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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. :]
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.
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.
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.