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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.'"
Most of us have soaked our floorboards after we removed the passenger seat.
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.
But I guess it sorta goes with my outstanding good looks. :)
I'm too anti-social to be a threat to society.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
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.
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....
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
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
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.
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I and many of my geek friends would have a hard time proving our innocence if such accusations were leveled against us.
.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."
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
Fortunately, we are innocent until proven guilty...
Yeah, no shit.
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.
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!
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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.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
http://www.freax.org/ has a little more info
"There is no clear motive for Hans to of killed his wife."
There are motives aplenty:
People have killed their former spouses over much less. There's plenty of motive.
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!
Why are they picking on Hans Reiser for strange behavior? Read this quote from the article about what his father is doing:
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? Why was Ramon Reiser standing around folding up pants??? Something very suspicious is going on here! Was Hans's mathematician father sending secret signals with the pants? Some sort of topology-laundry cipher system?
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.
Just callin' it like I see it.
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
Also, Nina wasn't a "mail-order bride".
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/02/hans-reiser-m-3.html
So let's recap:
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!
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, too, except I wouldn't be stupid enough to purchase books and leave them laying around. He purchased them 'surreptitiously', whatever that means, I'd actually go past that and not purchase them at all, just reading them in the library and bookstore.
As for removing parts of a car: My car has all its seats, although I have ripped out the center console and rigged up an electrical switching system in the glove compartment running to the rear of the car. Geeks do weird things with cars, maybe he's just absurdly gas-conscious. (Someone above asked why he didn't rip out the backseat too...he has two kids, he needs a backseat.) I once considered using the fold-down backseats in my car to make a bed extending into the truck. I have at least two 'secret' compartments in my car that are simply parts of the interior not attached firmly that I can pull off and get into easily. I sometimes remove the inside of the gearshift so people can't steal my car, at least not until they figure out why the hell they can't shift into drive and find something to push the thing down.
Geeks do weird things to other stuff too, I used a TV for six years that wouldn't turn off, I had to flip a power strip. I've ripped out tape-deck guts from a boom box because they didn't work and it was lighter without them. Once I was in someone's house when they made a casual remark about wishing their fridge door opened the other way, and I pointed out that the door actually could come off and be reattached to the other side with a little bit of work, although they'd have to patch holes where sheet metal had been punched. It had never occurred to them to even look, whereas I already knew that factories weren't going to make two sets of parts so it was likely that everything was the same and it was just put together different. I then realized to most people, a fridge, and everything else you buy, are a single entity that just exists...you don't try to change it unless it's obviously designed for changing. You can change the faceplate of your cellphone, but you don't peel the CPU stickers off your laptop, or put tape over the idiotic bright blue lights, and you certainly don't open it up and remove them.
Now, I haven't done anything that I would consider suspicious, but there are certain things about what I do and have that I would have a hard time explaining to to the courts if it turned out one of them were suspicious. Us geeks and nerds are much more likely to actually understand how things work, and are willing to change them if that would suit us better, things that normal human beings would not consider changing. Or perhaps a better term to refer to us is 'hackers'.
Incidentally, killing someone in your car, or killing them somewhere and transporting them in such a way that they bleed on your car's front seat, is incredibly stupid and and incredibly easy to avoid. Hans actually sounds like a smart guy, so I'm having trouble connecting 'Oh, I'll carry this bloody corpse in my car's front seat' with him.
OTOH, the fact there were blood spatters doesn't look good for them, as does the fact he can't produce the seat. (Whereas I can, even now, produce the center console of my car complete with broken tape deck.)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
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.
"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'.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
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
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.