Hans Reiser Gets Sentence of 15-To-Life

mallumax writes "Hans Reiser was today handed a prison sentence of 15-to-life for murdering his wife. Earlier this year, he pleaded guilty and led police to his wife's body. His jury trial concluded in April with Reiser's first-degree murder conviction. That carries a 25-to-life term, but the authorities, in a backroom deal, later offered him 15-to-life if he produced his wife's body and waived any rights to appeal his conviction." Several other readers contributed coverage at SFGate.

Comments

Linux is for Murderers

[Fanboy Fantasies]

fucking hippies

My experince with the law

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not trying to defend my actions; but I honestly don't feel I was in the wrong here. After my mother posted bail ($35,000!) I have a few months before any more tough shit happens, and my public defender said I can talk about it as long as I change the names.

Anywho, I was driving down 495 to Providence when an Asian-American Woman driver cut me off. Now, I'm not racist, but my blood did boil a tad when I saw exactly what kind of person it was. Like fulfilling a stereotype that is obviously wrong, but I was angry that they fulfilled the stereotype. I wasn't seeing red or anything but I was deffinitely not happy.

I blame my father. He taught me the code of Massachusetts drivers: 1. Defend your honor. This means tailing those flip you off, act like an asshole, etc. 2. Drive fast. This is vital and ensures you get to your location quick. 3. NEVER let someone cut you off.

Naturally the way I was raised had an immediate affect on this greivous error by the Asian-American lady driver. I turned on Deffcon 3 and tailed them in the standard way; aka getting right on their ass and flashing my brights on-off for 30 or 45 seconds. This is where things go wrong.

The car SLAMMED ON IT'S BRAKES. I am not kidding. I swerved to the right and just barely avoided contact. The driver then sped off and THREW A COFFEE CUP OUT THE WINDOW. It didn't come near my car but I know the intent, and I'm pretty sure it will aid in my upcoming defense trial.

Anywho, I bring it up to Deffcon 5. I slam the gas and pass the woman, then cut her off. I then throw the car in neutral so I slow down without break lights, ensuring they have no warning. The lady hits the back of my car and her airbag deploys. Apparantly she broke both her wrists and fractured a rib, but her airbag naturally saved her life.

I keep driving because my car is fine and I was certain I did not have the obligation to stop. 10 or so miles later I'm pulled over by the Rhode Island state tropper and cuffed, and they tell me several other drivers witnessed the whole thing and I'm screwed. They take me to the station, mugshots, pictures, some bullshit reporter for some local daily even asked me a few questions and I basically told him to fuck off. They try to interrorgate me and I keep my mouth shut, even using that famous Goodfellas line and saying "what, you gonna bing bang boom me?" and moved my arms around, but they didn't laugh (lol). A few hours later my mom picks me up and says "you're moving with your aunti and uncle in bel air" I whistled for a cab and when it came near, the license plate said "fresh" and had dice in the mirror. If anything I could say that this cab was rare, but I thought now forget it, yo home to bel-air! I pulled up to a house about seven or eight, And I yelled to the cabby "yo home, smell ya later!". Looked at my kingdom I was finally there, to settle my throne as the prince of bel-air.

ffs cant we lock up the real criminals

[Anonymous Coward]

ffs cant we lock up the real criminals??

Who cares if he killed his wife

[vistahator]

He's still a hero in my book!

Re:Try to be objective, everybody.

[afabbro]

By my calculations, it ceases to be "reasonable doubt" and veers off into "complete mathematical certainty" when they use phrases like "Reiser's chilling confession," and "led authorities to [the body]".

I've always thought that if you allocute, we should electrocute...

(Spare me the stories of innocents released even though they confessed. My rule would also improve the gene pool. If you're dumb enough to confess to a murder...)

Re:He should have gotten the chair

[anagama]

Don't get too far into the "EVIL" game. Nina was no angel either.

Re:Try to be objective, everybody.

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

You don't understand how some of these people think. You don't understand that people here believe all laws are "pushed upon us by the evil establishment that's killing innocent children in vietnam". A system that is in essence a system created by one Jesus Christ oh so fucking long ago. A jury has declared they believe he's guilty. Great.

But a (fair) jury would declare half of slashdot readers guilty of copyright infringement (at least), which carries (apparently) penalties in the order of 500,000 $ or more. A penalty like that would destroy the life of anyone, and certainly of most slashdot readers.

So you'll have to forgive us for not finding all that much comfort in that "the judgement was by a fair jury". That's nice and all, but judgements that destroyed the lives of quite a few geeks were made by a jury.

So slashdot doesn't like even a fair trial, for we don't like the laws the trial is based on. We don't like the part about personal responsibility, and we hate, above all, that religion that "pushes that responsability upon us". We want the nanny state. We want medicare, to be followed, as soon as possible, by what I'd like to call "gadgetcare". We don't like your science, your economy, and your religion that states this will not fly, because if we look at the budget, it could fulfill my wildest dreams a thousandfold. And yes, there's probably more than thousand geeks, but I'm sure we can tax the rich more.

And this was murder, I grant you that's obviously true, a most heinous crime, with most profound consequences. But we've never been confronted by murder, we don't really know it's consequences. Agreeing that murder is bad is basically something we do in our imagination and "because it's polite". We don't really think it's that wrong. We've always been thorougly isolated from the effects of minute violence (at worst the insurance paid for it, or the teacher or police stepped in and protected us), from the effects of the strong violently supressing the weak (we've never been outside of a democratic system). The only experience we have with violence is having lunch money stolen, to have it immediately replaced by a teacher, and perhaps a few incidents on the sport field, resolved by "coach", who was paid by the government.

So violence or murder ? What I've seen in my life, violence is more than just tolerable. It's not even a nuisance. I could live with 10 times the violence that I see around me today. Easily. What do we care if there's violence. Clearly violence can't touch us. Laws on the other hand, I've seen those. They always get between me and what I want. They're limiting, choking even. And I don't like them. Furthermore, I mostly get away with violating most of them (such as parking rules, or taking, or garbage regulations, or speeding limits, or ...). So I really don't want violating the law, like Hans Reiser did, to carry any penalty at all.

Add to that that Hans Reiser was giving something to us. A filesystem that, granted, had it's problems (and it's fiascos), but nevertheless, it was free, and it was good.

And the loss of others ... oh well. What does the method, apparently including lying, killing and kidnapping, and more lying, matter to us ? We get stuff !

So we try to be objective, it's just that your confused about the facts we're objective about, and you proceed to force your faith, your justice (not ours) upon the rest of us. Here's the cold, dark reality :
-> we like the convicted. He made stuff for us, and yes he violated ethical principles that were "forced upon us by the establishment", and that we, let's be frank, dislike (a lot). Apparently in the course of satisfying his feelings. And we know we violate ethical principles that the establishment forces upon us for our personal gratification all the time. Especially the ethical compromise that is copyright law, but also stuff involving sex, abortion, sometimes even theft ... (We'd for example like some say in aborting a child in

she had it coming

[Anonymous Coward]

well, she did.

Re:Try to be objective, everybody.

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

And why of all should he be granted access to computers?

I'll correct that:

And why of all should he be granted access to breathe ?