situations.

Assuming HR is innocent, it wouldn't surprise me if he were going through this. Of course, it doesn't mean he's not guilty either.

Re:

[DNS-and-BIND]

The story was written by journalists, as all news stories are - and we know for a fact that they aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer. They believe all sorts of weird things, especially about smart people...they move in a very restricted social stratum, and they are typically very out-of-touch. There must be something wrong with computer programmers, because if they were really that smart, they would have become journalism professors.