While RightSaidFred99 and I are certainly having a vigorous discussion about this, I'm going to side with him on this one... You do NOT, ever, ever, ever, EVER -- repeat after me, EVER! -- prove innocence in a courtroom. You are found guilty or not guilty; liable or not liable, but you are NEVER found 'innocent'.
The closest thing a defendant would ever bother to argue to a standard of proof would be some mitigating circumstance (in the case of Hans Reiser and a murder trial, that circumstance might be provocation, which is reason to lower charges from murder to manslaughter). The burden of proof falls on the prosecution, who are charged with proving guilt. No one is ever (AFAIK) charged with proving innocence, since one of the founding tenets of the legal system is "innocent until proven guilty"; the charge is on those alleging guilt to prove guilt, and the verdict is rendered on whether or not the standard of guilt (or culpability) is met, hence "guilty" or "not guilty". Never "innocent".
Bless you for a thoughtful, documented reply. And agreed on the cost of lives ruined. I disagree with your normative argument that "Once murder is established, the burden *should be* on the defendent to prove it wasn't premeditated", emphasis mine... But perhaps we can agree that it may make sense that the DA's office is using the second degree plea bargain in order to recover the body due in part to their in ability to -- circumstantially or otherwise -- prove 'reflection and calculation' in the commission of the crime; to wit:
"While first-degree premeditated murder and second-degree murder with express malice both require a purpose to kill, an individual cannot properly be convicted of first-degree murder if the murder was purposeful, yet without reflection and calculation." (p. 12)
Moreover, the document notes that the only burden of proof the Defense has to offer in charges involving murder refers to 'the mitigating factor of provocation' which 'distinguishes murder from manslaughter' (p. 21). In other words, "premeditated murder includes both a purpose to kill as well as a preexisting reflection, second-degree murder with express malice only requires a purpose to kill. Thus, if the prosecution proves that the defendant purposefully killed, but does not prove premeditation,(93) the verdict should then be second-degree murder, not first-degree murder." (p. 11)
So the burden of proof for murder is not that high (I have not said it is), but the burden of proof for reflection and consideration indeed is on the shoulders of the prosecution, no? And that proof of reflection and consideration is the primary differentiation between second-degree and first-degree murder. So, again, did D.A. Hora truly demonstrate reflection and consideration prior to the crime, or did he simply demonstrate a flailing, brilliant, antisocial software developer turned murderer? Methinks actions *after* the fact (hosing down the driveway, removing batteries from the cell phone, cleaning the car, ditching the seat) are not actions of a planned, contemplated murderer, but one of someone flailing about and trying to escape the consequences as best they can, ex post facto.
"Hora never once came close to demonstrating, circumstantially or otherwise, that Hans Resier planned to murder his wife, much less that he killed her at all."
This is a poorly worded sentence, and I apologize. I meant to convey the point that "Hora never once came close to demonstrating, circumstantially or otherwise, that Hans Resier planned to murder his wife, much less THAN THAT he killed her at all."; in other words, that Hora did a reasonable job of circumstantially arguing Hans Reiser's responsibility for her death.
But that is NOT in any way to say that Hora did a reasonable job of circumstantially arguing Hans Resier's responsibility for the first degree murder of Nina, which has a number of additional requirements beyond 'caused someone to become not alive anymore' (i.e., 'killed'). I don't understand where the idea that first degree murder was the right conviction comes from, based on the evidence presented by D.A. Hora; that said, I do understand where the conviction for killing Nina comes from. This is not an argument based on the fact that Hans Reiser killed his wife; this is an argument based on the fact that the evidence wasn't presented in the courtroom to convict Resier of first degree murder, IMHO.
Actually, I've been quite willing to accept the circumstantial evidence as valid evidence that, in fact, Resier did commit the murder -- you'll notice I copped to that in the grandparent to this post.
What I have an incredible amount of disdain for is the fact that there wasn't any circumstantial evidence that pointed to premeditation, which is a mandatory part of first degree murder in the state of California. You seem to be on the bandwagon that not only did Resier ostensibly commit the murder -- a point which I haven't really refuted, yet you evidently think I have -- but that he must have premeditated it. I'd like to ask you, for all the bungling of this crime that he did, where is the circumstantial evidence that indicates he planned the killing of Nina? Please, enlighten me.
You say:
"consider all the evidence which does point to him murdering him and the...none that points to him not having mudered her"
But that doesn't constitute or imply premeditation.
You say:
"Seriously, what are the odds of all that stuff coming together with _no_ evidence that he _didn't_ kill her? We're talking lottery odds. And most criminal cases like this come down to odds, there's no camera and no witnesses."
But that doesn't constitute or imply premeditation.
And you say:
"You just have to take all the evidence and come up with a percent likelihood that he didn't do it. In this case, that percent was diminishingly small."
And I agree with you, the circumstantial evidence indicates that beyond a reasonable doubt he killed her. But it does not constitute or imply premeditation.
So I'll admit, I'm totally trolling for an "I am a lawyer and here is your ass on a platter" response, but I do not appreciate your misrepresentation of my skepticism of the verdict. My qualms with the outcome extend solely to the realm in which the DA did NOT do an adequate job of accounting for the statutory requirements for a first degree murder conviction.
To say it again completely, I believed all along Hans Resier killed his wife; I do not believe the evidence presented to the jury by the DA adequately accounted for the burden of proof that the murder of Nina Reiser was premeditated. My issue with the jury extends only to the degree of the crime, not the fact that he was found guilty of the crime. Sorry if that's too nuanced for you to grasp;)
This has been my single, begrudging damn point all along. *I* thought Reiser was guilty too, but despite following the court case closely (SFGate.com had liveblogging, basically), I felt D.A. Hora did a pretty miserable job of building a convincing case for *first degree murder* (of which Resier was convicted), which carries with it stipulations about things like premeditation. Hora never once came close to demonstrating, circumstantially or otherwise, that Hans Resier planned to murder his wife, much less that he killed her at all.
Despite luckily ending up with the right decision, justice was not served by this trial; contempt for a sad, aloof, kinda-crazy man was the only social mechanism that really had its day in the sun.
I should note that while it is creeping, it's also the strongest candidate for major quakeage based on many recent San Francisco doomesday predictions.
while the Haywood fault runs along the base of mountains east of the Bay area from Milpitas to north of Oakland
It's called the Hayward fault, and it experiences plenty of creep all along the East Bay. The last quake greater than 4 that happened on it was basically across the street from my apartment. Trust, it's moving, and generally nonviolently (though noticeably at times). In fact, it runs through the middle of Memorial Stadium in Berkeley, which is built in two halves that have crept about a foot and a half offset since the stadium's construction.
Sorry to hear about your bari uke. I started playing a bari uke about 15 years ago, and now I play the uke, and acoustic and electric guitar. But like my mom, whose ukulele I started with, I hold the old nylon 4-string in a particular sort of regard. Good luck to you and yours in the future.
The "average user" shouldn't be building or setting up an HTPC, but that doesn't stop them. Not saying your point is off about usability -- but seriously, you're talking about fairly advanced stuff there that is well beyond what the "average user" is doing. We'd be better off worrying about usability in installation and day-to-day normal desktop PC stuff. Email, word processing, web browsing. Probably burning a CD or two. Syncing music with an iPod.
Tuner card installation, mythtv setup and figuring out ridiculous lirc settings are not the problem (yet).
I'm highly suspect of a 44% sample of AP. I used the more rigorous definition of musical experience in brain imaging experiments and had about 15% true AP among them. Many of those claiming AP had good RP, and their EEG showed more memory than auditory activation, just as those claiming and having only RP. I'm also suspect of getting the same results from sinusoidal tones vs. piano tones. The latter has multiple overtones, providing multiple cues for the pitch. I used only sinusoidal for that reason.
This is genuinely not-snarky, but curious: has anyone compared, e.g., a piano to sinusoidal tones among a group of AP informants? What about a 'piano' using only single strings vs. double?
"There's no excuse for federal officials to sit there like idiots waiting for things to magically get fixed. Oh wait, I guess some of them ARE idiots."
Not to mention the fact that you have a self-fulfilling excuse there. Federal officials sit there like idiots waiting for things to magically get fixed, de facto, because they are federal officials.
I wholeheartedly agree with this, however you're overlooking the difficulty of getting "facts straight" in a situation where top-secret shadow courts get to retroactively authorize spy ops that they later proactively decide were illegal, and expect an administration that has severe difficulty coloring between the lines to obey such a ruling.
Lots of clauses there, I know, but trust: they're held together by snark.
I didn't make any claims as to whether or not it was the "right" approach. I think you bring up a lot of valid points that are worth investigation and discussion, so please don't take my response as being contrary to what you bring up. Indeed, the binary blob issue is one of great concern to the Linux community across the spectrum (cf. Nvidia's 3D drivers, etc.).
All I intended to point out was that people were talking about / intimating that Linux systems that can playback MP3 files are afoul of the law. My impression of the Fluendo deal is that Linux-based systems can use their Gstreamer CODEC to legitimately play back MP3 files as the system stands today.
AFAIK it never matters if the accused is "innocent". In civil cases, it only matters if they can be found liable. In criminal proceedings, it only matters if they are "guilty" or not. So this: "as in never having illegally downloaded copyrighted songs while in university" isn't actually the issue, but rather, it's whether or not the defendant can be found liable for infringement of copyrights which are held by the record labels RIAA represents.
If I'm off in this assessment, please offer corrections or elaborations as necessary:)
However, you'd want a lexicon including phonetic and textual transcription, and some probabilistic sound : phoneme mappings. And then maybe an ontology and a semantic parser would help. And...
Well, number one, I hate fucking Anaheim, but they did just win the Cup, so I question your "They don't belong in the league" assertion. That and they're in the second-largest media market in the country. Give them time.
Second, I live in the Bay Area, the 4th largest media market in the country. The Shark Tank (AKA HP Pavillion, the, I hate to admit it, most brilliant corporate name for a stadium ever) sells out consistently, and though it's not as large as lots of places... There's a bunch of us that love to go to the bar and yell at the TV and stuff, and people around here do generally seem to care. Certainly not on a Canadian level or whatever, but I think we 'get it'. It's not "built into our genetics" like basketball in Indiana (where I'm originally from) or hockey to our friends to the North, but still.
As well as everyone who dumped airline stock the day before, for example. And, of course, the neoconservatives (at least in the short-term) who were actively seeking a "modern-day Pearl Harbor" to enable the implementation of their ideology.
Slashdot Mirror
"But when you work up healthy self-righteousness, you feel like you're doing something constructive."
"You absolutely cannot conceive how little I care that irrational people might hate me. They are simply beneath my notice."
While RightSaidFred99 and I are certainly having a vigorous discussion about this, I'm going to side with him on this one... You do NOT, ever, ever, ever, EVER -- repeat after me, EVER! -- prove innocence in a courtroom. You are found guilty or not guilty; liable or not liable, but you are NEVER found 'innocent'.
The closest thing a defendant would ever bother to argue to a standard of proof would be some mitigating circumstance (in the case of Hans Reiser and a murder trial, that circumstance might be provocation, which is reason to lower charges from murder to manslaughter). The burden of proof falls on the prosecution, who are charged with proving guilt. No one is ever (AFAIK) charged with proving innocence, since one of the founding tenets of the legal system is "innocent until proven guilty"; the charge is on those alleging guilt to prove guilt, and the verdict is rendered on whether or not the standard of guilt (or culpability) is met, hence "guilty" or "not guilty". Never "innocent".
Bless you for a thoughtful, documented reply. And agreed on the cost of lives ruined. I disagree with your normative argument that "Once murder is established, the burden *should be* on the defendent to prove it wasn't premeditated", emphasis mine... But perhaps we can agree that it may make sense that the DA's office is using the second degree plea bargain in order to recover the body due in part to their in ability to -- circumstantially or otherwise -- prove 'reflection and calculation' in the commission of the crime; to wit:
"While first-degree premeditated murder and second-degree murder with express malice both require a purpose to kill, an individual cannot properly be convicted of first-degree murder if the murder was purposeful, yet without reflection and calculation." (p. 12)
Moreover, the document notes that the only burden of proof the Defense has to offer in charges involving murder refers to 'the mitigating factor of provocation' which 'distinguishes murder from manslaughter' (p. 21). In other words, "premeditated murder includes both a purpose to kill as well as a preexisting reflection, second-degree murder with express malice only requires a purpose to kill. Thus, if the prosecution proves that the defendant purposefully killed, but does not prove premeditation,(93) the verdict
should then be second-degree murder, not first-degree murder." (p. 11)
So the burden of proof for murder is not that high (I have not said it is), but the burden of proof for reflection and consideration indeed is on the shoulders of the prosecution, no? And that proof of reflection and consideration is the primary differentiation between second-degree and first-degree murder. So, again, did D.A. Hora truly demonstrate reflection and consideration prior to the crime, or did he simply demonstrate a flailing, brilliant, antisocial software developer turned murderer? Methinks actions *after* the fact (hosing down the driveway, removing batteries from the cell phone, cleaning the car, ditching the seat) are not actions of a planned, contemplated murderer, but one of someone flailing about and trying to escape the consequences as best they can, ex post facto.
While I'm on the clarification track:
"Hora never once came close to demonstrating, circumstantially or otherwise, that Hans Resier planned to murder his wife, much less that he killed her at all."
This is a poorly worded sentence, and I apologize. I meant to convey the point that "Hora never once came close to demonstrating, circumstantially or otherwise, that Hans Resier planned to murder his wife, much less THAN THAT he killed her at all."; in other words, that Hora did a reasonable job of circumstantially arguing Hans Reiser's responsibility for her death.
But that is NOT in any way to say that Hora did a reasonable job of circumstantially arguing Hans Resier's responsibility for the first degree murder of Nina, which has a number of additional requirements beyond 'caused someone to become not alive anymore' (i.e., 'killed'). I don't understand where the idea that first degree murder was the right conviction comes from, based on the evidence presented by D.A. Hora; that said, I do understand where the conviction for killing Nina comes from. This is not an argument based on the fact that Hans Reiser killed his wife; this is an argument based on the fact that the evidence wasn't presented in the courtroom to convict Resier of first degree murder, IMHO.
Actually, I've been quite willing to accept the circumstantial evidence as valid evidence that, in fact, Resier did commit the murder -- you'll notice I copped to that in the grandparent to this post.
What I have an incredible amount of disdain for is the fact that there wasn't any circumstantial evidence that pointed to premeditation, which is a mandatory part of first degree murder in the state of California. You seem to be on the bandwagon that not only did Resier ostensibly commit the murder -- a point which I haven't really refuted, yet you evidently think I have -- but that he must have premeditated it. I'd like to ask you, for all the bungling of this crime that he did, where is the circumstantial evidence that indicates he planned the killing of Nina? Please, enlighten me.
You say:
"consider all the evidence which does point to him murdering him and the...none that points to him not having mudered her"
But that doesn't constitute or imply premeditation.
You say:
"Seriously, what are the odds of all that stuff coming together with _no_ evidence that he _didn't_ kill her? We're talking lottery odds. And most criminal cases like this come down to odds, there's no camera and no witnesses."
But that doesn't constitute or imply premeditation.
And you say:
"You just have to take all the evidence and come up with a percent likelihood that he didn't do it. In this case, that percent was diminishingly small."
And I agree with you, the circumstantial evidence indicates that beyond a reasonable doubt he killed her. But it does not constitute or imply premeditation.
So I'll admit, I'm totally trolling for an "I am a lawyer and here is your ass on a platter" response, but I do not appreciate your misrepresentation of my skepticism of the verdict. My qualms with the outcome extend solely to the realm in which the DA did NOT do an adequate job of accounting for the statutory requirements for a first degree murder conviction.
To say it again completely, I believed all along Hans Resier killed his wife; I do not believe the evidence presented to the jury by the DA adequately accounted for the burden of proof that the murder of Nina Reiser was premeditated. My issue with the jury extends only to the degree of the crime, not the fact that he was found guilty of the crime. Sorry if that's too nuanced for you to grasp ;)
This has been my single, begrudging damn point all along. *I* thought Reiser was guilty too, but despite following the court case closely (SFGate.com had liveblogging, basically), I felt D.A. Hora did a pretty miserable job of building a convincing case for *first degree murder* (of which Resier was convicted), which carries with it stipulations about things like premeditation. Hora never once came close to demonstrating, circumstantially or otherwise, that Hans Resier planned to murder his wife, much less that he killed her at all.
Despite luckily ending up with the right decision, justice was not served by this trial; contempt for a sad, aloof, kinda-crazy man was the only social mechanism that really had its day in the sun.
I should note that while it is creeping, it's also the strongest candidate for major quakeage based on many recent San Francisco doomesday predictions.
It's called the Hayward fault, and it experiences plenty of creep all along the East Bay. The last quake greater than 4 that happened on it was basically across the street from my apartment. Trust, it's moving, and generally nonviolently (though noticeably at times). In fact, it runs through the middle of Memorial Stadium in Berkeley, which is built in two halves that have crept about a foot and a half offset since the stadium's construction.
Sorry to hear about your bari uke. I started playing a bari uke about 15 years ago, and now I play the uke, and acoustic and electric guitar. But like my mom, whose ukulele I started with, I hold the old nylon 4-string in a particular sort of regard. Good luck to you and yours in the future.
The "average user" shouldn't be building or setting up an HTPC, but that doesn't stop them. Not saying your point is off about usability -- but seriously, you're talking about fairly advanced stuff there that is well beyond what the "average user" is doing. We'd be better off worrying about usability in installation and day-to-day normal desktop PC stuff. Email, word processing, web browsing. Probably burning a CD or two. Syncing music with an iPod.
Tuner card installation, mythtv setup and figuring out ridiculous lirc settings are not the problem (yet).
This is genuinely not-snarky, but curious: has anyone compared, e.g., a piano to sinusoidal tones among a group of AP informants? What about a 'piano' using only single strings vs. double?
Did anyone else parse that URL as "shooter sex change dot com"?
What, you mean like the air traffic control system? Yes. Yes, I would.
"There's no excuse for federal officials to sit there like idiots waiting for things to magically get fixed. Oh wait, I guess some of them ARE idiots."
Not to mention the fact that you have a self-fulfilling excuse there. Federal officials sit there like idiots waiting for things to magically get fixed, de facto, because they are federal officials.
"It is helpful to first get the facts straight."
I wholeheartedly agree with this, however you're overlooking the difficulty of getting "facts straight" in a situation where top-secret shadow courts get to retroactively authorize spy ops that they later proactively decide were illegal, and expect an administration that has severe difficulty coloring between the lines to obey such a ruling.
Lots of clauses there, I know, but trust: they're held together by snark.
I didn't make any claims as to whether or not it was the "right" approach. I think you bring up a lot of valid points that are worth investigation and discussion, so please don't take my response as being contrary to what you bring up. Indeed, the binary blob issue is one of great concern to the Linux community across the spectrum (cf. Nvidia's 3D drivers, etc.).
All I intended to point out was that people were talking about / intimating that Linux systems that can playback MP3 files are afoul of the law. My impression of the Fluendo deal is that Linux-based systems can use their Gstreamer CODEC to legitimately play back MP3 files as the system stands today.
Actually, they're free to distribute Fluendo's MP3 decoder.
Not to be coy (promise!), but can logic prove that?
AFAIK it never matters if the accused is "innocent". In civil cases, it only matters if they can be found liable. In criminal proceedings, it only matters if they are "guilty" or not. So this: "as in never having illegally downloaded copyrighted songs while in university" isn't actually the issue, but rather, it's whether or not the defendant can be found liable for infringement of copyrights which are held by the record labels RIAA represents.
:)
If I'm off in this assessment, please offer corrections or elaborations as necessary
Sounds like it's time to fire the bastard.
In fact, you'd be better off just dropping vowels.
G rnd th blck, crss th strt, dwn th strs, thrgh th dr, nd pst th thrd wndw
However, you'd want a lexicon including phonetic and textual transcription, and some probabilistic sound : phoneme mappings. And then maybe an ontology and a semantic parser would help. And...
Yeah. Well, never mind.
"FSCK"
Funny. My exclamation had one more vowel and one fewer consonant than yours.
(That's right, I yelled "ASCK!")
Well, number one, I hate fucking Anaheim, but they did just win the Cup, so I question your "They don't belong in the league" assertion. That and they're in the second-largest media market in the country. Give them time.
Second, I live in the Bay Area, the 4th largest media market in the country. The Shark Tank (AKA HP Pavillion, the, I hate to admit it, most brilliant corporate name for a stadium ever) sells out consistently, and though it's not as large as lots of places... There's a bunch of us that love to go to the bar and yell at the TV and stuff, and people around here do generally seem to care. Certainly not on a Canadian level or whatever, but I think we 'get it'. It's not "built into our genetics" like basketball in Indiana (where I'm originally from) or hockey to our friends to the North, but still.
And I agree with you about the instigator rule.
As well as everyone who dumped airline stock the day before, for example. And, of course, the neoconservatives (at least in the short-term) who were actively seeking a "modern-day Pearl Harbor" to enable the implementation of their ideology.
How's that Junior Anti-Sex League working out for ya?