Intellectual Property Law

Threat Level Visits Inmate No. BFPS63 aka Hans Reiser

By Ryan Singel, Kevin Poulsen, Sarah Lai Stirland, Kim Zetter, and David Kravets

DUBLIN, California -- Inside the Cellblock 9 visiting room here at Santa Rita Jail, inmate number BFPS63 looked like a man with a big hangover.

Hans Reiser may be confronting the reality that he could spend the rest of his life behind prison walls. The 44-year-old Linux programmer and developer of the ReiserFS filesystem was found guilty of first-degree murder on Monday in the disappearance of his wife. He faces a mandatory 25-to-life term.

Throughout his 6-month trial and his 11 days on the witness stand, Reiser couldn't stop talking. His attorneys urged him not to take the stand, and a juror said afterward that Reiser might have been acquitted had he exercised his constitutional right against self-incrimination.

Hans Reiser is escorted from the courtroom following a Tuesday court appearance setting his sentencing date.

By Wednesday, however, Reiser's talkativeness had evaporated.

Now he was seated in a tiny locked booth next to 10 other identical booths filled with inmates wearing identical jail jumpsuits. The prisoners were all seated on stainless steel stools, behind thick glass and metal barriers, anxiously scanning the faces of friends and loved ones entering the free side of the visiting area.

For Reiser, there was one person who would not be visiting. That was Nina Reiser, his 31-year-old wife, who he's been convicted of killing on September 3, 2006.

Maybe, he could be thinking, the visitor would be his mother or father, who both testified on his behalf. They told jurors their son was an innocent and strange man whose guilt-ridden behavior in the aftermath of Nina's disappearance can be explained by his geekishness and lack of social skills.

Perhaps it would be one or both of his criminal defense attorneys? They didn't want their client to take the stand and offer up unbelievable explanations for throwing away his car seat, hosing down the inside of that car, and trying to hide it.

Instead, Inmate No. BFPS63 did a double take at this jail just southeast of Oakland.

Threat Level had come calling with questions. Was Reiser satisfied with the fairness of the trial? Did Reiser still maintain that his wife moved back to Russia, after he accused her of embezzling from his software company Namesys? An even bigger question loomed: Where is Nina's body?

But Reiser, who was admonished by his attorney and the judge to stop rambling on the witness stand, to stop interrupting other witnesses while he was seated at the defense table -- and who provided self-damning testimony over his lawyers' objections, declined comment.

"On the advice of my attorneys," he said.

And as he hung up the telephone handset connecting us through the glass, all this reporter could think was that Hans Reiser waited too long to start heeding his lawyers' advice.

See Also:

• Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder
• Juror: Hans Reiser Planned the Murder, 'Thought It Out'
• Reiser Geek Defense Equals Cover Up to Murder
• Reiser Jury Deliberating; Readers Voting 'Not Guilty'
• Hans Reiser Jury Deliberating Fate of Linux Developer

Full post as published by Threat Level on April 30, 2008 (boomark / email).