The Reiser trial, taking us skiing down the slippery slope

In a murder case with no body, no crime scene, no reliable eyewitness and virtually no physical evidence, the prosecution began the trial last November with a daunting task ahead. By the time prosecutor Paul Hora rested his case February 14, he had called some 60 witnesses, but presented mostly circumstantial evidence demonstrating animus between Reiser and his wife, and suspicious behavior by the defendant following Nina's disappearance in September, 2006.

It should be obvious that in a case like this, where you have a case that rests entirely on circumstantial evidence that you are going to run a much greater risk of having an innocent person sent to prison or executed. When I hear claims that society has "morally evolved," I often find myself looking at our legal system and realizing just how much more similar we are to our ancestors than we like to think. The odds of securing justice in this case are only slightly higher than the odds of securing your financial future in a casino. Ironically, the much-maligned Old Testament law does not allow anyone to be executed based on circumstantial evidence. Truth is, had the prosecution's main witness, Nina Reiser's lover, not been such a shifty son of a bitch, the prosecutor probably could have gotten Reiser executed. So much for "moral evolution."

**UPDATE**: The jury admits that there was basically no hard evidence to convict him. Rather, they went after him based on flimsy circumstantial evidence, and their gut feeling that a man who passionately hates his ex-wife and speaks ill of her after her murder must clearly be suspicious.