Comment by SwellJoe | Hacker News Reader

Comment by SwellJoe | Hacker News Reader

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If there is no body, how does one know it isn't an elaborate framing?

In this case, one could argue as follows:

Nina disappears, and one or more friends help her get to Russia incognito (go through Mexico, perhaps).

Children go into custody of her parents who take them back to Russia.

Meanwhile, Hans is the first suspect, as is always the case in murder cases where there is a spouse or former spouse with some plausible motive and no good alibi...he is known to be paranoid by anyone that knows him, so begins to behave erratically when police begin to pay attention to him.

Perhaps someone (maybe Nina, maybe the serial killer friend, maybe someone else) had sprinkled a little blood on the front seat of his car (and in his house and the sleeping bag). He panics when he sees it and rips the seat out and disposes of it. Since he didn't commit the crime in this scenario he wouldn't have even known about the blood in the sleeping bag or the house.

Since producing some blood is pretty trivial, it means that anyone with the means and willingness to disappear could frame anyone for murder.

There is a reason why murder cases without a body or murder weapon pretty rarely result in conviction. And, I suspect, had Hans taken his lawyer's advice and not taken the stand, he would have probably had a much better chance, even with the pretty strong circumstantial evidence.

I'm not saying Hans didn't do it...I don't know. But I know that circumstantial evidence should be viewed with suspicion, when 25 years of someones life is on the line. The jury system is intended to insure that no innocent man is ever convicted, and this principle is even more important than every guilty man being punished.

If there is no body, how does one know it isn't an elaborate framing?

You don't, if you're a philosopher. But the rule is beyond reasonable doubt, not beyond all conceivable doubt.

The reason to disbelieve the "elaborate framing" hypothesis is straightforward: It's really easy to prove, and yet it has not been proved. All you have to do to prove it is find Nina. And yet she has not been found.

In fiction you can make a character disappear by saying "they moved to Russia/Argentina/Outer Mongolia and disappeared". In the real world it really is harder than that. Russia is not on the moon. You can phone up some Russians right now if you want and have a chat. Even if the Russian government won't cooperate with an investigation, there must be private investigators in Russia. All Hans and his legal team have to do is hire a P.I. to stake out the kids and produce some evidence that they're being visited by a mystery woman who might be Nina and suddenly his case becomes a lot stronger. He could still do this now, from prison, if he wanted. Might really shorten that 25 year sentence.

I suppose you could argue that Nina is so sneaky and so well connected that she and her kids have truly vanished from mortal ken, like Osama bin Laden. I haven't followed the case, so I don't know if Reiser tried to argue that. If he did, it obviously didn't work.

And I suppose you could argue that the woman hates Hans so much that she's willing to be separated from her kids for 30 years (or forever, via suicide -- there's a Sherlock Holmes plot for you) just to maximize his suffering. Good luck selling that "reasonable" theory.

The jury system is intended to insure that no innocent man is ever convicted...

Um, no. That jury system would be called "never sentence anyone". This system aspires to spare the innocent, but there is never a guarantee. And I have to say that, in the annals of potential injustice, this is a pretty weak example. Literally thousands of innocent-but-convicted Americans would be free today if they had even half of the legal resources that Reiser hired and then apparently chose to ignore.

But it is pretty horrible that Hans was convicted of murder with only circumstantial evidence. For petty crimes, or even for more intense crimes like battery, it might be worth it to make decisions based entirely on risky (though possibly accurate) circumstantial evidence. But when the most valuable portion of a person's life is on the line, the legal system's stance has to be that this person can only be convicted if there is hard evidence he committed the horrible crime, no matter how much we may want to believe that circumstantial evidence.

Imagine what the result is if we're wrong about Hans. He is an extraordinarily smart person, a valuable member of society, and could have made significant accomplishments in the next 25 years with his intelligence and experience. If we're wrong then we're throwing away his future contributions to society, depriving people that he would have helped of his assistance, stealing him from his friends, and in general not allowing him to have a positive effect on anyone's life for the next 25 years. Admittedly, in the grand scheme of things, that isn't too horrible, but it would certainly be horrible for the people that he would have had a good effect on. Perhaps he would have inspired some child to go on and do great things. We can't know.

Based on that, if a person is to be imprisoned for a huge portion of his life then there should be no doubt about his guilt.

It's true that it's impossibly unlikely that Nina made herself vanish, but consider that someone else could have used her to frame him.

Why is it "horrible" that he was convicted with indirect evidence? People are convicted without eyewitnesses all the time. That's why we have juries.

People are routinely convicted of murder (or other substantial crimes) without hard evidence? Because I was referring to high crimes, not petty thefts or speeding tickets.

It's 25 years of a smart man's life. Let's at least be 100% positive about his guilt.

What is "hard" evidence? This is a term you've invented. "100% positive"? When are we ever 100% positive? "Smart man's life"? You really think we should have different standards for programmers?

People are routinely convicted of murder on indirect evidence. Evidence is evidence. It's up to the jury to decide how compelling the evidence is. I'm surprised they came back with murder 1, but would have been shocked if they had acquitted: there was a lot of circumstancial evidence.

What is "hard" evidence?

Evidence is hard if we are 100% positive about its accuracy.

When are we ever 100% positive?

When our decision is based on current technology that we've used to rigorously prove something.

"Smart man's life"? You really think we should have different standards for programmers?

Those are your words, not mine. It would be silly to have different standards based on an artificial rating of a person.

But we should have different standards that reflect the possibility that we're wrong. For example, by limiting prison terms to an absolute maximum of ten years unless we are 100% positive (as defined above) that the person is guilty.

So, in the palish system of justice, if you can conceal a body, you face an absolute maximum of ten years in prison.

And in other news Tony Soprano today made a large contribution to the Palish for Governor campaign.

Currently, yes. That (indirect) question is difficult for me, and the answer might change in the future as I become more experienced. (I'm only 20, so what do I know anyway?)

There are proportionally few people who are murderously inclined. It's worth risking them if it means that no innocents are convicted. Perfect murders are unlikely, and they become more unlikely as forensic technology improves. It's best for a prison sentence to be based on a proof, but if we can't be positive about a person's guilt then we should favor the possibility of innocence.

limiting prison terms to an absolute maximum of ten years...

At the risk of repeating myself: Yes, you'd be right to complain if Reiser were being sentenced to death, but he isn't. And it would be sad if Reiser spent 25 or 30 years in prison even though he was innocent... but that might not happen, because at any moment Nina could turn up, dead or alive, and exonerate him.

[EDIT: removed bogus argument I made based on misreading the original article. I promise to get more sleep before my next post. :]

Why does it matter if the guy is "smart" or not? The justice system doesn't play favorites for people with high IQs - especially when they're accused of murder.

it doesn't? The average prisoner has an IQ that is one standard deviation below the mean. People whose IQ is one or two standard deviations above the mean rarely go to prison.

People with high IQs can afford top-notch legal counsel.

Not necessarily. People with lots of money can afford top-notch legal counsel.

Too much IQ and not enough common sense. When a lawyer tells you not to take the stand, don't take the stand.

You know who else had high IQs? Ted Bundy, The Unabomber and Charles Manson.

It's made even worse by the fucked up state of the US prison system -- his contribution really doesn't need to wasted. Would it be so horrible to give him a laptop and some internet access and let him hack?

Wow, what an enormous rathole you have discovered.

Let me politely decline to explore this complex issue of justice, policing, and ethics -- one which probably should be decided case-by-case rather than by a one-size-fits-all rule -- and just point out that accepting patches from an apparently-insane convicted murderer is really, really bad P.R. for your open source project.

>accepting patches from an apparently-insane convicted murderer is really, really bad P.R. for your open source project.

Touche.

accepting patches from an apparently-insane convicted murderer is really, really bad P.R. for your open source project

I wouldn't be so sure...

accepting patches from an apparently-insane convicted murderer is really, really bad P.R. for your open source project.

Curiously, the Oxford English Dictionary didn't have problems accepting contributions from their apparently-insane murderer:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Chester_Minor

Yes, but it's harder to use an entry in the OED to send real-time messages to your opium supplier on the outside, coordinate your escape attempt, rob a bank, or open security holes that will allow Russian mobsters to 0wn the paper dictionary and use it to send out ads for authentic-whalebone penis extensions.

(That would be a funny steampunk novel.)

But, yes, this is the guy I had in mind when I said that you have to consider the question on a case-by-case basis.

I know for sure that I'll be championing Phil Spector to be allowed to continue evolving his Wall of Sound once he gets convicted!

>>> Would it be so horrible to give him a laptop and some internet access and let him hack?

Yes it would. The only hacking he'll be doing is with a shiv.

But Phil Spector hasn't done important work in over three decades. Different story altogether...the world will not suffer without his creative output, while I suspect it will in the case of Reiser. Though, we might find that without his cantankerous and obstinate style of addressing the LKML ReiserFS may wind up more widely used. That assumes that the SuSE folks keep working on it, and the Namesys guys are able to keep the company going under new leadership (this is a problem, as Hans' stubbornness and passion for the idea is the primary reason Namesys has lasted as long as it has, and I doubt anyone else will have that crazy drive to keep it going--the best thing that could happen is probably a buyout by SuSE or IBM or similar).

I think you need to take a serious step back and actually view his work for what it is. You're acting like the guy deserves a Noble prize for his contributions to society.

I never mentioned any prizes. In fact, only one sentence of the above was a positive comment about Hans, and most of the the rest pointing out his flaws as a project leader.

But, prisoners generally are encouraged to work as part of their rehabilitation, and it seems to me that if his skills are most useful to the public in the development of software.

Nobody said he's Albert Einstein or Jimmy Carter. Just that he's done useful work for society--millions of people use ReiserFS, and he's worked for the US government for many years doing cryptographic and plugin-capable filesystem work--and that he could continue to do useful work for society with a few minor modifications to the terms of his imprisonment.

If you think Open Source software on the scale that Hans was involved in it has no value to society, then we'll have to agree to disagree.

http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=537280&cid=23231...

If I had gone down this rathole, instead of merely peering over the edge of the conversational abyss... my proposal would have been along the lines of this EFF proposal that you reference.

Giving prisoners real-time access to broadband communication is fraught with complications. Giving them a computer with no network is not especially different from giving them books and letting them read and write paper mail -- which I support, of course.

"He is an extraordinarily smart person, a valuable member of society, and could have made significant accomplishments in the next 25 years with his intelligence and experience."

I really don't like this line of argument, because it implies that if he were not an extraordinarily smart person, a valuable member of society, without significant accomplishments, then he should be convicted. If it were a homeless divorced guy living out of his minivan, should he have been convicted? How about a blue-collar landscaper? An unemployed househusband?

A society's standards of justice say far more about the society than they do about the people who go on trial before them. We have laws instead of kings because there's this wonderful innovation called "equal before the law". We owe a lot of Western civilization to that.

The part I find disturbing is that he was essentially convicted because the jury didn't like him. I know this happens all the time - this is why lawyers have you wear a suit in court, and why they agonize over whether you should testify or not, and why they coach you on what to say on the stand, and why they have closing arguments. But it's usually not quite so overt. He made an ass out of himself at his own trial - I'd like to believe that it shouldn't matter when "justice is blind", but of course it does, and that's why he's going to jail.

There's a difference between being convicted "because the jury doesn't like you" and being convicted "because you manage to do supernatural damage to your credibility on the stand".

I think that if Reiser had shut up and not testified, he'd have gotten manslaughter. It seems clear that his demeanor amped his conviction up to murder. But the jury didn't do that on a whim: Reiser managed to portrary himself as deceptive, evasive, and utterly unconcerned over the welfare of his family. That got factored in. How could it not?

Full agreement. A+++, would upvote again.

I was trying to enumerate the good qualities of Hans. If it were someone else, I would have listed their positive qualities. I didn't mean to imply that they should affect the verdict, but meant to communicate "if we're wrong about Hans, the following value is lost: an extremely smart person, ..."

"Um, no. That jury system would be called "never sentence anyone". This system aspires to spare the innocent, but there is never a guarantee."

I didn't say there is such a guarantee...just that our system is supposed to protect the innocent from conviction even if it means the guilty occasionally go free (at least many of our founding fathers felt that this was the purpose of our jury system). If you don't believe that is the correct way for our legal system to operate, we'll have to agree to disagree. I think it is more important for the courts to first do no evil than to always get vengeance for crimes committed (even if it's sometimes taken against an innocent party).

Anyway, I'm not saying I believe Hans is innocent, and I've also stated above that the circumstantial evidence is pretty overwhelming. But, I am saying that one should be cautious with purely circumstantial evidence, and that I would find it hard to convict someone if I were on a jury in a trial with only circumstantial evidence.

"Literally thousands of innocent-but-convicted Americans would be free today if they had even half of the legal resources that Reiser hired and then apparently chose to ignore."

That's a completely different discussion, and I agree with your statement entirely, though I'm getting the impression that you consider it far less of a problem than I do.

I would find it hard to convict someone if I were on a jury in a trial with only circumstantial evidence.

And so would I. But neither you nor I are on the jury, and so we don't know the full extent of the evidence.

I'm getting the impression that you consider it far less of a problem than I do.

Well, that impression is probably mistaken, unless what you're saying is that there's no amount of circumstantial evidence that should send a guy to prison. If all we're arguing about is the degree of the evidence... that's why we have juries.

I will say that my opinion would be closer to yours if Reiser were in danger of being sentenced to death. I disbelieve in the death penalty for precisely the reasons you describe. As it is, if Reiser isn't a murderer, there's a very good chance that he won't spend 25 years in prison -- Nina could turn up alive, or turn up dead in circumstances that exonerate Reiser. This isn't his last chance. Unless he's guilty.

We actually know several things the jury does not know. For instance, the DA sought to have admitted emails from Nina to Hans that referred directly to overt threats Hans had made. They weren't allowed due to hearsay rules.

And on the other side, the serial killer friend/lover was completely unknown to the jury.

The "friend/lover" was not a serial killer. No professional who interviewed Sturgeon believes him. If they had, he would have been called to testify. The defense had the option of calling him; they chose not to, because they did not think he would help their case.

I find it ridiculous that the DA would have chosen to pursue a case against a lonely computer programmer instead of locking up a serial killer. You have to believe something pretty incredible to argue that Sturgeon was a real factor in this case.

If all we're arguing about is the degree of the evidence... that's why we have juries.

The problem is that a judge must interpret a guilty verdict as an immutable fact, rather than as a decision made by emotional and fundamentally random human beings:

  if conviction == guilty 
    decide a sentence based on the type of crime

Instead, a person's prison sentence should reflect how confident we are in the guilty verdict.

The jury was asked how confident they were. They had the option of returning not guilty, or even guilty of a lesser crime, such as manslaughter --- murder without intent.

You are obviously not as confident as the jury was. But you were not on the jury. The jury, given the facts of the case, appears to have been maximally confident about Reiser's culpability: they returned a verdict of premeditated malicious intentional murder, where they instead could have found that Reiser had accidentally killed Nina in the heat of a terrible argument.

At a certain point, you just have to let go of the fact that you disagree with the jury. Clearly, we cannot simply poll every person on the country as to what they thought of the case from afar.

> a person's prison sentence should reflect how confident we are in the guilty verdict.

That's a bad idea: if we accuse someone of some awful crime, and decide there's only 1/10 confidence in a guilty verdict, they should still serve a small fraction of the time? Someone's either guilty or not. If they are, there are sentencing guidelines that take various other factors into account.

I agree that, in general, a sentence shouldn't reflect confidence in the verdict. However, given that the US justice system has so many shades of each crime, it's actually not clear either that someone's either guilty or not... they might well be guilty of a lesser crime, which would approximate sentencing guidelines as preferred by grandparent.

I've worked with a number of people on the heavy end of the asperger's spectrum and one thing that I've found disturbing about their personalities is that when they make a mistake, they have an extremely hard time admitting that they are wrong. In fact, they don't admit they are wrong, they do everything they can to explain why they are actually right. From what I've read of his testimony, this seems like what Hans was doing.

An elaborate framing story is hard to believe as it is easy for a woman in California to get a divorce and custody of her children.

On the other hand, OJ got off his criminal charges scott free, and later went on to write a book about his murder technique. The jury system isn't infallible.

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