Hans Reiser To Reveal Location of Wife's Body

dlgeek writes "The story of Hans Reiser is well known to all Slashdotters by now. Some still placed doubts about the conviction, stating that he might be innocent. It now seems that all doubt has been quelled, since Alameda County District Attorney Thomas Orloff has revealed that Hans Reiser will disclose the location of Nina's body for a reduced sentence. The deal is not yet finalized, though. 'There's been some overtures,' Orloff said, 'But everything is in its preliminary stage.' The deal would reduce his conviction from first degree to second degree murder. In addition, an anonymous source close to the situation said that 'the only real leverage he has is if he can provide a body. He really doesn't have any options left. Even if he won a retrial somehow, he'd likely be convicted.'"

Comments

*sigh*

[afxgrin]

Wow I feel like a moron for have ever attempted to defend Hans online at all. Like he was friends, and his wife was seeing, a guy that murdered several people.

Now he's just going to fess up to the murder.

I guess this marks the end of ReiserFS. I'm sure no one in the Linux community wants to be associated to that piece of work.

Am I missing something or

[Splab]

did the article just speculate?

No where in the article does it say that he has agreed to it, they are speculating that there might be a reduced sentence if Hans discloses where the body is. Also, he is most likely going to be someone's "slave" once he is in prison, so if he gets 15 or 25 years it is most likely going to be in protected custody (= voluntary solitary confinement) and 15 years alone is going to mess him even up let alone 25 years, either way he is done for.

Glad I'm not in the US, getting life in prison for something that has way too many loose ends, just isn't right.

(On a side note, whats with those extremely long terms in prison? Anyone going in for 25 years will never be able to get back into society - I thought the point of prison was to punish and correct the guilty and get them back into working order. There was a couple who got life in prison for mistreating their child to the point of death (raised her as a vegan) - a British couple got 3 years community service for the same thing)

Where is the Corpus Delicti?

[mangu]

The story is believable enough, but, let's let the DA PROVE it first.

IANAL, but in all the Perry Mason stories I read, the trial always start with proving Corpus Delicti which, as Perry Mason always explains, is not the body of the victim, but a proof that a crime was committed.

In this case, I wonder: wasn't Reiser committed wrongfully? Because if finding the body could turn the conviction from first degree to second degree murder it clearly means that first degree murder hasn't been proved beyond reasonable doubt. At least, "beyond reasonable doubt" doesn't seem like something that could be dispelled by examining a body that has been hidden for several years.

And what if, after examining the body, evidence is found that death could have had a natural cause, or be a suicide? With that reasonable doubt, would the conviction be reversed?

Finally, the juror mentioned in this article that made his decision based on the accused's eyes really scares me. What if I had been tried? Would a crazy schoolteacher send me to prison for life because he didn't like the look in my eyes? There's so much debate on lie detectors in general, experts cannot agree on which subtle body signals will tell if someone is lying or not. If trained police agents, people with vast experience in interrogation practices, using advanced equipment for evaluating stress, cannot tell for sure if someone is lying or not, how come a fifth-grade schoolteacher is able to tell just by a glance at the eyes?...

I'm not saying Reiser is either guilty or not. But that juror's statements make me hope I never stand trial, not under that system, unless there's at least one honest man in the jury to restrain the crazy old schoolteachers.

Name change

[ericspinder]

How about renaming it for the woman he killed? NinaFS, perhaps?

Re:World's Greatest Detective

[trolltalk.com]

Exactly Reiser doesn't have to say he killed his wife...he just needs to argue that IF he killed her, this is where he would have hidden the body.

It's mere coincidence that the actual killer thought the same way.

Problem is, he thought he was so smart that that sort of illogic would bamboozle at least 1 of 12 jurors. Let me be the first to say "I told you so!" All you who said he didn't do it, welcome your new "I told you so" overlords.

He's only doing this because the body will eventually be found anyway, in which case, "In Soviet Amerika, body reveals YOU (to be a killer)."

Jurors aren't (usually) stupid.