back to article Linux guru Hans Reiser convicted of first-degree murder

A jury has convicted Hans Reiser, developer of the ReiserFS filesystem for Linux, of first degree murder for killing his estranged wife in 2006 even though her body was never found. As the verdict was read in Alameda County Superior Court, Reiser furrowed his brows. Dressed in the same dark coat he's worn for months, the 44- …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Holy cow

    How can he be done for first degree murder on circumstantial evidence only.... that seems very strange.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Cellphone battery removed

    Another piece of evidence that I thought was significant was that he had his wife's cell phone but had removed the battery (presumably to prevent it's location from being tracked). Can anyone think of any other reasonable reason to remove the battery from a cell phone?

  3. Justin White
    Coat

    No more complaints about US Legals

    I guess this signals the end of Euros thumbing their high and mighty noses at Americans for having such a f*cked Legal system. Glad to see EU courts are just as stupid as US courts.

    Mines long, black, and flowing...with the wig.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Re: No more complaints about US Legals

    Am I confused or are you? This was tried in California.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Cellphone battery

    > Can anyone think of any other reasonable reason to remove the battery from a cell phone?

    To keep it from getting wet? Most cell phone batteries have an indicator that changes if it gets wet...

  6. kain preacher

    Re Re: No more complaints about US Legals

    Umm didnt Know Oakland Ca was in the EU.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Circumstantial evidence

    DNA, video, fingerprints, etc can all be circumstantial too. Circumstantial evidence is often more compelling and reliable than first-hand accounts, and lets face it, many murders happen without any witnesses. It seems one commenter misunderstands what first-degree murder is. First-degree doesn't mean the evidence is any better or worse, it means the murder was planned ahead of time (even 1 minute ahead of time, or less). In this case the prosecution was able to paint a story of an very planned out murder. Why should someone of obvious guilt go free just because there are no first-hand witnesses!

  8. paul

    sick

    "Seriously, I hope the lady has just escaped from this marriage and is keeping herself hidden away. "

    You cant just hide away when someone is being tried for your murder! If this was in another state , he could well be executed.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Can anyone think of any other reasonable reason to remove the battery from a cell phone?

    To drive the propeller on your hat obviously....although the file system link makes me think hard drive cooling fans.

    Don't they get computers in the slammer these days? It might actually make reiserfs work better.

  10. Dunstan Vavasour

    Armchair Jurists

    I wouldn't try to second guess a detailed trial with many weeks of testimony. A good piece of free software was created by a convicted murderer.

    This doesn't have any bearing on the usefulness of what he wrote. Nor has be profited from ReiserFS. His principle benefit was status in the free software community, which is now nil.

    Free software is, of its very nature, amoral.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not a Linux programmer

    Not that it matters, but Reiser never programmed Linux which is the cernel after all.

    We do not know if he is a murderer or not.

    We know he was a rather "difficult" person, however.

  12. James Anderson
    Paris Hilton

    Gotta be richer to get away with murder.

    I am not sure how much money the guy earned but he didnt get rich enough to get away with murder.

    Under (unwritten) California law nobody rich and famous gets convicted for murder ( see Phil Spector, OJ Simpson et al). Whereas being poor gets you life in no time at all.

    This puts the Linux community in somewhat of an impass. Should we protest the sentence on the grounds that "being famous among geeks" is as good as being famous among chat show viewers? Should we query our commitment to Open Source as we will never make enough money to be able to off the significant other and walk out of the courtroom?

    Paris - she could give some helpful tips on how to cope with jail time (at least the first 18 hours anyway).

  13. Ralph B
    Heart

    How did this ever happen?

    Geeks aren't supposed to get married, are they?

  14. Billy Goat Gruff

    Surreal

    This is a surreal case and he seems to have been convicted in the belief that his post-murder actions were incompetent, and his explanations are too twisted to be true, and the simplest answer is that he's lying.

    And a conviction does seem rather safe.

    But why is the circumstantial evidence so overwhelming because of this incompetence, and yet he had the clarity of thought to dispose of the body so thoroughly?

    He can't get rid of the books, or car, but he can dispose of a body and, presumably, a weapon?

    I have more faith in the jury's decision than my own half-baked thoughts, but... I'd like to think that it could be proved beyond all reasonable doubt one day...

  15. Brett Brennan

    Resier FS already gone...

    I run SuSE, and for the past two releases, the default FS is now EXT3. SuSE changed to EXT3 not long after the arrest of Hans, probably because Namesys, his company to develop and promote the Reiser file system, went out of business shortly after his arrest.

    After reading the WIRED articles on the case, Hans didn't do himself any favors during the trial. While circumstantial evidence doesn't usually make a prima facia case for murder, given his various testimonies, contradictions and just odd-ball actions it could certainly have done so here. Regardless of his guilt, he certainly did not paint the best possible picture for a jury.

    Unfortunately, when a case goes to jury trial in the US, it is usually either (a) the accused is not bright and wants "his day in court" regardless of the evidence or (more likely)(b): the evidence is so fubared already that there is no clear-cut case one way or another. Having sat on a number of juries myself, every case I heard in trial was of the latter type - and the real conviction or acquittal comes down to how the defendant and prosecution "look" to the jury.

  16. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

    Reiserfs already had problems

    Reiserfs was useful for a while, but there were good reasons to pick something else before Nina Reiser disappeared suspiciously.

    http://blog.linuxoss.com/2006/09/27/suse-102-ditching-reiserfs-as-it-default-fs/

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    one assumes..

    that he'll have plenty of time on his hands for coding now. i look forward to a new improved version of reiserFS. as long as he stays with file systems and doesn't try to re-write some of the core functions. i'm not letting him near my processes!

    would this constitute an investment by the government in opensource?

  18. Richard

    Circumstantial

    It's already been said, but it's perfectly true. There is nothing wrong with circumstantial.

    200 unlikely coincidences pointing to someone's guilt shouldn't be ignored. It's up to the jury to decide how incriminating each piece of evidence is and whether it's believable when the defence says "That wasn't her blood in his car from when she was murdered, it was just that she had the painters in."

  19. Robin
    Coat

    @Anonycow

    "lets face it, many murders happen without any witnesses."

    I think there are usually two witnesses, unfortunately one is not left in a state to testify and the other is not likely to give a very honest testimony.

    Mine is the all in one NBS suit to keep the DNA in.

  20. Ian Davies
    Flame

    @Justin White

    > Glad to see EU courts are just as stupid as US courts.

    Glad to see your American knowledge of world geography is just as 'f*cked' as we Euros suspected.

    You're not related to Miss Teen South Carolina 2007, are you?

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Prove

    That being a linux zealot leads to being criminally insane.

    Mine's the one with the arms tied round the back

  22. Forget It

    Laptop in Prison?

    I vote they let him continue to code from his cell.

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    What do you mean, "Not a Linux Programmer" ??

    "Not that it matters, but Reiser never programmed Linux which is the cernel after all."

    Rubbish. The kernel's MAINTAINERS file lists one Hans Reiser under "REISERFS FILE SYSTEM".

    I expect that will have to change though.

    I wonder if resierfs4 gird its metaphoric loins and move ahead now the trial is over ...

  24. Sean Purdy

    Can anyone think of any other reasonable reason to remove the battery from a cell

    Well yeah - to use the battery in your other phone. Or perhaps the battery cover had fallen off. Or perhaps the charging connector had bust and the battery needed to be charged in a separate phone. Lots of reasons.

    And "Reiser never programmed Linux which is the cernel after all" - where do you think the filesystem code lives, pray?

  25. heystoopid
    Linux

    Something is not quite right ?

    I have a bad feeling that the prosecutor has deliberately with held key information to make the missing victim look like an angel , and yet as we are all well aware in a bitter contested acrimonious separation/divorce where money and other wealth assets are the key component of the contest this is never the case as a certain Heather versus Paul has shown the dark side of how low some women will go to obtain that which does not belong to them in the first place !

    Sadly insufficient data to properly assess the situation other then the average fact that that US Injustice system on the whole with well over 2.2 million inmates approximately ten per cent that are incarcerated within , are in reality innocent of the crimes they were primarily convicted of in the first place by a basically corrupt and out control legal system which gives credence to Prosecutor who tell lies and knowingly chooses to with hold exonerating evidence and overlook a number of legal technicalities that he forgets to tell the jurors in his summation evidence and a defence system where these lawyer wankers are usually it turns out the best mates of the prosecutors on the day of the conviction have been asleep at the wheel for the entire duration of the trial !

    Choices , something is not quite right but I cannot put the finger on it due to lack of relative data , one would really need to totally study the entire transcript of the trial the DA pre case file with all police notes and not the ones used in the trial in it's entirety including all evidence and a thorough of background check on the technical witnesses supplied as government official witnesses both submitted and that has been with held from the jurors , to come to a proper conclusion as to the fairness of the trial !

  26. Hollerith

    circumstantial vs...

    Eye witness. Very few murderers are convicted by eye-witness evidence.

    Amateur murders are usually the most brutal, as it is actually quite hard to kill someone, and there is blood and screaming and agony involved, and your first-timers (as opposed to hit-men) tend to need to use rage to complete the job, meaning excess brutality (ie if the killing weren't bad enough).

    The taboo against killing is so strong in humans that armies ahve to semi-brainwash recruits to get them to the killing point. Studies from WWII showed that about 1 in 3 soldiers were ever firing at any time, the others being 'frozen' for periods of a few seconds to a few minutes.

    So this murder is nothing to joke about, but the loss of a human being, a mother of two children, for some reason that was not worth a life.

  27. Daniel Bennett
    Coat

    I wonder..

    How open source the whole investigation is.

  28. Chris Bradshaw

    It's a shame.

    Everyone lost here:

    Nina because she is dead (or at least has lost contact with her kids)

    Hans because he'll be in jail for a long time, and his reputation is ruined

    The kids because they have lost both their parents

    Californians because they are paying the bill for the trial and jail time

    Linux fans because ReiserFS will probably go by the wayside

    Moral of the story - 'buying' a bride will get you just what you paid for - someone who is willing to sell themselves. What kind of marriage can you build from a start like that? I feel sorry for the kids..

    @paul - If a person can be angry & crazy enough to plan a murder in advance including thinking about how to hide or destroy the evidence, a person can also be angry & crazy enough to frame another for a murder and keep quiet about it. And, just like murder, once you have started, you can't change your mind and back out of it - Nina (if she is in hiding) would be prosecuted and jailed if she turned up, just like Hans (if he did it) would be prosecuted for attempted murder if he started and then changed his mind before killing her.

  29. Clive Powell
    IT Angle

    Update on other comments

    "ow can he be done for first degree murder on circumstantial evidence only.... that seems very strange."

    You have been swayed by TV rime stories that use the word "circumstantial" as if it were a bad thing. Most evidence is circumstantial. It is stating that the "circumstances" shows that the likely outcome is that he killed her,

    "I have a bad feeling that the prosecutor has deliberately with held key information to make the missing victim look like an angel , and yet as we are all well aware in a bitter contested acrimonious separation/divorce where money and other wealth assets are the key component of the contest this is never the case as a certain Heather versus Paul has shown the dark side of how low some women will go to obtain that which does not belong to them in the first place !"

    Most US states force the prosecution to disclose ALL evidence gathered, Key or otherwise. Not to do so can either force a retrial or dismissal of the case. Having a large sleeping bag cover stained with her blood, is a little difficult to explain.

  30. david wilson

    @Something is not quite right ?

    If the missing person/victim wasn't an angel, and the prosecutor avoided mentioning that, wouldn't it be up to the defence to do so, if they thought it would help?

    In any case, the *less* angelic the missing person was, the *greater* the motive might appear to be, unless maybe it pointed to some credible other explanation for the disappearance just at the point when Reiser decided to do some extreme valeting.

  31. Laurent_Z
    Paris Hilton

    @ Chris Bradshaw : Buying a bride

    I always take the ones with a 30 days return garantee.

    I haven't yet found one "satisfied or reimbursed" yet, but I'll keep an eye out.

    -Paris, because she already got returned more than once -

  32. Iain

    No body no weapon no murder?

    The issue I have with this conviction is that it does not seem that the prosecution has even managed to show a murder took place. They do not have a murder scene, let alone a body. There is no murder weapon. It seems to me this man has been convicted of murder because he is a bit weird.

  33. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    @Chris Bradshaw

    "Buying a bride"?!?! WTF?!?!

    This is a human being that you are talking about. She met him, moved to be with him, and married him. How's that different from any other marriage, other than that she started out in a different part of the world? I get incredibly sick of this "mail order bride" crap, and the underlying assumption that you can buy a wife. It adds a salacious element to the story of a very sick individual who did awful things to someone he should have been loving and cherishing and when she'd had enough of this treatment, he had the nerve to take her life. If that woman had been the girl next door, would you be spouting shite about how you aren't supposed to marry the girl next door?

    People have to lose this whole attitude about marrying people from different backgrounds and look at the marriage as a marriage between two people with equal status before the law. Let me tell you something -- the women in different parts of the world looking for marriage are not looking for a free meal ticket -- they are looking for happiness, just like anybody else, and the creeps that take advantage of that ought to be stomped out like the insects they are. I've married a woman from Russia, and you couldn't find a kinder, sweeter, smarter, more loving wife, with a mind of her own, and strength and courage to do the impossible in order to find happiness. To demean this kind of spirit as "selling themselves" speaks volumes to what kind of bigotry and mysogyny you practice.

    If you had any comprehension of what kind of woman does this, how seriously they take marriage, how seriously they take family, you'd know what kind of neanderthal you are. This talk about framing him is distraction. She was a Russian woman -- if she isn't with her kids, she's dead. It's as simple as that.

    I wish CA had the electric chair just for this creep, so that on the day they fry that beast, I could turn my air conditioner off so they'd have a few joules more energy to send him to hell.

    Anon. because I don't want you knowing which of your neighbors thinks you're a troll.

  34. Richard Kay
    Thumb Down

    @david wilson

    "If the missing person/victim wasn't an angel, and the prosecutor avoided mentioning that, wouldn't it be up to the defence to do so, if they thought it would help?"

    The defence has to decide whether to go for a not-guilty verdict or for a lesser conviction. (The UK offence of manslaughter e.g. based on temporary insanity of the killer, is I think the same as the US one of second degree murder.) They can't logically go for both, because to go for the lesser offence they have to first admit that he did it.

  35. Michael McLean

    circumstancial???

    how is his wifes blood soaked sleeping bag found in his car circumstancial

  36. StopthePropaganda
    Stop

    Kalifornia Kult of Karisma

    Reiser was a technical guru and intelligent, but that's not what powers Kalifornia anymore. It's all about charisma. I bet the jury saw him as "creepy" and all those pretty boys and jocks who feel threatened by "nerdier" folks got a chance to reassert their traditional authority. The real crime was not being Beautiful and in High Style (reference)

    Had Reiser been a total clueless idiot, self centered and sociopathic, with the looks of George Clooney, he would have walked. Had he some latino charm, he'd have gotten a much lighter sentence. As a "creepy" white guy, he was doomed. the Scott Peterson Syndrome manifested.

    Whereas the Jackson's, the Simpson's. the Spectre's can get away with horrendous crimes because they have the ability to manipulate, and the money to buy the lawyers who can create an evil synergy that allows the guilty to go free.

    In a nutshell, California (and most American) law is like the Looney Tunes cartoons. Tweety Bird or Jerry the mouse can instigate any conflict, but since they're "cute" they're the ones we're supposed to root for. The cats, not being so "cute" are the bad guys, every time.

    BTW, did no one wonder how Reiser's kids ended up with their grandmother in Russia at the same time their "mother" disappeared?

  37. vincent himpe
    Linux

    He assumed ..

    the water would drain from the car ...

    And this guy designs filesystems ?

    Not for my data he ain't !

    Let's assume the user will put in larger drive well before we run out of space .. so i don;t need to check that... let's assume the user only want to write data. He won't need to find it or read it. it's for archival only. We all know archives end up somewhere in a dusty room wehre nobody ever looks at them and they get thrown in the bon after 25 years ...

    Freaky .. if this is the 'Linux security , stability and quality' .. give me back the microsoft bloatware ....

    penguins because they like water too and they can't fly either. ..

  38. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    @several

    "I have a bad feeling that the prosecutor has deliberately with held key information to make the missing victim look like an angel , .... Heather versus Paul has shown the dark side of how low some women will go to obtain that which does not belong to them in the first place !"

    So lets get this right...You saying now she is legally dead, she can inherit his wealth. Well that's a new one.

    Next.

    No body, no weapon, no crime? Well unless you haven't been around for ooo several decades, you may find there have be dozens if not hundreds of cases where bodies have not been found. Large amounts of blood are always a good start.

    Next

    Manslaughter is not dimished responsibilty. It is death without intention. For example if you punch someone, then they drop dead of a heart attck, you would be tried for manslaughter not murder, unless you already knew that punching them would result in death.

    Blimey a few episodes of Waking the dead or Cold case files would give you some of the basics....

    Next, please remember him as a murderer, not a some sort of God, otherwise it's time to worship Adolf Hitler as a pioneer of space travel, air sea rescue, gene therapy and medical research !

  39. david wilson

    @Richard Kay

    >>"The defence has to decide whether to go for a not-guilty verdict or for a lesser conviction. (The UK offence of manslaughter e.g. based on temporary insanity of the killer, is I think the same as the US one of second degree murder.) They can't logically go for both, because to go for the lesser offence they have to first admit that he did it."

    Someone was suggesting there may have been a miscarriage of justice due to the prosecution failing to mention something about the [alleged] victim that would make the victim look bad.

    Firstly, if there was something that would seemingly give additional motive to the crime the prosecution is alleging happened, it'd seem odd if they didn't mention it.

    Secondly, unless the prosecution had evidence they were keeping from the defence and defendant, then whether the prosecution mentioned it of not in the trial would be irrelevant since it's up to the defence to present whatever case they can given how they see their position.

    It'd only be if the prosecution was sitting on evidence suggesting the victim might not have been a victim, or might have been killed by someone else that there would seem to be grounds for complaint.

    Having someone effectively say "I think there's been a miscarriage of justice that's currently totally secret" seems to be the same as someone saying "I think the guy is innocent despite the available evidence".

  40. Anonymous Coward
    Gates Horns

    It's a fit up !

    We all know the boys in the van with the blacked out Windows(tm) did it !

    She's just been kidnapped and sent to the Village to frame Reiser. Fit ups and disappearances of open sauce programmers are going on all the the time its just nobody has yet noticed.

    Read all about it at www.storiesfortheparanoid.net

    Now who is number 1 !

  41. Herby

    Looney Tunes

    While Tweety Bird was a Looney Tunes character, Jerry the mouse wasn't!

    MGM & Messrs Hanna and Barbera would heartly concur!

    p.s. I always rooted for Sylvester anyway. He had a much better personality.

    I could argue about California's legal system, but my success fighting it (traffic tickets) has been miserable. Presently they don't have "traffic school" for 187PC offenders! Sorry Hans.

  42. Anonymous Coward
    Go

    @Cellphone battery removed

    maybe he wanted to get at the MMC card beneath it?

  43. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Wonder if...

    Wonder if he'll be working on Riker's FS now.... Oh, wrong state.

    Seriously though... Circumstantial evidence or no, it sure sounds like he did it...

  44. Brian Milner

    Missing wife: Call her?

    From another forum:

    "He paid a $5,000 retainer to a criminal defense attorney just days after Nina disappeared, while the investigation was still a missing person's case. He didn't even bother to try calling her to find out if she was alive before he shelled out for the retainer."

    Wouldn't you try calling your wife if she went missing?

  45. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re:What do you mean, "Not a Linux Programmer" ??

    Hans Reiser made headlines when he "demanded that Reiser4 be incorporated into Linux"

    "Demanding" did not sit well with the kernel developers who do such things.

    They also remebered how Reiser stopped helping with bugs soon as ReiserFS was incorporated.

    There are many different filesystems for Linux, one made bye IBM an other bye SGI and so on.

    I am not a Linux programmer, a programmer yes, but even if I stared to do my own filesystem for Linux I do not think I could claim being a Linux programmer.

    As far as I remember Reiser had plans to get Reiser4 into other systems too. Perhaps he did, I do not know.

    Having Reiser4 incorporated into Solaris would not make him a Solaris programmer, I think, or a BSD programmer if used bye BSD.

    All this does not matter a bit of course.

    But there are a few things to remember, being a murderer or not does not make Reiser a bad programmer nor does it make ReiserFS or Reiser4 this or that.

    If Linus Torvalds decided shoot the postman it would not make Linux any worse.

    I remember an author in Sweden who was caught trying to murder his landlord .

    He escaped to the USA on a ship. On that ship he met a very rich lady and pretended to be very rich himself too.

    After they married they found out they had both been cheating about their riches.

    Both totally broke. Quit funny really.

    Point is, the guy was a good writer and his books did not become worse.

    And I must admit I am not quite sure why this particular case has been so "popular".

    Is it the filesystem, a geek, a russian girl, a connection to Linux, or what.

    How many murders are there per hour or five minutes or whatever in the US, so why this interest in Hans Reiser

    And then there is "the jury", something I do not trust at all.

    The film "The Jury" made in 1940 or 50 was one of the best films I have ever seen. But the reality , well not now.

  46. heystoopid
    Coat

    @david

    @david surely you jest , you should open your eyes to other alternate possibilities as there is basic circumstantial evidence and then there is a large number of corrupted variations dependent on the actual viewpoint of both the investigator and the so called CSI handling the evidence , along with very corrupt expert witness testimony too !

    Suffice to say , if all the lower courts judges , juries , prosecutors and defense lawyers did their job properly there would be no need for peer judgment review of the entire proceedings from a through z , and no where it is more self evident then the current US injustice system as it exists today ,that it is self evident daily stuff ups in the lower courts exist !

    Further , numerous very well documented cases show the extensive corrupt black hand of state and federal prosecutors knowingly and deliberately acting in collusion with shonky defense lawyers and very corrupt police officials in with holding key pieces of exonerating contradictory circumstantial evidence in high profile murder trials for purely political and very greedy self interest gain reasons in order to gain an unsafe conviction or apply the death penalty for propaganda reasons only !

    As for the TV /Press media staff , why would they want to discredit the hand that feeds them this sensational but very damaged bill of goods for they too have their own hidden agenda of the Judith Miller class of reporting nonsense as fact for self or other basic greedy egotistic reasons as the gullible public accepts the media is incapable of not telling lies when all evidence shows otherwise and a huge credibility gap below the thin surface veneer the show often in real life !

    Yes our justice system is full of flaws , some are addressed many are not and the innocent are either jailed or executed for that is life ! But sadly media reports alone are not sufficient or adequate due to very extensive stage managing Judith Miller style presentation of nonsense as fact and heavy handed editing cuts and those that believe the media on the whole is telling the truth are just being far too lazy to think for themselves or do any basic research !

    Choices , can be very evil if they make one think before they leap and look outside the circle beyond at what they are not willing to disclose as we saw in numerous classic examples of absolute stupidity post 2001 mass media exposures of that which was not self evident but was made to look so !

    Suffice to say insufficient data currently supplied from very questionable sources(media inclusive) to assign factual innocence or guilt in this case at this point in time !

  47. david wilson

    @heystoopid

    I'm not denying that there are miscarriages of justice.

    I'm just wondering how someone seemingly plucks out of the air a theory about the prosecution in a particular case withholding a certain kind of evidence (backed up by a comment about Heather Mills?) when it's not obvious how even if such evidence existed, keeping quiet about it would help the prosecution case, *or* that it would be news to the defence.

    Short of the police/prosecution having interviewed some people who said "Oh - she said she was going to run away", it's hard to see what would be worth withholding.

  48. yargnad
    Joke

    Run-on Sentence Championship

    I have no opinion on this matter as I have only heard about this just today. But i would like to point out something else.

    I would like to hereby acknowledge the unequivocable run-on sentence contruction capabilities that heystoopid posesses. The mandatory exclaimation capping off every one is sure to drive the point home. This is no slouch we are dealing with here, these are some serious heavywieght-class jumbles he's got going on. David is almost there. With a few more single sentence paragraphs, I believe he would be a contender in no time at all...

  49. j
    Alert

    Reasonable doubt

    "Short of the police/prosecution having interviewed some people who said "Oh - she said she was going to run away", it's hard to see what would be worth withholding."

    I read all the comments, noticing a lot of discussion as to what exactly the prosecution withheld... No one mentioned the major thing they withheld, which is the fact that Reiser's friend had a relationship with Nina, and this friend had previously confessed to 8 murders (which he wasn't charged with.)

    The prosecution did not let them mention this fact, which is absurd because it presents entire new avenues of possibilities which could raise doubts as to whether or not it was actually Hans who murdered her. To be convicted in the US, you have to be guilty *beyond a reasonable doubt*. Having followed the entire case, I have several reasonable doubts, and I hope he appeals so the case can be examined more thoroughly.

  50. Marco

    Re: Re Re: No more complaints about US Legals

    >>> Umm didnt Know Oakland Ca was in the EU.

    Well, at least parts of California try to get as far away as possible from being associated with the rest of the US.

  51. david wilson

    Withholding?

    Surely, it's the *judge* who (rightly or wrongly) decides what evidence is admitted?

    You can only really accuse the prosecution of withholding/suppressing something if it's something only they knew about.

  52. Robert Long

    Bizarre

    The wife's lover admits to mass murder but without a body the husband is convicted of 1st degree murder?! If that's not reasonable doubt I don't know what the f*ck is.

    Pathetic, even if he did do it.

This topic is closed for new posts.