Comment by palish
18 years ago
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.
"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, ..."
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.
Curiously, the Oxford English Dictionary didn't have problems accepting contributions from their apparently-insane murderer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Chester_Minor
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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...
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).
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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.
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.
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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.
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