evals@lists.merlins.org
Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com>
Thu, 12 Oct 2006 19:17:50 -0700
[Evals] Reiser "probable cause statement" and arraignment
Mutt/1.5.11+cvs20060403
<evals.lists.merlins.org>
<20061013021750.GA3624@linuxmafia.com>
http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_4480382
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/10/12/BAGR7LO3UI96.DTL
[many others]
Part of our local real-world forensics show: It seems that criminal
prosecutions involve a court standard form called a "probable cause
statement", in which somebody, e.g., a officer of Oakland PD, declares
something like this:
I, [name], upon my oath and under penalties of perjury, state as
follows:
1. I have probable cause to believe that [name] committed one or more
criminal offenses.
2. The facts supporting this belief are as follows: [large blank field]
I, knowing that false statements on this form are punishable by law,
hereby affirm that the above information is true and accurate to the
best of my knowledge, information and belief.
/s/
[printed name]
After which, that jurisdiction's DA can arraign (formally accuse) the
named party; judicial fun ensues.
This afternoon, Oakland PD Missing Persons Investigator Ryan
Gill filed a probable cause statement in Alameda County Superior
Court. Following that, the Court arraigned Hans on one unspecified type
of murder charge. He made no comment, postponed his plea until Nov. 28,
and was sent back to Santa Rita Jail without bail.
Per Gill's affadavit:
o The two children were in Nina's house on Sept. 3, the day police
believe Hans killed her.
o Police believe the kids were downstairs playing video games, and
that one of the children claimed to police that their parents had
been "possibly involved in an argument", upstairs. This was
said to be "at medium volume" and include "not nice words".
o That child had said he or she'd gone upstairs, seen his/her parents talking
in the living room, and been told by Hans to go back downstairs and
not to come back upstairs, not even to the kitchen area". (It's not
clear from the story whether these are Gill's words, or the child's.)
o When questioned, Hans "became uncooperative and advised the officer
to contact his lawyer".
o Nina's minivan, found ~3 miles away in Montclair, was unlocked, had
groceries strewn around the back seat "in disarray", and also had Nina's
cellular telephone, "dismantled (battery removed and phone flipped open)".
o Much earlier (2004) in the early part of their divorce, Hans had
"physically assaulted" Nina, and threatened to harm her "for the rest of her
life". A reporter notes that no other details or evidence of these
assertions are given, nor an explanation of what "physically assaulted"
means, here.
The news stories go on to repeat a number of other claims from the police.
It's uncertain which if any of them are attested in the probable cause
statement:
o That Hans "had about $8,900 in cash, his passport, and receipts,
including one for a siphon pump found in his car" when police
detained him on Sept. 28.
o The police found inside Hans's car "found a blood stain on a sleeping
bag stuff sack that measured one inch by three inches". After
testing, "Nina Reiser could not be excluded as its donor."
o The police "found evidence they believe shows the car was cleaned".
o When police recovered Hans's car, "It was missing the right, front
passenger seat". Car contents included "a roll of large black trash
bags and a socket wrench".
o Police had also removed a door from Hans and his mother's house,
which had some unspecified amount of blood on it that is claimed to be
Nina's.
o Inside Nina's van "were personal checks, receipts and more than $100
in cash".
o Hans was determined to have purchased copies of the books _Homicide:
A Year on the Killing Streets_ by David Simon and _Masterpieces of Murder_
by Jonathan Goodman on Sept. 8 at the Berkeley Barnes and Noble.
o Hans's alimony payment in the not-completed divorce proceedings was
claimed to be $8,000/month, per "sources close to the investigation".
_______________________________________________
Evals mailing list
Evals@lists.merlins.org
http://lists.merlins.org/lists/listinfo/evals
Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com>
Marc MERLIN <marc@merlins.org>
evals@lists.merlins.org
Thu, 12 Oct 2006 19:28:26 -0700
Re: [Evals] Reiser "probable cause statement" and arraignment
Mutt/1.5.13 (2006-08-11)
<evals.lists.merlins.org>
<20061013021750.GA3624@linuxmafia.com>
<20061013022826.GP11309@merlins.org>
<20061013021750.GA3624@linuxmafia.com>
On Thu, Oct 12, 2006 at 07:17:50PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
> http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_4480382
> http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/10/12/BAGR7LO3UI96.DTL
> [many others]
Thanks for the details. This is looking worse by the minute :(
> o Hans's alimony payment in the not-completed divorce proceedings was
> claimed to be $8,000/month, per "sources close to the investigation".
Apart from everything else: this is totally fucked up.
HTH can you get $8000/month in alimony?
Nothing justifies murder, and I'm not claiming this is what happened anyay,
but for a judge to award $8000/month from a father who isn't exactly rich
and working hard to make a struggling company succeed, isn't neither fair,
nor smart.
(especially when the mother is able to work and get a decent salary as
opposed to being a homemaker who never worked in her life and has no
marketable skills and now needs to work 1 or 2 minimum wage jobs while
trying to raise her kids)
Chris Rock has a skit about OJ where he talked about unreasonable alimony,
and where he said "I'm not saying that he should have killed her, but I
understand"
Marc
--
"A mouse is a device used to point at the xterm you want to type in" - A.S.R.
Microsoft is to operating systems & security ....
.... what McDonalds is to gourmet cooking
Home page: http://marc.merlins.org/
_______________________________________________
Evals mailing list
Evals@lists.merlins.org
http://lists.merlins.org/lists/listinfo/evals
evals@lists.merlins.org
Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com>
Thu, 12 Oct 2006 19:56:17 -0700
Re: [Evals] Reiser "probable cause statement" and arraignment
Mutt/1.5.11+cvs20060403
<evals.lists.merlins.org>
<20061013022826.GP11309@merlins.org>
<20061013025617.GQ7858@linuxmafia.com>
<20061013021750.GA3624@linuxmafia.com>
<20061013022826.GP11309@merlins.org>
Quoting Marc MERLIN (marc@merlins.org):
> Thanks for the details. This is looking worse by the minute :(
Yes, but this gets back to Royce's point: Oakland PD and the Alameda
County DA's office basically get to conduct a prosecution by press
conference for a while, hoping to score PR points and maybe if they're
lucky taint the jury -- without the risk of cross-examination -- and you
have no idea what's true but twisted absurdly out of context, what's
accurate, and what's absolute bollocks. All you know is that it's a
_story_ the police are telling about things they think are true, and
about things they believe are true -- some but not all of it attested to
in a sworn affadavit. (Officer Gill's risk of a perjury trial even
if he tells whoppers is pretty small, as long as he can defensibly
claim it's what he thought at the time.)
Consider that bit about buying two books on murder investigations.
Imagine some guy (to make this being theoretical for a moment, and not
necessarily about Hans) who hears that his estranged wife (and mother
of their children) has disappeared and is feared murdered. Police
search his house, take far away and interview his kids, pointedly
question his wife's boyfriend, attempt to question him, attempt to
question his mother, search his and his mother's house and dig up the
yard with corpse-sniffing dogs. He notices that police are tailing him
whenever he drives anywhere.
Five days later, he goes to the nearest large bookstore and buys two
non-fiction books about murder investigations.
Is this _really_ evidence that he's a murderer -- or is it just a
logical and reasonable reaction to the foregoing sequence of events?
If the police wanted to make _you_ look suspicious after weeks of 24
hour surveillance, and didn't mind citing selected allegations like the
above and spinning them to make them look sinister, I'm sure they could
make you come across as a psychotic axe-murderer, too.
> Apart from everything else: this is totally fucked up. HTH can you
> get $8000/month in alimony?
Yeah, $96,000/year subtracted from small-potato Namesys's earnings is
pretty huge. Of course, "sources close to the investigation" might be
completely wrong, or lying. Who's to say?
_______________________________________________
Evals mailing list
Evals@lists.merlins.org
http://lists.merlins.org/lists/listinfo/evals
evals@lists.merlins.org
Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com>
Sun, 15 Oct 2006 15:59:59 -0700
Re: [Evals] Reiser "probable cause statement" and arraignment
Mutt/1.5.11+cvs20060403
<evals.lists.merlins.org>
<45310286.50604@perdue.net>
<20061015225959.GB26620@linuxmafia.com>
<4f3.6999593.326235e2@aol.com> <45310286.50604@perdue.net>
Quoting Tim Perdue (tim06@perdue.net):
> Some of the pieces of 'evidence' don't seem to fit together very well
> IMHO.
>
> The missing car seat doesn't seem to make sense if she was killed in
> the house where the blood spatter was. Is he going to take his dead
> wife, wrap her in trash bags, and sit her in the front seat? Bodies
> belong in the trunk or at least the back seat.
I was thinking that, and also about Oakland PD's statement that the seat
_had_ been present in the car when Hans's was traffic-stopped by, I
think, a highway patrolman in Redwood City a week or two after Nina's
disappearance. Two things:
1. If you've just killed your estranged wife on Sept. 3 and even
_think_ you might have gotten her blood (or such) on it while disposing
of the body, wouldn't you unbolt and replace it _then_, rather than
junking and _not_ replacing it after the police have already started
tailing you and digging up your house foundations and yards?
2. FWIW, though the Redwood City officer had mentioned the seat's
presence during the traffic stop, he didn't notice anything like blood
spots.
So, the police's suggestion is that Hans was too stupid to get rid of
the seat at the time of the murder, suddenly realised his ommision weeks
later, well into the missing person / murder investigation, but then
failed to realise that he should bolt in a replacement seat if he didn't
want to call attention to his act.
Extremely inept criminal, or just somebody who for unrelated reasons
removed a car seat: Take your pick.
I've already made a note to myself that, if I ever even _think_ I've
become a "person of interest" in some murder investigation, the very first
thing I'm doing, other than giving my name and address to the police and
politely declining comment, will a long consultation with a good
criminal attorney -- asking what I should do and not do, to stay pure as
the driven snow in the eyes of the law.
I'd not want to do anything, or not do anything, that could be cited in
a probable cause statement without the judge laughing his/her ass off.
But most people are nowhere near this careful. Thus my point.
_______________________________________________
Evals mailing list
Evals@lists.merlins.org
http://lists.merlins.org/lists/listinfo/evals
evals@lists.merlins.org
Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com>
Sun, 15 Oct 2006 17:11:13 -0700
Re: [Evals] Reiser "probable cause statement" and arraignment
Mutt/1.5.11+cvs20060403
<evals.lists.merlins.org>
<ea1996ba0610151625p45596882n982f026b35e3d880@mail.gmail.com>
<20061016001113.GC26620@linuxmafia.com>
<4f3.6999593.326235e2@aol.com> <45310286.50604@perdue.net>
<20061015225959.GB26620@linuxmafia.com>
<ea1996ba0610151625p45596882n982f026b35e3d880@mail.gmail.com>
Quoting Bruce O. Benson (bbenson@gmail.com):
> Having actually been a person of interest, that had nowhere near the
> interest level of doing everything and anything possible to find the
> missing relative. Fuck a bunch of driven snow.
Yeah, well, also fuck having to worry about spending a few hundred thousand
dollars defending against a criminal charge and maybe being sent to Folsom
just because some police detective needed a suspect, you seemed a good
fit, and a DA agreed.
I'd gladly behave in a boring and non-prosecutor-usable fashion for a
couple of months, rather than risk that.
I'd also, of course, be _immensely_ interested in helping to find the
missing person -- two minutes after talking to that attorney, and in
his/her presence.
_______________________________________________
Evals mailing list
Evals@lists.merlins.org
http://lists.merlins.org/lists/listinfo/evals