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Mar 18, 2008 7:59 pm US/Pacific
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Hans Reiser: I'm An 'A--Hole,' Not A Murderer
OAKLAND (CBS 5 / AP / BCN) ―
An Oakland software programmer charged with killing his estranged wife, sparred with a prosecutor as the highly-anticipated cross-examination in his murder trial began Tuesday afternoon.
In his many days on the witness stand so far, Reiser described himself as "an asshole" several times but said repeatedly that he isn't a murderer and didn't have anything to do with Nina Resier's disappearance.
Resier said Tuesday that the idea he hasn't been forthcoming with information is "ridiculous."
The tone of the exchange was set early as Hans Reiser objected to a question from prosecutor Paul Hora regarding whether Reiser had been obliged to provide police with his car, for which they had obtained a search warrant after Nina Reiser disappeared.
"You're kind of asking me for a legal conclusion, sir," Reiser said, going on to say, "I don't have a great deal of desire to give the government all my possessions. Not my underwear (a reference to an earlier police search), not my car and definitely not my children."
"And not information about where Nina was either, right?" Hora said.
"Your question's ridiculous," Reiser replied.
But Alameda County Superior Court Judge Larry Goodman directed Reiser to answer all of Hora's questions, and Reiser reluctantly complied.
Hora, who began cross-examination after Reiser finished more than four days of direct testimony, confronted him with a series of questions about what happened Sept. 3, 2006, the afternoon then-31-year old Nina Reiser disappeared after dropping the couple's two children off at Hans Reiser's Oakland hills home.
Nina, who was born in Russia and was trained as a physician there, and Hans married in 1999 but she filed for divorce in 2004 and was awarded legal custody of their children, although he had visitation rights.
Reiser, known in programming circles for his ReiserFS computer file system, has testified that he knows nothing about her disappearance. He said after she arrived with the children on that day in 2006, the couple talked for about an hour about the children and their divorce and the last time he saw Nina Reiser she was driving away from his house.
Her body has never been found despite extensive searches in the Oakland hills and elsewhere, and the defense has suggested she may be living in her native Russia. But prosecutors said Nina Reiser would never have left her children, who ultimately were placed in the custody of Nina's mother and currently are living with her in St. Petersburg, Russia.
The prosecution claims DNA and other blood evidence points to Reiser as having murdered his wife and police arrested him in Oct. 2006.
Hora asked Reiser if the conversation on Sept. 3, 2006 had turned into a sudden quarrel.
"Did you strike her?" Hora asked.
"No, I did not," Reiser replied.
"Did you apply any physical force to her?"
"No, I did not," Reiser said.
"Did she provoke you in any manner whatsoever that afternoon?" the prosecutor asked.
"No. We did, however, have a contentious divorce that we did discuss," Reiser said.
"So you certainly didn't kill Nina in the heat of passion?" Hora said, going on to enumerate a number of other scenarios, including manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter and accidental injury.
Reiser said none of those things happened.
"I certainly didn't kill Nina," he said.
Reiser admitted that he has a black belt in judo and would have been capable of killing Nina with his bare hands part because he was bigger and stronger than she was.
But he said, "any man my size could have" killed her.
Hora showed jurors an email exchange between Hans and Nina on June 24, 2005, about their divorce proceedings and what was in the best interest of their children. Nina accused Hans of creating "a loyalty conflict" for their son by saying bad things about her.
At the end of the exchange, Hans told Nina, "Those who anger slowly cool slowly."
Hora asked Reiser, "What did you mean?"
Reiser replied, "What the words said."
In his opening statement in Reiser's lengthy trial, which began Nov. 6, Hora said Reiser may have removed the battery from his cell phone so that his movements couldn't be traced.
Hora also said that the battery in Nina's cell phone had been removed when police found the phone in her mini-van on Sept. 9, 2006, six days after she disappeared.
In his first question Tuesday, Hora got Reiser to admit that he misled jurors about the cell phone issue.
Hora asked Reiser if he was willing to admit that in direct testimony, "you willfully concealed the fact that you routinely removed the battery from your cell phone after Nina disappeared?"
Reiser said, "Yes, and I feel badly about it."
Asked by Hora if "that was a willfully false or misleading statement of material fact," Reiser agreed.
A standard instruction in criminal trials is that jurors can disregard all of a witness's testimony if he makes even one willfully false or misleading statement, so in his closing argument Hora may tell jurors to disregard Reiser's testimony that he didn't have anything to do with Nina's disappearance and didn't kill her.
Later in his cross-examination, Hora accused Reiser of "lying under oath" and Reiser admitted, "I felt it was deceptive of me."
Cross-examination of Hans Reiser was expected to continue on Wdnesday morning.
(© 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.)