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ReiserFS goes to chroot jail: Hans gets 15-to-life sentence

Filesystem developer Hans Reiser received a relatively lenient 15-to-life …

Linux filesystem developer Hans Reiser, who was found guilty earlier this year of murdering his estranged wife, received a 15-to-life prison sentence on Friday.

Hans Reiser was arrested and charged with murder in 2006 following the sudden disappearance of his wife, Nina. She vanished only days before the couple, who were in the midst of divorce proceedings, were supposed to meet in court over allegations that Reiser had failed to provide child support payments. Although police were unable to find her body, they uncovered evidence during the investigation that led them to choose Reiser as their prime suspect.

During the trial, Reiser took the stand in his own defense and attempted to convince jurors that the largely circumstantial evidence presented by the prosecution did not point to his guilt. He attributed his suspicious conduct to an idiosyncratic personality and paranoia. In the end, his erratic behavior and tenuous arguments failed to impress the jury.

After the guilty verdict was issued, Reiser made a deal with prosecutor Paul Hora, who agreed to secure him a lenient sentence in exchange for providing law enforcement officials with a complete confession and the location of the body. He admitted to strangling her to death and led police to her corpse, which was buried a mile from his home.

His cooperation earned him a downgrade from first-degree murder to second-degree murder, which means that he will be eligible for parole 15 years from the date of his initial incarceration, instead of 25 years. He has already served two years of his sentence during the trial.

According to Wired's Threat Level blog, which attended the sentencing, Reiser plans to put his company, Namesys, and the ReiserFS filesystem into a trust fund for his children. He also hopes to be able to continue programming professionally from prison so he can make some extra money for them.

Namesys, however, is likely worthless at this point. During the trial, Reiser made several unsuccessful attempts to sell the company "for pennies on the dollar" in order to fund his legal defense. The company has virtually ceased all operations, its web site has been completely dismantled, and the ReiserFS source code, which is distributed under an open source software license, has been relocated to the web site.

Now that Hans Reiser has received his sentence, the file descriptor of this sordid tale will finally be closed. His legacy, the ReiserFS filesystem, has already been replaced for various technical and philosophical reasons in the last few distributions that used it by default. Although Reiser and his project have made important contributions to the theory behind filesystems, his legacy will likely be overwritten by his crime. 

Further reading

  • Wired has published the complete, 34-page transcript of Reiser's confession.

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Channel Ars Technica