[svlug] Hans Reiser charged, pleads innocent, seeks speedy trial

[Bill Ward]

On 3/26/07, Darlene Wallach <freewatermelon at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have attended trials in Santa Clara County
> involving law enforcement either beating unarmed
> civilians or killing unarmed civilians. I attended
> everything that was open to the public. The system
> is corrupt to the core. The jury does NOT get all
> the facts. I presume Hans Reiser is innocent. I
> assume he would very much appreciate any/all
> support in the courtroom. I know I would!

I don't doubt that for a moment.  I know there's a lot of corruption,
innocent people get convicted all the time, etc.  For all I know this
is just as much of a terrible miscarriage of justice as the cases you
cite.  And we all should care more about such things.  I get that.
But it's not really relevant for a Linux user group, is it?

I'm just asking if the fact that he wrote a filesystem that works on
Linux is enough to deserve the support of a Linux user group in a case
that has nothing to do with said filesystem?  Maybe so, maybe not.  I
just wanted to pose the question.  It's not like the Adobe vs. Dmitri
thing a few years ago, where there was a clear relevance to Linux.  I
hate to sound cold-hearted, but if I opened my heart to every sad case
of a criminal being wrongly prosecuted, I'd spend all my days and
nights crying over it.

Now as Rick mentioned elsewhere in the thread, he knows the guy
personally to some extent, and would hate to be a bad judge of
character.  But don't we hear that all the time about murderers?  "He
seemed like such a regular guy, I can't believe he coudl do such a
thing," the neighbors would say.

Now it's quite possible that Hans is innocent and his wife just ran
off to Russia.  I wouldn't know either way.  Luckily, I'm not on that
jury.  I hope whatever the outcome is, he gets the fairest trial
possible in our current system.