Hans Reiser Leads Police To Nina's Body

jlmcgraw was the first to alert us that Hans Reiser has led police to the location in the Oakland Hills where he buried the body of his wife Nina. (We discussed the rumor that he would do so last month.) SFGate.com reports that remains were recovered but have not yet been identified. Reiser is to be sentenced on Wednesday. CBS5 claims that Reiser made a deal for a reduced sentence, to 15 years, in exchange for revealing the body.

Comments

Okay there you go

[morgan_greywolf]

All you people who said "I still don't believe Hans did it" -- do you doubt it now?

Re:Okay there you go

[Nelson]

I'll clue you in. Reasonable doubt requires more than just a semi-plausible alternative theory. It's not like reading something in a textbook. "Reasonable doubt" is made up of his actions, his inaction, the things he says to the jury, the things he doesn't say to the jury, his actions in court, his mannerisms, whether he appears to be lying, all of that stuff. There is no sterile, black and white "reasonable doubt" where he can just tell lies and suggest an alternative theory and get off.

That's what makes serial killers scary, they are so emotionless and seem to not think that they did anything wrong that they can just lie to a group of people and most people find it believable. Many of them are smart enough to not get caught in lies.

Hans had a lot of circumstances stacked against him and then he did the worst thing possible and he opened his mouth in court, the guy has a hard time communicating with people that really want to understand him and hear what he has to say (fellow kernel hackers) no way he's going to lie to a jury in a convincing manner. Even for a geek he is a very odd individual. Just not convincing in court, and as it turns out, he did the crime anyways. A jury saw through his lies and they were right, as they tend to be. Some estimates have them between 85% and 90% accurate.

Re:Okay there you go

[D Ninja]

I think a lot of people here wanted to believe he was innocent, perhaps because of the open source connection

Heh, I'll probably be modded as Flamebait for this, but...whatever.

I agree with you. The OSS connection, I think, is what made people think he was innocent. If this had been a story about Bill Gates or some other closed source proponent, I wonder if people's reactions would still have been the same on this site.

Re:Okay there you go

[greatpatton]

My wife lost our babies in the car (fourth month of pregnancy) while I was driving her to the hospital. The amount of blood she lost in the car was shocking, she had to be transfused at the hospital. So yes you can have you wife bled in a significant amount in your car for a legitimate reason.

Re:Epic fail

[caller9]

I just thought of something. Maybe he thought his nerd fame carried some weight "on the street." To put it as nerdily as I can, the union of the set of people who care about a filesystem and the legal system is an empty set.

Google Maps anyone?

[nukeade]

From the article, the location where he dumped Nina must be approximately here:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=37.833531,-122.182109

~Ben

Also

[Sycraft-fu]

What people seem to forget is that while any one of these things doesn't mean anything by itself, they add up to a bigger picture. People keep trying to deconstruct individual facts. That's not how it works at trial. It isn't a case of "every fact must prove, on it's own, that this happened." They are all considered together. So while there is reasonable doubt for a given fact, there's not when they are all presented together. For example, suppose that someone claims I stole their laptop. They didn't actually see me take it and I don't currently have it, however the following is known:

--I was the last person seen in the area of the laptop before it was discovered missing.
--I had no reason to be in that area, and can offer no plausible reason as to why I was.
--There were security cameras in the area, however I moved in such a way to always avoid their lines of sight.
--My fingerprints were found around the area where the laptop was prior to going missing.
--I was was observed carrying a small box, that would hold a laptop from my car back to my house, after leaving the area.
--I suddenly have an amount of cash consistent with the sale of such a laptop that I can provide no plausible way for getting.
--I am discovered to have books on the topic of security systems, and removing tracking software from a laptop.
--Several pawn shop owners said I inquired about the discretion they exercise in relation to goods they buy.

At some point in there, it becomes pretty clear that I am the guy who stole the laptop. Any given fact on it's own isn't a big deal. Like getting extra money without a good explanation isn't indicative of theft, maybe I just got it in a way I'm not proud of. However taken all together and with no plausible alternative explanation, it really isn't reasonable to doubt that I stole the laptop. Just because I don't have the laptop itself, doesn't mean a jury can't find beyond a reasonable doubt that I did steal it.

Same deal in the Reiser case. You take all the evidence together and there is very little doubt. Any that remained he did a good job of erasing with his testimony. One of the things juries can certainly weigh is how ceredable the alternative explanations the defense and defendant offer are. If they offer a very credible, plausible explanation, well then that can make reasonable doubt, even in the light of strong evidence. However if they offer extremely unbelievable stories, well then the jury can infer they are lying.

Part of the problem is people here do the geek extremist thing and start taking ANY amount of doubt to be reasonable. No, that's not how it works. You don't have to prove a case beyond any doubt, because there's always some doubt. I mean there is some doubt that the sun will come up tomorrow. Very, very little, but still some. Just because it has always happened in the past, doesn't mean it will for sure, beyond any doubt, happen in the future.

So the proof in court isn't about absolutes, it is about reasonable doubt. That means is it REASONABLE to doubt that someone did it. The jury said no, it isn't, and it looks as though they are correct, it wasn't.

Re:Still could be innocent

[hbuttle]

"In Italy, this is permitted in certain circumstances"

IANAL, but as an italian this is what i know:

up to the seventies there was a law (number 587) on "honour killing", where you could kill your wife if they were having an affair and you would get a much reduced sentence because you were defending the honour of your family.

for the same reason you could somewhat get away with killing your wife if she just was behaving in an unappropriate way, or your sister if she was dating an undesirable man or if she lost her virginity before the wedding.

but it was even worse than that: when divorce was socially unacceptable (and legally forbidden) this law was used by some also to just get rid of their wife (as depicted in the movie "divorzio all'italiana").

this law was more popular in southern italy and in rural areas, but it was not the only one:

you could also beat your wife to "educate" her (ius corrigendi).

a raped woman could be forced to marry their raper (as depicted in the movie "sedotta e abbandonata)"

contraception was strictly forbidden.

and so on.


but NOW the italian law, while still lacking, is not as bad as some decades ago. if you commit a crime of passion you get a sentence for manslaughter or something like that.