The File-System Fallout of the Reiser Verdict

perlow writes "Yesterday, the Open Source community took an emotional hit when veteran Linux programmer Hans Reiser was convicted of first degree murder in the suspicious disappearing of his wife, Nina. While I won't go into the details of the case, as this has been covered extensively in the press, I would like to talk a little bit about how this verdict will impact the technology in play for file system dominance in our favorite Open Source operating system, Linux."

Re:Article a bit one-sided?

[Traxxas]

True, the other developer moved the code and patches to his server months ago when the namesys.com site went down.
Rieser 4 Patches and Programs [zelnet.ru]

According to the article they are still in active development. They got patches for the 2.6.25 kernel so somebody is still working over there.
Source Article [news.com]

Re:I'm hoping...

[nuzak]

> You don't find the fact that his wife had dated a confessed serial killer at all odd?

Sturgeon has a bit of a credibility problem in that none of the eight people he's confessed to killing are, um, dead.

And it's "could have".

Re:What happened?

[jjohnson]

1. There was strong circumstantial evidence that Nina had disappeared because she was murdered:
2. 1. she didn't show up to pick up the kids from school on the day she was supposed to
   2. friends and family testified that she loved the kids and would never abandon them
   3. friends and family hadn't heard from her in two years
   4. her passport was found, meaning she didn't take it with her if she left herself
   5. her bank accounts were untouched in two years, and showed no abnormally large withdrawals before her disappearance
   6. no travel plans or evidence like a plane ticket was ever located for her
   7. her van was found with her cell phone and $146 in groceries in it, several miles from her apartment.
3. There was evidence that Hans knew she was gone before it was reported: He went to pick up the kids on the day she didn't; he never tried to phone her immediately after her disappearance.
4. Lots of weird stuff that could plausibly, but not conclusively, be construed as Hans covering up moving her bloody body in his car: removing the passenger seat, hosing out the interior, a 6" bloodstain on a sleeping bag cover kept in the car.
5. Miscellaneous other stuff that looks suspicious in context of everything else.

Now, you're right, that list alone creates a plausible but by no means airtight case that he killed her and disposed of the body. If that were all, I probably would have voted to acquit if I were on the jury.

But then Hans took the stand for eleven days, against his attorney's advice, and tried to explain all that. And he did such a massively poor job of it that the jury believed he was lying about why he'd done those things. He said he removed the passenger seat because he was sleeping is his car and wanted extra space; but in a Honda CRX, the passenger seat is probably the most comfortable part of the car to sleep in, and removing it leaves a non-flat surface with bolts and bars across it (Hans said that with a good sleeping bag he didn't notice). There was an inch of water in the interior because he hosed it out; Hans said he doesn't remember it bothering him, sleeping on the floor where the passenger seat used to be.

Since there's little worth lying about that's more important than being falsely convicted of murder, the jury concluded that his lies were covering up a murder. In short, he talked himself into jail. He's not the first defendant to do that.

Re:prison reform?

[fishbowl]

>Does such a system exist in the US?

Yes, each state has a different system and there is also a federal system.

In California there are four classes that correspond to UK's A-D.
And conditions vary a great deal between prisons. At one end of the spectrum we have hell holes like
Pelican Bay or Folsom, where inmates are basically stored until they die, and the security is primarily designed to keep them from killing each other. At the other end, there are prisons with open dormitories, large campuses, gate passes, education programs on the level of a state university, even one where the labor details work out in the forest (logging, of course).

But Reiser with his insults to the judge, has pretty much assured himself of life without parole in Pelican Bay. He will be lucky to get his own ration of toilet paper (you have to ask for it every time, and they give you just a little bit, because they don't want you to have a pillow, or to make dice, or to feel privileged enough to have toilet paper.)

After a few years of not being violent and working at some crummy job, he might be in a position to go someplace nicer, or at least have a private cell with a tv and reading/writing material. No California inmate gets individual access to any kind of computer system, except for certain highly supervised library research purposes and some vocational training programs. But a person doing life without parole isn't eligible for vocational rehab -- they aren't leaving prison except in a box, period, and so the opportunities go to offenders with lower fines.