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Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired)Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired)Posted Apr 29, 2008 2:01 UTC (Tue) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861)Parent article: Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) I don't know anything about the trial other than what was contained in this one article. It seems very likely he did it (but what are the odds that his best friend, whom his wife had an affair with, is also a serial killer?!?! Bizarre. No wonder the judge disallowed that little tidbit--talk about prejudicial! Does Gambler's Fallacy also apply to serial killers?) It seems pretty clear to me that if he'd just exercised his legal right to not testify at all, he'd have gotten off. His actions look very suspicious but juries have to find guilt without a reasonable doubt, and they would have to wonder if he might have had some reason for those suspicious actions. There was absolutely no direct evidence linking him to the crime--there wasn't even any direct evidence that there was a crime! By taking the stand and spewing such plainly bogus nonsense he proved to them there was no reason for his actions other than the obvious one: he was guilty. For those not familiar, in the U.S. a defendant does not have to testify, and the jury is not allowed to consider that the defendant did not testify as any indication of guilt--of course, it's probable that some juries do consider it anyway. In this case, though, his lawyer could have argued that he is so socially inept that he felt he would damage his own case by testifying--which would have been the truth as it turns out. We can't say it's a shame without knowing whether he did it, but it's at least ironic that the same qualities which made his experiences so difficult with the Linux community appear to be the ones that got him convicted of first degree murder. I guess some people really don't ever learn!
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Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) Posted Apr 29, 2008 2:34 UTC (Tue) by zlynx (subscriber, #2285) [Link] > his lawyer could have argued that he is so socially inept that he felt he would damage his own case by testifying--which would have been the truth as it turns out. Lawyers can't actually stop their clients from as they wish. Mr. Reiser probably insisted on telling it his way.
Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) Posted Apr 29, 2008 3:59 UTC (Tue) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861) [Link] I'm not sure where your comment comes from. I never suggested that Reiser's lawyer had any say in whether he testified or not. What I said was, the lawyer had plausible justifications for it if he decided not to testify, for example that he could use in closing arguments.
Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) Posted Apr 29, 2008 3:32 UTC (Tue) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] Actually, we can say it's a shame.I can understand not applying a patch from a person with social issues, because the code needs to be maintained, somebody needs to work with people reporting bugs. I can understand a judge choosing a harsher punishment for a person who appears to be more dangerous to the society, as long as it's within legal limits and follows precedents. But the jury should not be basing answers to yes-or-no questions on personal traits of the suspect. The jury is supposed to work with proven facts, not with guesses. The jury is not made of omniscient beings who know better than the prosecution, whether he did it, and especially whether it was intentional and planned. IANAL (unfortunately, this acronym sounds very different in this discussion).
Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) Posted Apr 29, 2008 4:34 UTC (Tue) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861) [Link] > But the jury should not be basing answers to yes-or-no questions on > personal traits of the suspect. No, but they can certainly base judgements of the suspect's trustworthiness and inclination to violence from his or her testimony and use it to condemn them. Just as they cannot hold it against a suspect for failing to testify, the jury certainly doesn't have to give them any extra points for testifying, especially if they do it as badly as Reiser seems to have (based solely on published reports).
Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) Posted Apr 29, 2008 6:34 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] This is doubly true if there is no other evidence one way or the other...
Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) Posted Apr 29, 2008 21:32 UTC (Tue) by rahvin (subscriber, #16953) [Link] In the US, a common mistake of the educated is to assume that the Justice system is about facts. The justice system is about emotion, facts are just a way to justify the emotion. If trials were only about facts inflammatory language wouldn't be used, but the prosecutor calls the defendant those names because it incites an emotional response. For example in the Hans trial closing remarks the prosecutor read a passage from a children's book found in the car of Han's wife. Such action was to incite anger and sadness for the loss of the mother to the children, and secondarily to try to show the fact that the mother wouldn't abandon her children (as the defense contended). The emotional response was the target, the fact was used to justify the blatant attempt to influence the emotions of the jury. The best lawyers are those that can weave emotion and fact together to create the emotional response the lawyer wants in the jury. Whether you approve or disprove of this isn't entirely relevant as this is a fact of the justice system and I doubt this will ever change as long as people are involved in the process. In the case of Hans I doubt the Jury would have convicted him had he not gotten on the stand and produced such unbelievable responses for his strange behavior after the disappearance.
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