Speaking in general terms, not to the specifics of Hans Reiser's crimes - I dont see why it wouldn't allow for redemption, people do stupid things and get blinded easily.
And then there’s murdering your ex, hiding her body over two days, lying to your children that she’d left for russia and they’d been abandoned, and only revealing the location of the body so you could plea down to second degree murder (a good 18 months later mind, we’re not talking quick change of heart).
Oh and then filing a civil suit against pretty much the entire legal system, including the trial judges and your attorney.
And when sued for damage by your children’s grandmother (on their behalf) assert that you killed your ex to protect your kids (which you had basically never been there for, which was the entire reason your wife left you).
I’m not saying redemption is not possible, but I’d think some reflection and atonement would be the baseline, and I’m not aware of Hans Reiser having done any such work.
The fact is - he killed his wife.
> To all practical intents and purposes she was no longer 'his wife'
It doesn't work like that, though. My soon-to-be-ex-wife is still listed as spouse on our health insurance because I can't remove her until the divorce is finalized. I still have to specify her in many legals documents as my wife.
Even outside the legal field, many in my personal life consider her as my wife, go "call me when it's finalized".
I think this is just bs for his next parole hearing tho.
Doubly so because she's, you know, dead.
While I won't say redemption is impossible. He is going to have to serve his time and dedicate the rest of his life to helping others to even come close.
He got 15 to life, the maximum for second-degree murder, and his first request for parole was rejected so he’s doing at least 20 for now.
>An Alameda County Superior Court judge confirmed today Hans Reiser was presented a deal last year in which the convicted murderer would have only served three years in prison. During what was supposed to have been Reiser’s sentencing hearing – which has been delayed due to this week’s events – Judge Larry Goodman, in an effort to clear up what he called inaccuracies in the media, said that Reiser was given the opportunity last September to plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter. While voluntary manslaughter can carry different prison terms, Goodman said he agreed to give Reiser three years – the lowest possible term – to spare Nina Reiser’s family the turmoil of going through a trial and having the couple’s oldest son testify. Goodman pointed out in court if Reiser had accepted the deal, he would have been released in May 2008. However, Goodman said Reiser chose to “roll the dice,” and a jury convicted Reiser April 28 of first-degree murder in the killing of his wife.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2008/07/09/reiser-rejected-volun...
On the other hand, the first degree homicide seems absurd given the evidence. Did they just give him that because he refused to cooperate, and not because it was actually an accurate verdict?
Had he driven the car with her dead body directly to the police, he probably would have received the three year sentence or even less.
The prosecution offered the deal because historically convicting someone of murder when you can't find the body is nearly impossible. But Hans found a way!
It was true in the past that it could be used as a defense, but juries and judges no longer buy it and it generally won't get you anywhere at all in 2024.
Source: I play a lawyer on TV.
Well I would hope drunk driving while drunk would be treated differently than drunk driving while sober.
Where I'm from, most people who kill other people while driving get off without any punishment at all.
Broadly speaking, there are two independent axes the judicial system is trying to satisfy:
- punitive punishment. There are some actions that cannot be undone and some catastrophes for which there is no "making whole" the victim. Our system factors in a certain amount of eye for an eye retribution in these cases that dates all the way back to Hammurabi. If you're looking for a justification based on societal structure and survival and not just "vibes" (and make no mistake, there's a huge amount of just vibes in the way law, crime, and punishment come about)... It is believed a general understanding amongst the people that committing irrevocable transgressions on their neighbors will cause society to inflict transgressions upon them keeps the society from degenerating into infliction of individual violence on each other in the common case. Does it work? Depends on who you ask. But that's the idea, at least from the Machiavellian "stable society" standpoint. In that context, it doesn't matter if Reiser completely overhauls his philosophy of life in jail; he took something that he cannot give back, he took something no one can give back, and a certain amount of punishment is necessary to inform everyone else this is not acceptable ("thus always to the enemies of the country," etc).
- rehabilitation and rebuilding of trust. We humans broadly speaking divide other humans into two categories: those who would never and those who would. Certain transgressions bump a person from the would-never into the would category, and that opens a fissure that can never be closed. The fissure can be diminished by the transgressor demonstrating that they understand why that's unacceptable and providing reasons for the public to believe they will never commit that transgression a second time. Under this theory, crime commission is contextual; if a person can demonstrate that they will never be in the context again that would cause them to commit the crime, a certain amount of trust can be reestablished.
And here we get to the question of why drunk driving is treated less severely than, say, premeditated murder. As an individual, it's very hard to guard against premeditated murder. And people premeditating murder look like everybody else; It's hard to generate signifiers that would rebuild trust if somebody does such a thing. So the state has a large interest in discouraging it via "the olde ways," because the state has a hard time detecting it coming or defending the victims. In contrast, crimes committed under the influence of mind-alterers we generally feel would be something the transgressor would not do if the influence were removed. It's a lot easier to reestablish the trust gap in theory if somebody who drives drunk swears they will never drink again.
... That having been said, in practice, I totally agree with you. I think the numbers on drunk driving recidivism are ridiculous and it is completely unacceptable to maintain the status quo trust model on this issue; drunk driving should be an immediate revocation of the ability to use a licensed vehicle for life without extraordinary circumstances (on the order of pardon from the governor) to allow someone to retest for a license. We treat pilot licenses thusly; we should treat vehicle licenses with similar scrutiny.
... Problem is, in the US at least, we've built a society so heavily dependent upon cars in most of the country that doing this in the general case would be a sentence worse than the location constraints we put on sex offenders, and there's an upper limit on the state's capacity to actually enforce a law.
I'm not christian so I don't see the world like that.
He killed his s/o, like what 15 years ago now?
People change and deserves a second chance.
That's a lot. The prison system is neither equipped nor designed to resocialize or rehabilitate people. He hasn't demonstrated any considerable change in his character or outlook on the value of human life that makes me believe he changed for the better.
He didn't make a mistake. He intentionally planned out the murder of his ex and how to hide the body and explain her disappearance and he did this to keep his children he neglected, which was the reason for her breaking up with him to begin with. And then he acted out that plan and stuck to it for months. Most people don't even commit to their gym memberships as long as he did to his cover story.
People aren't evil. But people also don't improve by rotting in prison. You can argue that means we need something better than prison and I would, but you can't argue that means he should be treated as redeemed or released early.
Dropping a feel-good out of context MLK quote to try and impress a future parole hearing is not a demonstration of character growth. Still referring to his victim as "my wife" when she had already broken up with him is not a demonstration of character growth. If he seeks redemption he needs to address those surviving his victim. If he wants to demonstrate rehabilitation he needs to do more than just get older and memorize meaningless platitudes.
For sure, there were reasons. We just don't know them.
> but you can't argue that means he should be treated as redeemed or released early.
I'm not. Was just saying people deserve another chance.
His first parole board certainly didn’t think so and decided to keep him in for 5 more years.
Now if I’m positing that human beings have intrinsic worth because god made them, and that we need to turn the other cheek and all that, then no, the process is deeply flawed and shouldn’t be happening.
Thus spoke Zarathustra..
I think many people can agree that inherently "evil" people are very very rare. Usually people who commit an "evil" act have a reason or justification. It's portrayed in literally every movie with an antihero and spawned the "villain origin story" meme.
But even if they have a reason/justification, that does not make the antihero or villain any less evil.
I mean that the popular idea of evil is a childs story and should not blur our reasoning.
One can consider an act "evil", but if you saw the other side of the coin, perhaps it was done out of necessity, revenge, fear or another "non-evil" reason.
(I am not trying to rationalize away horrible deeds).
I believe in selfishness tho. That's a real thing.
I did not claim that Christianity invented good & evil. I claimed that it is a central concept in Christianity.
Your way of reasoning here is often referred to as a straw mans argument.
Even today, people still read and are influenced by Plato and Aristotle.
> I did not claim that Christianity invented good & evil. I claimed that it is a central concept in Christianity.
You claimed you don’t believe in evil because you are not a Christian. Not being a Christian and not believing in evil have little connection with each other, given billions of non-Christians believe in evil.
> Your way of reasoning here is often referred to as a straw mans argument.
You argument was too unclear to strawman.
I don't know where you live but it's almost impossible to overstate the significance of Plato on Western thought.
Christianity doesn't own "good and evil", even though it features it, and nor are these premises even owned by religion generally.
Christianity is, and is still influencing our world, like I wrote above.
When Cristianity didn't even exist, the Chinese already had a good chunk of philosophy perfectly set and written, and even modernish rules for war and diplomacy: Tao Te King, and The Art of War.
Heck, America from Canada to the Patagonia didn't even know about Jesus until the Europeans arrived 1500 years later. 1500s damn years. For a huge continent mass spread over from almost the North Pole to the South pole.
So much for an 'Universal' God. So universal that Aquinas had to rip a good chunk of Greek philosophy to adapt (more like smash it down with nails and duct tape) ancient Middle East fairy tales into the less-desert bound Europe as the modern Christian canonical sources.
If any, the Western world is shaped by the Roman architecture and law, and the Greek worldview, mindset and math.
> Hinduism it's pretty much alive, and Christianity it's just a fork of Judaism
Okay, so you're a hindu or a jew.
Are you arguing my point about christianity influencing "our" world? I guess I expressed myself rather western-centric.
I mean, here people it's Christian by name only. Technically, even the Southern Spain with infamous street parades with large walks carrying a big structure with a Virgin, most of that it's just a showoff and a way to say "look how loaded we are, so much that we can build great golden clothes for our Virgin".
If any, lots of lore in Europe it's just paganism with a Christian disguise.
Even Christianism itself it's so-so Christian-wannabe unlike the original one which came from the Middle East; it was largely repurposed with Greek values so people here could assimilate better these alien customs such as not being able to eat pork or nonsense about alcohol when the risk of dehidrating in Europe was near nil.
Kinda like North Korea with Communism. Marxist? Today, in name, maybe. Because Juche it's almost a copycat of right wing fascism with Asian features. Kinda like the Japanese one, but with Koreans.
But the idea that "evil" is an attribute a person can possess is 100% a religious one. If you're not religious, there can be no evil person unless you think there is an "evil" gene or an "evil" psychosis - "sociopath" and "psychopath" are often used this way but usually in ways that have very little to do with diagnostic criteria and more with trying to sound more profound than just calling someone a bad person; in pseudoscience this also sometimes manifests as the idea that some people are more predisposed to crime, though usually nowadays this more often manifests as vague notions of "racial culture" than measuring skull shapes, but this too is just a more elaborate way to call groups of people inherently bad.
As a religious concept, "evil" can be somewhat nebulous where people just take some wrong turns and "evilness" seeps into them making them irredeemable: many Christians (especially certain sects of American protestantism) believe "sins" (i.e. disobeying God's rules, not necessarily causing measurable harm to others in secular terms) work kind of like this where habitual sinning in one way can lead to sinning in other ways as sinfulness takes over the person's life (like an addiction spiraling out of control). It can also be a much more literal idea of outright demonic possession (e.g. the kind of thing you need an exorcist to help with) or demonic presence (e.g. evil people actually being lizard people masking themselves as fellow humans to hide among us). And yes, I'm labelling certain fringe conspiracy movements as religious as they operate on a similar framework and often have direct ties to religious traditions and concepts.
Conversely, not only are "evil people" a religious concept but so are "good people". If good is something you do that means you need to continously demonstrate your "goodness" by doing good things. But if good is something you can be then any accusations of wrongdoing are highly suspect because a good person would do no such things. This is why most people don't take kindly to being told even in the most polite terms that something they did was kinda racist (or sexist, or misogynist, or...) because "I'm not a racist" (i.e. thinking of it as an innate attribute of their character rather than one of their actions and hence something they can and need to actively control) - mind you, liberals did not do a good job with this distinction either over the past decade because as it turns out even self-professed non-religious people often have religious upbringings that stick with them (i.e. self-applied labels like "feminist", "anti-racist", etc should only ever be read as statements of intent and dismissed if they do not manifest in their actions which they rarely do).
The above does not rest on religion. Christians/etc having their own theories about evil is irrelevant. When most people say Pol Pot was evil, they're not talking about demonic possession or some silly nonsense like that; they mean he was a mass murderer, which is evil.
Well, no. Most people I've heard say something like that would mean that he was innately evil as a person. They wouldn't spell it out like that but the underlying assumption is that a "normal human being" couldn't do what he did and therefore he was a freak mutation in some way. Most people even struggle with the idea that there was a time in such a person's life where they weren't "evil" yet. Even when talking about Antisocial Personality Disorder ("psychopathy") they rarely know that this is often in part caused by severe early childhood trauma, e.g. sexual abuse or parental abuse and emotional neglect - most seem to believe these people are "just born evil" and any prior period where they didn't do anything sufficiently evil were just a mask.
This is easiest to see when talking about the Nazis. Instead of trying to gain a systemic understanding of how the Nazis came to power or how "ordinary citizens" could be made to commit massacres and genocides we single out the big names as uniquely evil and make up excuses for the rest. For the longest time I had been told that soldiers who participated in massacres were implicitly threatened with death or at least physical punishment but we know that this was not the case and the mere threat of social ostracization by the other members of their unit was enough. The majority of those involved in the massacres saw themselves as victims for having to carry out those commands and deal with the trauma because denying their own agency helped them cope with what they had done.
So no, they don't mean "a person who has done something evil" when they say a person is evil. They usually mean something more transcendental than that. When most people say Pol Pot or Hitler or Milosevic was evil they mean he wasn't human the same way "normal humans" are human. They may not think he was literally possessed by a demon or the physical manifestation of a demon but they will think there was some essence of evilness inside him that would inevitably manifest. He wasn't evil as a result of doing evil things, he did evil things because he was an evil person. This is called essentialism and it's extremely widespread and antithetical to a systems theory based understanding of social dynamics and behaviors.
> Personally I am not a christian
You really shouldn't extrapolate from yourself then.
I've seen this discourse repeatedly in Germany when it comes to Hitler and the Nazis:
1. Hitler did unspeakably evil things.
2. Therefore Hitler was evil.
3. However the evil he did was so uniquely evil he can not be compared to others.
4. Therefore Hitler was uniquely capable of committing such evil.
5. This implies Hitler was already innately evil prior to committing those acts.
This usually extends to falsely distinguish the evil SS from the "patriotic" Wehrmacht (who were "ordinary soldiers just following orders" and only "incidentally" ended up participating in mass murders). It's directly tied to the Great Man narrative of history: only Hitler could have been Hitler because he was innately different. The idea in the Great Man narrative usually being that a great leader emerges and changes history, rather than history changing through the conflict of material conditions (or ideas, if you're a Hegelian) and the actual figureheads being largely incidental (i.e. what Marxists call dialectical materialism).
According to demographic data, over 40% of Germans identify as non-religious whereas in the US it's a bit over 20%, so I would expect Americans to actually be more likely to think this way (if not outright going with the "demon person" idea of evil).
Also, according to most Christian faiths Jesus specifically atoned for the Original Sin (Adam and Eve disobeying God by eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil). The entire "redemption" thing is also a bit more complicated: in practice even Protestant and Catholic Christians generally behave as if they were following the Eastern Orthodox view of mortal sins where mortal sins are irredeemable and the separation from God they inflict on the sinner is permanent.
But this is a digression. The point is, most people view evil when it comes to person not as a mere descriptor of having done something but
- either: having a pre-existing innate essence of evil-ness that allowed them to do it
- or: having been so corrupted by the act itself that they now possess a permanent essence of evil-ness
or a combination of the two. In other words: an Evil Person™ is not just a person who has done an evil thing but a person uniquely capable of and predisposed towards doing evil things to a greater extent than a Normal Person™ would be. Pol Pot wasn't just evil because he did evil things, he did those evil things because he was Pol Pot, an evil person.
I'll shut up now before I get started on how different ideas of free will play into this.
I wish I was as good expressing myself like you are!
Yes, we've all done stupid things we regret. But this is not it. This is way to bad to fit in the "stupid things" category.
Ain’t killed anyone, though.