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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.'"
Come on - the only place a half-crazed defense strategy can work is when pitched to computer geeks?
What what what?
-dave-
The pig browse. With Google. Sigh is to the chicken. Chicken is fool. Giggle. The DailyWTF giggle.
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'.
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask where they're goin' and hook up with 'em later.
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.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
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.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
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.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Sean Sturgeon confessed to killing eight people. 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.
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.
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 circumstantial evidence that he did it, with little plausible explanations in his defense. And no, "the other guy did it" doesn't convince me.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
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.
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.
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.
Ice Cream has no bones.
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...
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
Free Hans!
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.
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.
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:
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.
The cake is a pie
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.
evil is as evil does
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: 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 - only 22% agree that god created humans within the last 10,000 years. 59% believe in evolution.
In this set of findings 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 ...