Geek Defense vs. Reality

The murder trial of local computer programmer Hans Reiser was followed closely in the tech heavy SF Bay Area. The guy's weirdness hit a certain chord with geeky types as he pursued his self-defense, what Wired Magazine called the geek defense.

In his defense, the developer of the ReiserFS filesystem took the stand and displayed himself to jurors as a classic geek: intelligent, paranoid, anti-authoritarian, socially distant and at times logical to the point of irrationality.

Whether this is truly Reiser's nature or not, the archetype is well-known in the computer programming world, and its representatives can be found in groups like the Cypherpunks, Ron Paul supporters, Slashdot users and Wired.com readers.

For the geek defense to work, the jury doesn't have to believe that the police investigating Reiser are crooked. Instead, jurors must believe that Reiser believed it himself: that the programmer started with the proposition that police == corrupt and followed it, with irrational logic, right down the rabbit hole.

How'd that work for him? Not so well. He was convicted. Oh, and today it seems he led police to his wife's body.