Revenge of the Nerd: The Legal Battle
To kill is not to be a geek, but to be a geek is to kill. This Washington Post story discusses an Oakland, CA trial that has to rank as one of the more bizarre murder trials in recent memory. Some major figures in this drama:
- A mail-order bride gone missing
- An extremely successful asocial computer programmer indicted for homicide (Mr. Hans Reiser)
- Family von-Weirdo
- The brother contends that he and his brother drive without front seats
- The parents make obscure references to their son’s undergraduate thesis on reality and perception
- A cross-dressing/bondage enthusiast best friend (Sean Sturgeon… really, that’s his name)
- Who also proclaimed he killed several people years ago
- Who had an affair with the mail-order bride
- Who was the “maid of honor” in the wedding
- And of course, Dungeons and Dragons
If all of this seems weird, that is because it is. You have to read the whole story to believe it, but here are a few choice quotes summing up the legal defense that the attorney for the alleged murder, a Mr. Hans Reiser, has developed:
“Being too intelligent can be a sort of curse,” defense counsel William Du Bois said. “All this weird conduct can be explained by him, but he’s the only one who can do it. People who are commonly known as computer geeks are so into the field.”
Of course it can! Computer geeks are silent killers waiting to be unleashed. Every one of them. It is definitely not more likely that sociopaths come from all walks of life (though perhaps disproportionately from Berkley, like Mr. Reiser), and it was only a matter of time that a computer program joined their ranks…
At least the judge in the trial seems reasonable:
The thesis [Han’s undergraduate thesis at Berkley] might apply to the evidence, which the judge in the preliminary hearing termed thin.
I guess I should be careful what I put in my undergraduate thesis as well. Seems to be a trend…
Here is more support for the theory that computer programmers are so into their jobs that they are completely detached from the world and morality:
“It strikes me that a lot of coders have a somewhat detached view of the world, and it’s reasonable to assume that Hans might not even have stopped to think about how things looked,” said Rick Moen, a local area network consultant in Menlo Park.
We aren’t talking about a guy forgetting to pay his phone bill or not visiting his mother for several months. We aren’t even talking about a guy locked up in his room playing video games and working until he dies. We are talking about a programmer, un-detached enough to marry and have children, who may have kidnapped his wife, killed her and hid the body.
As for now the evidence is only circumstantial, so I’m not ready to convict the guy based on this:
“After taking no part in the massive public effort to search for the mother of his two children, he listed the reasons he was happy that Nina was gone in a phone call monitored by police. He had purchased copies of “Masterpieces of Murder” and “Homicide” from a local bookstore. Police discovered his passport in his fanny pack along with $8,000 in cash and a cellphone that could not be tracked electronically because its battery was removed, just like the phone found inside Nina’s minivan, which was found abandoned on a side street smelling of rotting groceries…”
But it sounds pretty damn suspicious to me.
The legal precedent set in this case could become very important in the digital world. What if detachment from reality becomes a valid legal defense? Hopefully it doesn’t and it takes its rightful place alongside the Twinkie Defense—whithering away in pop culture obscurity (and evoking proper legislative change).
At any rate, the trial should make for at least decent reality television—here is a taste of the proceedings:
In court, Du Bois has taken pains to portray his client as an irritating nebbish. He has repeatedly asked Alameda County Circuit Court Judge Larry Goodman to order his client to stop distracting him by talking in his ear at the defense table. He called Reiser “an inconsiderate slob” in front of the jury.
Indeed Mr. Du Bois. Indeed.
Sphere: Related ContentTags: homicide, trial, Twinkie Defense