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

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Bill Ward (bill at wards.net):

> 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.

Yes, quite.

(As a reminder, I'm just passing along news summaries.  I know you're
having a dialogue with Darlene specifically, but just wanted to make
sure that is clear.)

> Now it's quite possible that Hans is innocent and his wife just ran
> off to Russia.  

Or that someone else murdered her.  An estranged husband makes a dandy
diversion.

The pretrial judge (Julie Conger) expressed her assessment that Hans's 
behaviour shortly after Nina disappeared was squirrely enough to justify
the trial proceeding, but that she did not buy, in any way, the DA's
account of the murder, as it didn't accord with the placement and
timings of people that had been established during the hearings.

(The jury at the actual trial will of course come up with their own
assessments, and we don't know yet what evidence and testimony they'll
be seeing, but Conger's remarks were interesting.)