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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.'"
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.