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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.
I feel bad for the kids - that is such a messed up situation.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
All you people who said "I still don't believe Hans did it" -- do you doubt it now?
My blog
There was always that little (irrational) bit of me that said he was innocent. Foof.
I held out so much hope all during the trial process that Hans wasn't guilty. And even after he'd been convicted, I held onto the cynical thought that Nina was alive and well somewhere in Russia, laughing at all of this, and that someday it would all be revealed as a fraud.
Good luck, Hans.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
Even after the conviction, given the circumstantial case some doubts remained. This certainly removes all remaining doubts.
FINALLY
Does this whole situation affect your choice of file system? Personally, I would have to say so. This is a very sad story. There is something very morbid about using the work of a murderer.
It's unfortunate. A woman is dead, and the large majority of the tech community (myself included) has egg on their faces. We wanted to believe it wasn't true... well, the proof is in the pudding.
-Vendal Thornheart
There are two archetypes of nerds, which oddly parallel serial killer archetypes: disorganized and spontaneously creative vs organized and methodically calculating.
The M.O. he demonstrated in the crime indicates the disorganized type.
If he were the methodical type, his crime might not have even been noticed.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
queue?
I'm just saying that given enough people in a community, you'll certain amounts of people who lie, cheat, steal and even murder.
Statistically, given enough people in a community, you'll find certain amount of people who are nice, moral, and respectful of others. This could have easily gone the other way.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
No matter how much we argue or try to make "programming jokes" about this incident the truth is these kids' mother is dead, their father is going away for a long time and they are going to be the ones bearing one of the heaviest burdens in this particular case.
How very Christian of you.
Jeremy
He duped a minority, methinks.
There were lots of us who thought he probably did it: the "she ran away" excuse just never floated, and there was too much stupid circumstantial excuses (I don't care HOW much of a geek you are, doing BOTh the seat AND flooding the car AND saying you slept in the wet sopping car is just ridiculous)
Test your net with Netalyzr
With things like this coming out, it is going to be much, much harder to find a wonderful woman. Let alone getting 1000 points in an hour playing Team Fortress 2.
"The New Age. The New Beginning."
He did some odd things after the murder that didn't really help his case, and its now obvious why he did those things. The lesson isn't what you said, its this: don't murder your wife.
there is nothing more sad then the Truth
...then the Truth what?
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
-Matt
Oh, come off it ... there was no reasonable doubt. Doubt that isn't reasonable isn't sufficient to let him walk, and the *jury* - not the prosecutor - got it right.
Bottom lne: Hans tried to bullshit them, and they saw through it. If he had shut his moutn, maybe he would have walked, but he thought he could "put one over" on a bunch of "dumb jurors."
He forgot that jurors don't have to be smarter than the accused - in his case, all they needed was a baloney-meter.
You're an ass, nobody deserves that. I know you're a troll, but you're also sadly indicative of a lot of people's attitudes towards prison rape.
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
Fixed that for you. Being a decent person has very little to do with religion.
This will impact future development in a negative fashion. If there were others that could seriously continue development, then sure, I'll keep using it. And I'll keep watching Chris Benoit wrestling matches.
I hope you also don't wear anything with Cotton in it. I mean, unless you are pro-slavery of course. And I certainly hope you wouldn't drive a VW or other German car ... or are you pro-Nazi?
I can understand you being a bit emotional at the moment, but at some point you need to start to think reasonably. If you stopped using quality products because of the nature of some of those involved in their design and production, you'd probably be naked, and starving. The above was but a small sample of examples. Also, namesys is more than Hans Reiser, and throwing the baby out with the bath water is an expression for a reason.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I hope he gets his in prison.
As understandable as the sentiment is, that won't bring Nina Reiser back. I've lost a loved one to a drunk driver, and it isn't much comfort that the bastard went to prison. I hope his kids get a little bit of peace from the fact that at least they have a final answer on the matter, and that they'll be able to visit their mother's grave. This is just really sad; everybody involved loses.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
all the people from LA.
last time I saw that sort of hopeful thinking it was kobe and people saying he didnt cheat on his wife. And he did. We all love our heros, dont we?
Well, heros are usually only good at the one thing they are touted for... im not asking kobe to fix my car for sure.
With all the smart people around here, why would anyone think that a computer programmer is any less suceptible to violent acts than any other?
I mean, is it just because computer geeks are well known as the most well adjusted people on the planet? :)
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
The object of justice is the dispassionate meting of a society-prescribed punishment. Vengeance and revenge never enter the equation; justice and vengeance are never the same.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
He may have had knowledge of the murder, and use that to reduce the sentence.
I would be interested in your theories of how he could have had knowledge of the murder and not be guilty.
OK, here's a serious answer: his guilt or innocence does not, in any way, change the fact that he was convicted on scant evidence.
It's not the destination that matters, it's the journey. A broken system can send an innocent man to jail as easily as a guilty one.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Fixed that for you. Being a decent person has very little to do with religion.
But it has everything to do with not being a pompous asshole, and thus avoiding pompous asshole-like phrases such as "fixed that for you."
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
This case is all based on circumstantial evidence. I mean, first we're convicting people based on the books they read, and now on the bodies they can find! FREE PAUL REISER!!
Reduces the likelihood of appeals. They probably didn't want to risk have him walk out five years down the road because some loophole in the way evidence in the case was collected.
You're asking the wrong question.
The question to ask is whether Reiser should have been convicted. At the time, I thought it was more likely than not that he had done it, but I also thought there wasn't enough physical evidence to convict him beyond a reasonable doubt.
Of course, one can't know what exactly went through the jury's minds, so we should give them the benefit of the doubt. However, I do find it worrisome that several jurors basically said that they convicted him because they didn't like him.
Maybe he was angry with her because she was having an affair. He bought a gun out of anger, but didn't want to kill her. He goes home, to find her with her lover. In a struggle with the lover, the lover the lover wrests the gun from Hans. He's got the gun pointed at Hans, who reveals that his wife has in fact ANOTHER lover. In anger, the lover shoots Nina and flees. Hans has no idea who he was, and Nina dies sadly in his arms. The only way he can avoid blame for the murder (having just legally purchased the gun) is to bury Nina himself. In the end, Hans feels responsible for her death, having driven her away from him due to his obsession with work, and of course, the foolish decision to buy the guy. He sees only too late that he should forgiven her for such a minor human flaw, and if he had, then he would still be with her.
Umm, I kinda doubt that's going to happen, can you imagine the response to his participating in discussion threads on kernel.org?
For similar reasons, I kinda doubt he'll be returning to Slashdot. Or at least, not with his current login.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I don't want to sound like I'm defending murder here, but not I nor you nor anyone else know what Nina did to make him kill her.
Murder is illegal. That is a good thing. He got caught after killing someone, he pays the price. That is well and good.
But I don't think we should be saying things like "evil" and "I hope he dies of AIDS in jail" until you know the facts of the situation, and what she did to make him kill her. Sure, maybe it was nothing, and he's just a psychopath - but maybe it was years of abuse, in which case I have quite a lot of difficulty blaming him completely.
I've seen marriages so sick and dysfunctional I almost wish one of the parties would kill the other. Everyone's life would get better if one of them just did it. Some people lead such sick, disgraceful lives that I have little guilt in thinking the world would be better of without them in it.
Killing someone because you want their money, or you don't like the colour of their skin, is a crime against humanity itself and anyone who does that's life is forfeit, in my opinion. But killing someone after they inflict years of mental abuse? The matter is far less black and white. Illegal, yes. Wrong, too .. maybe. Certainly not optimal. But evil?
Some people have it coming. I'm not saying one way or the other here, OK. I don't know Mr Reiser, nor have I any emotional investment one way or the other. I just don't believe murder is always the heinous evil crime some might think. Sometimes, it's the wheel of karma turning. Sometimes, it's a public service.
Of course, we don't know, and will likely never know, what caused the murder. But have we all decided anyway?
Maybe Reiser is a sick psychopathic fuck who kills for kicks. Maybe Nina had it coming. Who knows? Not you or I. So let's lay off the fire and brimstone, what do you say?
"We'll become monsters too" is not at all based on Christian morality, although it doesn't contradict it either. It's entirely orthogonal (I'm an atheist).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice
Apparently you are a hardcore retributivist. I'm closest to a utilitarian by this scale.
Torturing him doesn't really help anything and is just an asshole manouevre. In my opinion, it's not that one becomes a monster by torturing another, it's that one already is a monster for wanting to torture.
I'm not happy for Hans Reiser's suffering. I'm happy to prevent him from causing any more suffering, and in all fairness, if somebody has to suffer it should be the one who forced the issue.
Are the quotes in your post put their in order to signify that those are exact words spoken by Reiser?
Or are those words simply representative of some supposition (yours or anothers...) about what Reiser may have been thinking?
If those words were spoken or written by Reiser, do you have the cites? If not, would you clarify that?
Just wondering. This has been an interesting case to follow, but I don't recall reading that he said those things, and would be interested in the facts, purely out of curiosity in the bizarre...
"...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can." ~ Mark Twain
Was Fabio on the cover of this book?
As part of the deal that was discussed, CBS News learned that Reiser's mandated sentence of 25 years to life sentence could be cut to 15 years to life. Such an agreement would entail a judge allowing Reiser's conviction to be reduced to second-degree murder.
Emphasis is mine. It's not guaranteed that he'll get a reduced sentence.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
I think the conviction (first degree murder, i.e. preplanned) is still ridiculous. The evidence for preplanning was very weak. Part of it was that Hans bought a book about murder investigations--but he bought it AFTER Nina's disappearance. You'd think someone planning a murder and wanting to foil an investigation would buy the book BEFORE doing the deed. Another part was that he removed his cell phone battery to avoid being tracked--again AFTER the disappearance. I've been neutral about Hans's possible innocence (60% of Wired Magazine readers in a survey thought he was innocent) but I always thought the premeditation charge was ridiculous. If it was preplanned there are a million less crazy ways he could have done it, such as hiring professionals from Russia or at least making better arrangements to get rid of the body far away. I've felt it more plausible that he lost self-control in the heat of an argument, found himself with a dead wife and a potential giant heap of trouble, and then, after the fact, decided (unsuccessfully) to try to outrun/outsmart the police. That would be second degree murder rather than first, if I remember my Perry Mason reruns.
If I were separated from my wife and bound by a restraining order, and she was having sex with her new lover IN MY HOUSE, I would probably kill her, too.
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." - Bob Dylan
After being out-of-order in court, he spilled the encryptic details about where his wife was stored and from there on, the jury knew he was corrupted. Strangely enough, due to his cooperation, officials didn't even have to raid his home...
You know what though...? inode he was a criminal all along.
There, I'm glad to have gotten that out of my system.
Fact: Everything I say is fiction.
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.
No, part of his punishment should be being forced to maintain a file system that he feels is inferior.
What's interesting is comparing the comments in this thread with pre-body, both pre and post conviction. The vast majority here felt that the murderer Reiser was being "railroaded" and there was reasonable explanations for everything and that it was perfectly believable that his wife had fled to Russia, and so on... Now it seems the majority have always thought he was guilty as Hell? Good grief!
Also, I keep hearing he made a deal for 15 years? Not so. It's 15 years to life . What this means is that MAYBE he gets out in 15, but he'll spend AT LEAST 15.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
The urge to divide everything into two -- black or white, friend or enemy, capitalism or communism, christian or heathen, disorganized or organized -- is a recognized mental oddity.
In most cases, there is not only a sliding scale (or shades of grey, if you like), but multiple axes.
That we so easily try place things in a two-bin system might be because it makes it easier for us to make decisions.
Hans Reiser is an odd man out in many ways, but can't be explained this easily. He's not just a disorganized person. He's a complex person. And if you'd ever talked to him, you'd know that in some things he is meticulously organized, while in others, not. Binning him like you did seems silly, but if it makes it easier for you to deal with, hey, whatever sinks your bathyscaphe.
Well crap, I meant intersection. I fail at discrete math. Note to self - don't kill ppl with plans based on set theory or discrete branching algorithms.
His actions in court made it pretty obvious what he thought of the jurors.
Try sitting as a juror on a murder trial - it's quite an experience, not at all like on TV.
The man believed he could con everyone. He forgot that even the most brilliant people make mistakes, as well as that his own perspective may be untrustworthy.
Of course, when you're so full of yourself as he was, it makes it easier to "justify" killing someone else, since they aren't as "worthy" as you are.
Some people have said he's disturbed. No - he's just a conceited scumbag who has no empathy for others, and let his ego get the better of him, a la OJ Simpson.
None of that justifies killing her. Only someone with an over-inflated ego would think otherwise.
Also, she had gone out and gotten herself a decent job to support herself and their children. Sounds like a responsible mother to most of us.
Plus in the end, his filesystem ends up a dead end because it's now unsupported.
Remember to enable soft updates before executing this plan.
Murder your wife and get a reduced sentence for showing authorities where the body of the dead mother of your children are?
15 years for murder?
This is insane. He should get life. Period.
I hope his children are kept safely away from him.
While there ARE certainly plausible ways that he could have been not guilty AND known where the body is, I would imagine that if he was innocent and knew where the body was that he would, oh, I don't know.... maybe.... CALL THE POLICE AS SOON AS HE KNEW WHERE THE BODY OF HIS DEAD WIFE WAS.
I mean, if it was me, I'd be trying to find all of the evidence to clear my name that I could - and if I hadn't done the killing, you better believe I'd be demanding the police go all CSI on her body and the crime scene before we even get to the point of me being arrested. The fact that he knew where the body was and kept quiet is an indicator to me of intent.
And while indicative of intent, it is not further proof of his guilt. At least it DOES bring closure to the family of the deceased.
--endcycle--
This AC is spot-on. I wouldn't go so far as say we need to raise money, but I do think Slashdotters should be aware that if they ever stumble across Hans and Nina's kids, they deserve a little extra consideration.
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
Why doesn't he deserve that?
Gandhi? "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind"? We are not barbarians.
The punishment is the prison time, not rape, let along the long, drawn-out suffering that is an AIDS death. Yes he's a terrible person for having killed his wife, yes he should be punished and no the 15 years he's getting probably isn't enough for someone who can kill their wife and then calculatingly lie to the police and a jury about it for so long. That doesn't mean he deserves to be raped. At the very least it's mob justice, and the reason we have courts to hand out punishment instead.
The sick individuals gloating at the idea of anyone being raped are no better than the people they wish it upon.
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
Don't be so hard on the man, until you yourself go through a bitter divorce! Believe me, he already got his...which is why he probably did it.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
From the article, the location where he dumped Nina must be approximately here:
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=37.833531,-122.182109
~Ben
If I were separated from my wife and bound by a restraining order, and she was having sex with her new lover IN MY HOUSE, I would probably kill her, too.
And if you admitted as much to the cops, and testified to such in court, the district attorney would likely seek no more than manslaughter.
Crimes committed in the heat of passion, when the murderer is truthful with the police and penitent, aren't always prosecuted as a capital crime. To do so costs the state much more.
Hans Reiser insisted on lying about every aspect of the disappearance of Nina Reiser from the moment he was questioned by police. The DA had no choice but to prosecute it as a murder case - and given the facts in evidence, he was convicted because he made a lot of stupid mistakes - typical for someone who commits a crime of passion and then thinks they can cover it up because they're so much smarter than the 'average bear'.
If Reiser had even pled guilty and recanted his story after lying to the police and being arraigned for murder, he might have gotten off with a much lighter sentence for murder. But he waited until the sentencing phase, after he'd lied to the court.
No, Hans was so much smarter than everyone else. Now he's going to go to prison for 15-to-life - and lying to the court as Reiser did means his parole hearings aren't going to go well for him, if he even survives 15 years in prison.
Yes, I remember it well... particularly when he jumped up and shouted:
"It's chowdah! CHOWDAH!! Say it RIGHT!!!"
"I'll kill you-- I'll kill all of you, especially those of you in the jury!!!"
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
Only on fucking slashdot does the one guy who offers a rational opinion NOT get modded up. So far the first page of comments is mostly jokes and inane - "I'd murder the bitch too" remarks - all getting modded up.
Assholes, this is a real person with a real family, not some fucking Manga or Anime or video game.
This doesn't prove he's guilty. He may have had knowledge of the murder, and use that to reduce the sentence. I still have faith that the real story will come out.
He is the O .J. Simpson of nerds. We can't believe he's guilty because he's one of us.
The M.O. he demonstrated in the crime indicates the disorganized type.
You want to delve into psychopath vs. sociopath types here. Psychopaths are the calculating, detail oriented types (who usually get away with crimes), and their goal is to end up in a position of authority (aim to become Judges/Surgeons or Militarymen etc. where they can decide fate of others). Sociopaths on the other hand plan less meticulously, more prone to jumping from one crime to another, like say a psychopath with ADD.
I'm not a Christian. I don't believe in forgiveness nor do I believe in rebirth. But I do believe in revenge.
Can you give one reason outside of Christian morality that this man shouldn't be tortured? Please note that the "he might be innocent" excuse just walked out of the door. And don't use the "we'll become monsters too" excuse because it is based on Christian morality (because there is nothing special about humanity).
The concept of justice requires him to be tortured and executed.
I'm an atheist, but I can give you some excellent reasons.
You will debase the people who carry out the punishment. It's lovely that *you* want someone tortured and executed. What about the person who has to carry out that act? What happens to them, year after year as they carry out revenge killings to make people like you happy?
You know what happens to them. They go insane and are themselves tortured. You commit a further crime by making someone torture another person. Do you know what most societies do to those who order the torturing?
Another excellent reason is that making this person suffer isn't impartial justice, it's emotional retribution. It has nothing to do with *why* we have a legal system. In fact, the legal system is partly created to stop this sort of thing happening. We don't want revenge killings and mob justice. We want fairness and impartiality in punishment. And why is that?
Well, sometimes the courts get it wrong. It happened a lot before blood typing and DNA evidence, and still happens today.
How do you recompense someone you tortured and killed when you made a mistake, or when people in the system manipulate evidence to ensure a guilty verdict?
In your retributive world, you'd have to torture and kill members of the bar, the police, the DA and maybe even the jury.
No, I'll stick with a world where there's an impartial, rational legal system, thanks very much. You can keep your torture fantasies to yourself.
I have no idea why you were marked Troll. In Italy, this is called "a crime of passion", and permitted in certain circumstances (not that I condone it).
No, dude, it didn't. He didn't need to explain his behavior. The only reason why his testimony was the final nail in his coffin is because the jury care more about how eloquent he is compared to the DA or his lawyer or the judge. That's wrong. That shouldn't be an issue. It's just like if he was convicted because he was black or because he had a nose ring. The evidence is all that should matter and he should have walked free simply because the police should not have arrested him until they had found the body or even some good evidence - "suspicious behavior" should not be enough. The justice system dodged a bullet here.
How we know is more important than what we know.
What I really don't understand is he gets to hold her location out like a trophy and then his reward is a better sentence? He did the time, he was convicted, who gives a rats ass if he lead them to the body (sentence wise). Were they afraid of an appeal? Or is just giving the closure to the family somehow outweighing him being in jail longer?
Nina got in the way of Hans' incredibly HUGE ego. It's that simple, very little "pop" psychology needed.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
He is the O .J. Simpson of nerds. We can't believe he's guilty because he's one of us.
"IF I did not do it", a replay
Ohyes oh yes oh yes oh yes
They both reached for the gun!
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Or worse, we don't care if he's guilty because he's one of us.
I'm all for innocent-until-proven, believe me - but he's been PROVEN guilty at this point. Clinging to an idea of his innocence is a weird sort of cognitive dissonance I can't get behind.
--endcycle--
The urge to divide everything into two -- black or white, friend or enemy, capitalism or communism, christian or heathen, disorganized or organized -- is a recognized mental oddity.
In most cases, there is not only a sliding scale (or shades of grey, if you like), but multiple axes.
So there are people who divide everything into two, and those who do not?
Isn't the manslaughter vs. murder decision usually given to the jury?
Instead of that, try making ReiserFS NOT a total piece of crap. It sucked, and it always has. Reiser was a huge abusive turd, and so are his fans.
Now THAT's how to start a flamewar. Amateur.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Only if that's how the prosecutor decides to handle it, usually because they aren't confident that they have convinced the jury of premeditation, for example. Then they get the judge to instruct the jury that they may find the defendant guilty of the lesser charge if they think it is applicable, but the stronger charge is not.
The prosecutor can also decide to only attempt to prove manslaughter, whether as part of a plea bargain or for any other reason.
Random and weird software I've written.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/44/PatBenatar-CrimesOfPassion.jpg/200px-PatBenatar-CrimesOfPassion.jpg
Crimes of Passion? Hell yeah I'll permit it.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
(by the way, I am a divorcee. Just for the record.)
I have never understood, and as time goes by, I become aware of how alien the mind of a murderer is to me. I am almost 40 and have seen and experienced many things in my life. I still don't get how can someone cross that red line - and take someone's life.
But apparently, I am a minority. You, for instance, seem to be able to cross that line? Or maybe you were just very cavalier in your wording?
Anyhow, the mind of a murderer is something I can not understand. I can get angry, sure, but to resort to violence, or worse, to have someone's life on my conscience, that's just unfathomable for me.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
In most cases, there is not only a sliding scale (or shades of grey, if you like), but multiple axes.
He used axes? I thought he shot her.
I think that for the cases where the Innocence Project gets involved, the problem is not the existence of circumstantial evidence, but that even then the evidence turns out to be highly lacking, highly suspicious, or both.
That said, the one time I had to show up for jury duty, I wasn't chosen, for saying something like that. After being asked if I felt comfortable handing out a guilty verdict in this particular criminal case, I said "I guess it depends on the evidence". This was my honest response and not a wisecrack. The judge was sort of annoyed and told me that in our state, jurors are instructed to weigh testimony equally with physical evidence. I said something about not being sure I could do that. I was not invited to sit on that jury.
There are only two types of people in the world: Those who see gray areas and those who only see black and white.
The punishment is the prison time, not rape, let along the long, drawn-out suffering that is an AIDS death. Yes he's a terrible person for having killed his wife, yes he should be punished and no the 15 years he's getting probably isn't enough for someone who can kill their wife and then calculatingly lie to the police and a jury about it for so long. That doesn't mean he deserves to be raped.
No one "deserves" to suffer at all as payback for committing a crime. Punishment for punishment's sake is barbaric and has no place in a civilized legal system.
That doesn't mean no one should be sentenced, of course. But the purpose of any sentence should be to prevent the criminal from reoffending (either by rehabilitating him or just by keeping him off the street), to make him compensate the victim (when possible, which it isn't in this case), and to provide a deterrent to other would-be criminals, not to take revenge on him for being a bad boy.
Now, it's true that the sentence has to be undesirable for it to work as an effective deterrent, but really, prison is undesirable enough on its own. You don't need to throw in the threat of prison rape or violence; the thought of being locked up for a few decades is enough to deter any rational person, and an irrational one won't be deterred by anything.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Hans has a black belt in judo, he'll survive better than another nerd might.
IOW: Occam, meet razor.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
"Don't be so hard on the man, until you yourself go through a bitter divorce!"
Yeah, because bitter divorces overwhelmingly lead to murder.
Wait...they don't? The vast majority of people involved in bitter divorces simply go on with their lives with some varying degree of contact with their ex spouse? That's impossible! That would mean that Hans Reiser is simply a murderer! That just can't be!
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Hold the innocent with standards longer than the guilty with nothing other than wanting to save their own ass.
No, the idea is that the innocent are acquitted at trial, and are not held at all. The moment the judge reads the guilty verdict, the system switches from a presumption of innocence to a presumption of guilt. The penal system is concerned only with your punishment and correction. It has to be this way: if we treated every prisoner as a possible innocent, we'd have to let 'em all go free, or give them an endless series of new trials on demand. Unlike the *court* system, the *penal* system must proceed from a presumption of guilt, or it's useless. Useless as a deterrent, useless as rehabilitation, useless as incarceration.
Of course, there *are* innocent people in jail. But your problem is not with the penal system, it's with a trial system that occasionally imprisons innocents. No doubt that's a problem, but you're shooting at the wrong target.
This doesn't prove he's guilty. He may have had knowledge of the murder, and use that to reduce the sentence. I still have faith that the real story will come out.
Yeah, because the "I didn't do it but I know where the body is buried" argument will look so good on appeal.
I will refrain from calling you "Jackass" on the basis that you are taking the piss.
I hope he is brutalized in prison. Brutalized and savaged.
Why kill her? Why not just join them. :)
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
There are two kinds of people:
All those that make generalisations ought to be shot.
Leela: "Is all the work done by children?" Alien: "No, not the whipping."
In a US Criminal court the answer would be: Rarely. Like maybe if the judge and defense attorney were both asleep kind of Rarely.
A jury given the choice between a greater charge and a lesser charge will almost always convict on the lesser charge. Both when conviction on the greater charge may be more appropriate AND when returning a not guilty verdict may be more appropriate. To the point where a DA with a weak case would LOVE to be able to give the jury a 'middle ground' to compromise on. This is clearly prejudicial to the cause of justice.
Not to say it doesn't happen but usually a lesser charge will be dismissed in pretrial motions.
No, Hans was so much smarter than everyone else. Now he's going to go to prison for 15-to-life - and lying to the court as Reiser did means his parole hearings aren't going to go well for him, if he even survives 15 years in prison.
So sad. I wonder if they'll make him serve his time in the superblock?
"jurors are instructed to weigh testimony equally with physical evidence"
Equally? Wow. I don't trust most people to remember things right - there are so many people out there where when they don't know stuff their brain makes things up AND they don't know they are making things up. They actually believe what they are saying is true. I know so many people who are unreliable that way (they may be reliable and competent in other ways).
To me testimony has very very low weight unless backed by physical evidence. Or backed by evidence that the person testifying is likely to be telling truth - the sort of person with good memory, pays attention to detail, has integrity and an obsession for telling the truth (e.g. if they murdered somebody and were asked if they did, they'd rather admit to it than tell a lie).
I've had enough evidence over the years that most people's brains and consciences don't work well enough for me to risk some accused person's life on their "testimony".
Physical evidence in itself often isn't good enough to know what happened - it depends on what the evidence is.
Basically if a video recording shows A shooting B, and witnesses who aren't aware of what the video camera said (and thus aren't biased) are also sure that A shot B. Then I'll believe A shot B. But whether A shot B _first_ (which would be interesting for a "self defense" excuse), that could be hard to tell just from witnesses (forensics could help - if the B's gun was not fired recently, then A shot B first).
You might be wanting the "Post Anonymously" button there, dude...
>>I'm all for innocent-until-proven, believe me - but he's been PROVEN guilty at this point. Clinging to an idea of his innocence is a weird sort of cognitive dissonance I can't get behind.
Yeah, in the previous Slashdot articles on this case, it was bizarre watching people defend him simply because he wrote a filesystem that some of us use. You're right, it is cognitive dissonance, as the human brain has trouble putting a person in two different boxes for Good and Bad.
Of course, now that he's admittedly guilty, a different mental mechanism will come into play, and half his defenders will post on here that they thought he was guilty all along, and what's weirder, they will actually believe it. Dunno what that phenomena is called - maybe it could be called a false memory.
Hans has a black belt in judo, he'll survive better than another nerd might.
I'm sure a black belt in judo is the surest way to a gang raping in prison. Come on, it's judo. We're talking about prison.
Note: I have not been keeping up on the Hans Reiser case, nor have I read the attached articles nor comments.
So, this kind of brings up a question on how the FLOSS community will handle things in a different situation.
Let's say Hans gets out in 7 years (Good behavior and all that), and returns to write code, and begins working on Reiser FS version 5. His code is tight, the file system performs fantastically, self heals, does not fragment files, washes the dishes, cleans the clothes, makes coffee... but it's code from a known felon.
The question is, can the FLOSS community recognize good code from a person who has done bad things? Or will his previous actions dictate what we think of him and any product he creates?
I hope we can accept the good with the bad. Some people probably will hate Hans forever, and will never accept anything which has his code (let alone anything with his name on it). Others will not care, and will use the code if it fits their needs.
We shall see.
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.
There were some posts that contained it outright, others that you could see it in the subtext. It is something not surprising since there are an above normal amount of people here who have trouble dealing with women. It leads some of those people to dislike and distrust women. They believe Hans simply because they find it more likely that a woman would screw over a man than vice versa. Now combine that with the OSS hero status and you really have a situation that blinds them to the facts.
I think you'd find that had the situation been reversed (Nina killing Hans) that there would have been no doubt in their minds she was guilty, in no small part because of her gender.
A lot of people probably wanted Hans to be innocent because he's part of the "tribe", but if you look back, the evidence against him was a bit shakyâ"mostly circumstantial, plus the testimony of a nutcase who said he murdered eight other people. And let's not forget the procession of other men Nina had been in contact with, any one of whom could have been an internet stalker.
He was found guilty anyway, and now he's come clean, so I guess it was the right verdict. But that doesn't mean everyone who thought he was innocent in the past was experiencing cognitive dissonance, only that they weren't on the jury.
"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.
That's pretty much it. I don't care if he killed her. What matters is, will the development of reiserfs continue?
Call me egoistic, but whether his wife is alive or dead, murdered by him or someone else, has no influence on my life. Whether reiserfs is an option as a filesystem, does.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Part of it is the feeling that someone with asperger's may not be treated fairly by the court system. Something that seems rational to an aspergers sufferer, such as buying a book on police investigations when you're under police investigation, makes you look guilty.
In this case Hans is guilty - but up until now, I wasn't *certain* he hadn't been railroaded by a justice system ill suited to dealing with those who think differently to the majority.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
We can't believe he's guilty because he's one of us.
No he's not one of us, he had a wife. Hand in your geek card on the way out.
(sigh) When will people learn? You should NEVER mount something you don't trust anymore. It can really mess up your whole system.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If the glove isn't 64-bit, you must acquit.
I can beleive he would still use it.
I am trolling
The court awarded $480000 in punitive damages. Not millions.
This was to a company that served coffee at a dangerously high temperature. Coffee should be hot, but not so hot that it causes third degree burns. Damages were reduced because it was her fault she spilled it. So in fact, she was charged $40000 for her clumsiness.
Are you kidding right? There's no such thing as "permitted" homicide. A passional crime here in italy is prosecuted as any other crime and the law provides with some means to take the circumstances into consideration but that's it. Please don't spread misinformed idiocy.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
I mean he killed a human being. I mean the guy could be out of jail in less than 15 years if he gets paroled. His wife's never coming back. The irony of this whole thing is that by proving without a shadow of a doubt that he murdered her, he will get his punishment reduced.
If he had first-hand knowledge of the murder, and didn't report it, he's subject to accomplice charges. In some jurisdictions, being accomplice to a murder, or even near the scene, can get you charged with murder.
Case-in-point, Texas has one of the strictest accomplice laws on the books, known as the "law of parties." Kenneth Foster was charged with murder one and given the death sentence for unknowingly (according to his testimony) driving a man to a soon-to-become murder scene. The governor of Texas intervened and commutted his sentence to life in prison. Ridiculous case, if you ask me.
O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.
If his ego was worth a damn, it wouldn't have bought a wife from a russian agency.
I hope he is brutalized in prison. Brutalized and savaged.
I was with you up to this point.
There's this little part of the Constitution you are ignoring that forbids "cruel and unusual punishment". 15 to life in prison is not cruel and unusual punishment. Being brutalized and savaged is cruel and unusual punishment.
Why not just hand him to the mob to string him up and teach him a lesson?
Your comment makes me think that you (and whoever modded you insightful) are a bit of a sociopath who is willing to shred the Constitution and pull out that old canard, "think of the children!".
"Oh fuck off", indeed...
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
While there ARE certainly plausible ways that he could have been not guilty AND known where the body is, I would imagine that if he was innocent and knew where the body was that he would, oh, I don't know.... maybe.... CALL THE POLICE AS SOON AS HE KNEW WHERE THE BODY OF HIS DEAD WIFE WAS.
Because of course the police wouldn't think it's you, they're all very nice and rational people. They haven't the slightest desire of pinning murder cases on someone who might be innocent, I mean it's not like their job isn't about locking people away and making examples out of them.
This is pretty much a ridiculous conspiracy theory.
Reiser's attorney flat out denied that he had Aspberger's, and Reiser never once raised any sort of mental illness defense.
Furthermore, his speech skills were fine, he is actually very articulate. I find it hard to believe that he had any sort of autism-related mental illness.
The myth that every nerd who programs computers has some sort of "cool" mental defect really needs to die. A lot of you are just poorly socialized and stupid, that is all. Like Hans Reiser.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
This is pretty much a ridiculous conspiracy theory.
Maybe so, but your rebutall is completely illogical.
Reiser's attorney flat out denied that he had Aspberger's, Reiser never once raised any sort of mental illness defense.
Then why did he bring multiple witnesses to suggest otherwise?
Furthermore, his speech skills were fine, he is actually very articulate. I find it hard to believe that he had any sort of autism-related mental illness.
Shows what you know about Asperger's Syndrome. Being articulate does not rule you out. Those with Asperger's are often highly articulate when talking about their particular areas of focus.
The myth that every nerd who programs computers has some sort of "cool" mental defect really needs to die. A lot of you are just poorly socialized and stupid, that is all.
Way to exaggerate there pal.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I think it's funny that O.j Simpson. A man who without a doubt murdered not just one but TWO people.
Walked.
Because he was an athlete. Possibly also because of race issues. Because he was "charming" and did what his team of scum bag lawyers told him to do.
But a programmer, well we aren't athletes are we?
Hans murdered her, because he loved his kids and she was taking them away from him. She burned him in every way possible and he finally snapped. It wasn't right but it was something I can understand.
Welcome to the modern dilemma where all the raw male emotions required to fight for survival and hunt for food have to be caged and ignored in order to be processed by the system like a slab of beef. Guess what sometimes when you hound someone through the courts, fuck his best friend, and try to deny him access to his kids by moving them to russia you might find out that he can only take so much.
Having been made into weekend daddy/ATM myself I know where the guy was coming from. He just let it off the leash for a few minutes and then scrambled to try to avoid having the rest of his life ruined...
Some people are only alive because it would be illegal to kill them, and from what I saw of her actions Nina fit that bill.
All you do nothing hounds who never wrote a line of code, or did anything worth remembering in your entire life clamoring for him to be brutalized in prison, I spit on you. I have had family and friends in prison the shit that will be done to him, it would be kinder to kill him. Last time I checked the sentence was for a number of years not a number of brutal rapes and or infection with aids, hep C, or herpes. Try to familiarize yourself with what you so gleefully wish on another human being. http://www.spr.org/ the survivor stories would probably be a good place to start.
The man worked his ass off and gave away the fruits of his genius to the world, and because he gave it away he was broke when it came time for him to buy someone like Johnny Cochran ( I neither know nor care how that fucks name is spelled).
I for one will be sending him 10 or 20 bucks a month to his prison commissary, small things like that can really make a huge difference when you are behind bars. If you enjoyed using his file system, or if you ever found yourself in a bad situation you regret maybe you should too.
Or at least stop rushing in to point out black and white cats, they are all grey in the dark after all. If you have a problem with what I have to say, please reply.
ss0
Panel F, Relay #70
If you think, another human being is your personal property who has to bow to your will even after friendship or partnership has come to an end, I wouldn't want to be your friend or partner.
And if you then think, you are morally justified in killing them when they don't comply, I'm glad that capital punishment is still available.
"Follow my will or I'll kill you" is not something I would expect from civilized people under the rule of law.
I admit there may be some moral leeway concerning the constitutional rights of child molesters, dicators and mass murderers, but that's not the case here.
You are not talking about killing people with heavy guilt and a huge bodycount, but about killing humans for lawfully and consensually having sex. That is morally depraved, shameful and if carried out highly against the law. And no, that wouldn't be manslaughter but pre-meditated first degree murder. And they'll fry you for that.
Then why did he bring multiple witnesses to suggest otherwise?
Thanks for the correction. Yes, only after Reiser's testimony had totally backfired, they brought in some shrinks to suggest he "may have" aspergers, based on tangential evidence. If he clearly had a mental illness, why wasn't he directly evaluated, and why wasn't this brought up before hand? Hmmm.
Shows what you know about Asperger's Syndrome. Being articulate does not rule you out. Those with Asperger's are often highly articulate when talking about their particular areas of focus.
Did Reiser have a particular focus on wife murdering? Because he seems pretty bad at it to me.
He wasn't talking about his filesystem on the stand for weeks you know.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Free as in beer or free as in speech?
What a shame, the whole thing. Just awful, depressing, and demoralizing.
Innocent woman murdered, a bright (and fellow tribe member to boot - yes, I still consider him a fellow tribe member in spite of what he did) man's life down the drain, two kids with no parents . . .
I hope she rests in peace, I hope he gets help for his problems (and to anyone who wishes him worse still, YOU go and live in a fucking California State Penitentiary, specially as a white man . . . he will pay for his crime for sure - I hope he has it in him to fight like an animal) and I hope the kids are and remain in good hands.
How awful. It might happen everyday, but this one gets to me. At least, at least, he WAS guilty, thus he was not wrongly convicted owing to his being an arrogant, abrasive geek. No logic to my relief of course, but part of me feels relieved. The thought of him being innocent and spending the better part of the remainder of his life in the pen straight fucking haunted me.
Sigh.
SARAVA!
Well, you sound as though you are for real so I will reply. I can sympathize with nearly losing control when having to endure some sick cunt, but, let me tell you, some cunt's misbehavior does not justify strangling the fucking bitch.
Have you ever watched someone being murdered? Seeing someone alive one minute and dead the next, just laying there, just having pissed and shit on his/her self, all that, it's nothing nice man . . .
Trust me, a proper assbeating is much better for you and the mouthy bitch/asshole in question.
SARAVA!
There is no excuse for murder. Initially my take on this case was that maybe he did it, or maybe he didn't - we just don't know. And now I'm pissed I even gave Hans that much.
What dissapoints me about Hans Reiser is that he didn't do the right thing. He didn't confess and in an attempt to avoid taking responsibility he tried to get away with it. A remorseful, intelligent man would've realized that a life with a murder on your conscience i just as bad as prison, maybe even worse. It suggests to me that he didn't feel guilt for what he had done, and I think it's a testament of poor charachter. He only confessed when he had nothing more to loose.
To further your point - I appreciate humor, but when the reality of what happened to Nina sinks in jokes seems to be of very poor taste. Nina was strangled by the father of her children and then buried to rot in a 4x4 foot grave, nearly upside down. Conjure up an image of what she looked like when they dug her up after all those months and then crack a joke. What - not funny anymore? Assholes indeed.
I think you misunderstand something about the Right to Remain Silent. The warning from the police when you are arrested is "anything that you say can and will be used against you" not "anything you say may help exonerate you". It is NEVER helpful to talk to the police when you are a suspect, even if you are innocent. You can say things that are truthful when you are innocent and still make you look like a murderer. Always talk to a lawyer first. Always. No matter what your circumstances are.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Surely the time to decide to do the right thing would have been just before he murdered his wife, not during the aftermath, when clearly no amount of "right things" would rectify anything but the most comparatively trivial aspects of this situation.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
Maybe he was angry with her because she was having an affair. He bought a gun out of anger, but didn't want to kill her. He goes home, to find her with her lover. In a struggle with the lover, the lover the lover wrests the gun from Hans. He's got the gun pointed at Hans, who reveals that his wife has in fact ANOTHER lover. In anger, the lover shoots Nina and flees. Hans has no idea who he was, and Nina dies sadly in his arms. The only way he can avoid blame for the murder (having just legally purchased the gun) is to bury Nina himself. In the end, Hans feels responsible for her death, having driven her away from him due to his obsession with work, and of course, the foolish decision to buy the guy. He sees only too late that he should forgiven her for such a minor human flaw, and if he had, then he would still be with her.
You left out the part where he's tutoring a small-time crook in prison and that crook says he shared a cell with another con who claimed he murdered some computer geek's wife and now the geek is doing time for the murder. Hans would have started helping out the guards with their computer problems, then the warden gets him involved in a lucrative spamming operation that rakes in millions under the table. And after the warden has the tutored con killed, Hans plots his escape through a storm sewer, withdrawing all the profits from the bank and mailing a package to the papers implicating the warden in spam and murder.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
A perfect example of this is Martha Stewart. They decided that she never did anything wrong with regard to why she was being investigated, but that she wasn't truthful when she spoke to investigators. So she went to prison for lying to them. To me, that is insane. And the most important lesson was exactly what you say - don't ever talk to the cops without representation present, even if you didn't do a single thing wrong.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
We didn't get it because we don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Most likely because we aren't the kind of guys that go to musicals. You might have better luck in the Apple section.
Basically? Not perfect, perhaps, but essentially correct? And most of the people here, who weren't in the courtroom to see and hear it all, and weren't part of the deliberations got it wrong? I'm shocked.
"And if you then think, you are morally justified in killing them when they don't comply, I'm glad that capital punishment is still available."
Do you want to examine this statement for a circular hipocrisy?
Capital punishment is the acme of "being morally justified in killing someone when they don't comply".
Note: I am NOT saying I oppose capital punishment. Merely that this nose-in-the-air pseudo-moralization is WAAAY out of place.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Mod parent down - wrong.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/04/reiser-defense.html
"Hans and Nina met in 1998, in Russia, when he was overseas hiring programmers. He picked her out of a mail-order bride catalog, where she was advertised as "5279 Nina.""
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
Hm. I thought I had read that differently.
Actually, it seems to that both may be true:
> "No, that's not true," answered Sharanova, who had
> testified earlier Reiser and her daughter met when
> Nina went with a friend who was to meet Reiser at
> a cafe to act as a translator.
From: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4176/is_20080214/ai_n21416688
Unfortunately, I can't post and moderate ;-)
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
Don't forget that investigators will most likely lie to you, in an attempt to "trick" you into saying something to incriminate yourself. Its all ok for them them to lie to you, but you can't lie to them. Strange isn't that?
I'm going to assume you are a troll - but for anyone else who reads this thread, it is easy to make a mistake, especially when recounting events over a long period of time. It is easy to say things that can be taken in more than one way, and if one of those ways happens to imply violation of a law, it could cause real problems. My perspective is not garbage. An innocent person, through innocent conversation can end up going to prison when they have done nothing wrong. Our penal code is so complicated I would never speak to law enforcement about anything without someone handy who is well versed in law and on my side.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Not necessarily. If he's never used it in an actual fight, he'll be overconfident and at a disadvantage. Having studied the arts myself, I've met a lot of people over the years with black belts and other high "degrees" who've had their asses kicked in street fights. The stuff you learn in a dojo is well-controlled and don't necessarily apply in a real fight. That's why I chose a kung fu sufi who insisted on his students competing in local matches with other dojos before advancing them.
Which is more painful? Going to work or gouging your eye out with a spoon? Find out!
http://www.workorspoon.com
Parole boards virtually never grant parole to criminals who don't admit their guilt and show remorse. Trying to convince them that you were falsely convicted never works, so the absence of a body is no asset at all.
What it does do is eliminate the possibility of appeals (which was probably written into the plea agreement). But I've heard no reporting indicating that appeals were likely, either. Outside the tech community, this was a fairly standard murder, trial and conviction.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
I've always prefered 867-5309 Jenny Myself
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
There is and should be a big difference between what the peanut
gallery assumes and what actually goes down in a court of law.
"Everyone knows he did it" doesn't constitute proof.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
...he'll be overconfident and at a disadvantage.
Hans Reiser, overconfident? Nooooo.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
I've no plans to drop Reiser (still using v3 dern near everywhere) over something like this, but the serious question is this: What's going to happen to ReiserFS at this point? Would Hans have to turn over the copyright? Is there a precedent to be set here, take it out of his hands, whatever?
I use ReiserFS on a home machine, my wife's laptop, and a fileserver at work (with tail-packing ENABLED) and can't imagine doing without it. Anything comparable on the horizon?
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
I'm having a difficult time imagining a situation where I might have some helpful information, but revealing it might lead to me being charged with the crime.
It's not that hard to imagine. Usually, it happens when there is violence involved.
Heck, man, you're likely to get grilled if the cops think you're "too calm" in a situation involving violence. Happened to me while I was helping treat a gunshot wound.
No, I didn't do it. It was someone I cared about a great deal and it was self-inflicted, but the sheriff was bound and determined that he was going to try to pin it on me because solving an attempted murder or attempted homicide would look better than a suicide attempt. Thankfully, the state troopers there (who were first on scene) had my back. The very first one there looked like he was about ready to beat the living daylights out of the sheriff because he saw what I was going through.
Hell, I guess the cop at the hospital where they took her even tried to get her to say that I did it.
Never underestimate the lengths some cops will go to in order to get a "suspect".
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
Hmm... I see your point, but you're being a little harsh on people in general, I think.
I grew up in a little town in the North West of the UK called Hyde. This town is known for being where the UK's most prolific serial killer on record went about his business; Dr. Harold Shipman. I remember how people in Hyde reacted when the story broke, and how this changed as it developed.
In some ways, the parallels with this case are strong. Sure, there are differences - while he committed suicide before he could be tried for more than a handful of them, the best estimates (from medical and judicial professionals, not the gutter press) are that Shipman killed hundreds (I've seen numbers from 200-400 throughout his career quoted), while Reiser just killed one. However, I think the similarities outweigh that.
Both were highly respected within their respective communities. Both were, in some ways, slightly odd, but certainly not to the extent you'd consider them dangerous. Both, thought themselves smart enough to talk their way out of any situation, including a well-evidenced murder rap. Both, ultimately, found out that they weren't.
Shipman was always popular around Hyde, particularly with his elderly patients (who formed the bulk of his victims). I did some summer work, before the story broke, at another General Practice in the area while I was a student and there was always a steady drip-drip-drip of patients leaving the books of the practice where I worked to move over to Shipman's. He was renowned for a good bed-side manner and his patients liked the fact that his surgery was a one-man-band; they could be sure that they'd always see the same doctor when they needed to, whereas at a larger practice, they might end up seeing somebody they didn't know so well.
The first public rumblings came when it was revealed that a non-local woman had complained to the police, after she'd been cut out of her recently and suddenly deceased (Hyde resident) mother's will in favour of Shipman. The reaction of both the local press (albeit by inference) and public was pretty much unanimous. "The mother was very old and had just died of natural causes - she hadn't been fantastically well for some time, after all. She'd been living on her own in Hyde for years, not seeing much of her daughter. It perhaps wasn't surprising that she'd decided to leave her money to her well-liked GP, who she would have seen a lot of in her later years, rather than to a daughter who she felt had abandoned her. The accusations were just a spiteful attempt to get the will overturned."
This lasted several months. However, as time went on, it became clear that the police were actually taking this very, very seriously. More and more bodies were exhumed. There was talk of strong evidence that the will in question was a clumsy forgery. More and more local residents came forward to say "Actually, my Mum died quite suddenly, now that I think about it, and the last person she saw was Shipman". Then it came out that a GP at another local practice had actually informed the police of her concerns about the number of deaths among Shipman's patients over a year earlier and had been ignored. By the time the trial started, there were few in Hyde who believed that Shipman was innocent.
Can you blame people for this? Not really. The man was, to use a rather hackneyed but nevertheless fitting phrase, a pillar of the community. People base their beliefs on the evidence they have available to them and in the early days this was very thin. The narrative of the spiteful attempt to overturn the will fit with the general public mood quite well, and understandably so - there was growing concern at the time throughout the country (and there still is today), that litigation was making it impossible for medical practitioners to do their jobs safely. When the available evidence changed, people's views changed. At a guess, I'd say an overwhelming majority of the locals went through this path, self included.
There were, it is true, a tiny minority who did
but I'm not sure how your story is relevant.
2 things - I was there (actually, I was rushing up the hill in question because I had a bad feeling) when it happened so I had the information in question and it's an example of the lengths cops will go to in order to stretch the truth in order to "get the suspect" (make their career).
I can't see how your providing information to this sheriff would have led to your being charged with this crime.
You have obviously not dealt extensively with police. More than a few of them will take "I gave information" to mean "I did it because I know what happened".
Do you really think the DA would have filed charges against you?
In that county? Hell yes.
What did the victim say about "whodunit"?
I don't know how to break this to you, but the cops kept trying to get her to say that I did it even after she told them what happened. This is while she had a bleeding gunshot wound. She actually ended up spitting on the cop that was trying to get her to say I did it. (According to her, that was a mistake, because it really hurt. With a hole in your chest, I'd believe it)
Why would the assailant call 911? Whose prints were on the gun? Did the victim have a history of diagnosed mental illness? What was your relationship to the victim? Did you have motive to murder her?
In order: I had to flag down a car because I didn't have a phone at the time (long story), but an assailant would call 911 in an attempt to make it look like they didn't do it or because they panicked and had second thoughts (it happens). Both of our prints would have been on the gun. Yes, but the police don't care (especially not there. trust me). We were engaged. No.
I still can't imagine what truthful information you could have given that sheriff that would have led to the DA filing attempted-murder charges against you.
The fact that I knew the gun used, knew where it happened, and was "too calm". You don't seem to get that not all police officers are straight as an arrow (and that sheriff, well, isn't).
So that is my question for you. Would you have been considered any more or less of a suspect if you invoked your right to remain silent and your right to counsel?
Actually, this part of the discussion was about how being free with information (whether or not you are a suspect at the time) can lead to you being turned into a suspect and/or being charged with the crime, and I'm telling you that it can, has, and does happen.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
Ya gotta wonder about the people who thought he was innocent.
What's to wonder? Lacking the whole story as told in the courtroom, they merely thought that there was not enough evidence to conclude that Hans was guilty.
Absent the body, absent any known murder weapon, and with the victim being a foreign national holding dual citizenship and with plausible motive to flee the country and frame Hans for murder, that's not an unreasonable conclusion. It may not have been the conclusion you came to, but different people have different ideas about how much evidence you need to convict a man of murder.
Now, of course, after a guilty verdict, a confession, and with the body right in front of us, it's pretty stupid for anyone to continue to maintain his innocence. I know I'm convinced. But before all this? "Beyond reasonable doubt" depends entirely on how you define "reasonable."
I never have frustrations, the reason is, to wit:
If at first I don't succeed, I quit!
Oh well, this is sad on so many fronts, and now the "justice" system will feel more empowered to convict on flimsy evidence, which will result in more harm to innocents.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
This is not an extreme crime. Killing 50 hookers over a span of 10 years is an extreme crime. Shooting people randomly with a sniper rifle is also pretty extreme.
Killing your ex-wife in rage during an argument when she's also had an affair and embezzled from you is not that extreme. It, in fact, is sadly all too common a scenario (though the having an affair and embezzling bits are details that change from case to case). It is definitely criminal, and definitely deserves punishment. But reacting as if it's the most horrible thing in the world isn't particularly realistic.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Although we're all innocent until proven guilty, for those of us without access to all of the facts it certainly seems damning. He was already convicted of this crime, and now *on top* of that conviction, he is the only person who has been identified as knowing where the body is. I'd say that's pretty compelling.
*sigh* I'm aware that there are two separate issues theres.
First, I were to be raped... in order to protect "the people"* I'm forcefully married to him, and him to me.
Second, since he used a condom during the rape, that means that he is guilty of a crime, and is either punished, or put in jail for it.
They wouldn't have really cared that the woman was now married to a convict.. I mean, it's his property, and he's a doofus for having done something to acquire the property that ended up being illegal.
* Note that "the people" here, means "the patriarchal system." If a woman is raped, it's like dropping a glass at a department store, "Hey! You broke it, you buy it!" In the Old Testament, the law was to ensure that a father got a dowry for his daughter, who was now undesirable to anyone else. If she was married, then crap, if she has a kid, whose is it? No way to tell, and so a man might be raising a kid that isn't his... best to just kill her, and then you don't have to deal with potentially bastard children. Modern rape is a violent crime assaulting another recognized person... in old times, it was a non-violent crime of property damage.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
Modern rape is a violent crime assaulting another recognized person... in old times, it was a non-violent crime of property damage.
Rape and promiscuity are two different things. The difference is that one act goes against the consent of an individual while the other is mutual.
Regardless of time periods in human history, rape is often emotionally and/or physically disturbing to the victim.
Of course the emotional harm done to a woman in old and modern times was the same. The difference is, in olden times that didn't legally matter. While rape was a devastating thing to happen to a woman in olden days, just as it is today (I wish I didn't personally know how devastating) the patriarchal society didn't give a s* because it was against a woman.
In much the same way, Nazis justified their death camps because Jews, Retards, and Gypsies were all defined as "sub-human", and thus not afforded the same rights or respect given to another German, and before Americans try to get all high on the horse, that was the exact reason justifying slavery in the United States.
Killing someone's slave in the United States was not a murder, it was property destruction... Nazi concentration camps weren't murderous, because it was vermin control.
It is naturally up to philosophical debate, as to whether these acts were fundamentally any more immoral than destroying someone's chair, (or in fact, killing their dog), or destroying cockroaches and rats that have infested a house... You're free to hold your own beliefs upon which way it was, but I'm talking about legal fact, and attested history... not morality.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS