Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired)

> 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).