Apr 7, 2008 5:59 pm US/Pacific
Reiser: 'Being Railroaded' In Oakland Murder Trial
OAKLAND (CBS 5 / AP / BCN) ―
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Hans Reiser as he enters an Alameda County courtroom recently.
AP
Oakland software programmer Hans Reiser complained that he was "being railroaded" as he wrapped up testimony in his murder trial Monday after spending 10 days on the witness stand.
The 44-year-old Reiser is charged with murdering his estranged wife, Nina Reiser, who vanished after dropping the couple's two children off at his Oakland Hills house on Sept. 3, 2006. Reiser said Nina Reiser left the house alive.
Reiser told jurors Monday that he is good at communicating scientifically, but not socially, leading people to misunderstand him.
Reiser's time on the stand has been marked by frequent rebukes from Alameda County Superior Court Judge Larry Goodman for rambling testimony and failure to answer questions directly.
Reiser said while he may not communicate well, he's not capable of murder.
In his last day on the witness stand, Reiser again insisted that, "I didn't kill Nina" and accused several prosecution witnesses of committing perjury.
Nina Reiser, who was 31 when she disappeared, and Hans Reiser met in Russia, where she was born and trained as a physician, and where he often spent time doing business for his computer file system company.
They married in 1999, but she filed for divorce and separated from him in 2004. Nina was awarded legal custody of their children, but Hans had visitation rights. Their divorce case, which Hans Reiser has admitted was acrimonious, was still pending when she disappeared.
Even though Nina's body has never been found, in October of 2006 Hans Reiser was charged with murdering her because prosecutors believe that
DNA and other blood evidence proves that he killed her.
The defense has said that Nina may still be alive and be in hiding somewhere, possibly in Russia.
The last witness in the marathon trial, which began Nov. 6, will be an Alameda County sheriff's technician who will spend this week reviewing 2 million files and 50 million lines of text on two hard drives that Reiser removed from one of his home computers shortly after Nina disappeared.
Reiser testified that he removed the hard drives because he didn't want Oakland police to be able to look at them. He said he gave them to his defense lawyer, who turned them over to the court last week.
Closing arguments will begin at some point next Monday and could go
for as long as five days before jurors finally begin their deliberations, the judge said.
(© CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. The Associated Press and Bay City News contributed to this report.)
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