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Friday
THE REISER TRIAL –
Opening statements are over
HIGH THEATER AWAITS
Bill Bu Bois, ever the old pro, made (by all counts) a very effective two hour opening statement yesterday. As predicted, court is not in session today and will take up the jury trial again on Tuesday. Clever court watchers would be advised to keep an eye on the courtroom Monday because I suspect there are in limine motions to be made.
The thrust of the defense is a character contrast: Nina as highly social and manipulative and Hans as brilliant, highly unsocial, but a lamb to the slaughter. Nina, a mail order bride, whose family has ties to the old KGB (all this, so far only according to Du Bois) only married Hans to get citizenship, then had an affair with Hans' "sadomasochistic" friend. The defense will try to sell the notion that Nina intentionally set up her husband then deliberately disappeared. And that the two books on homicide (arguably useful to a prospective killer) found in Mr. Reiser’s car were only a product of the client’s “intellectual curiosity”. Note that Bu Bois was forced to concede that the books belonged to Hans, not planted by Nina (in her sinister KGB mode).
One of the classic functions of a defense opening statement is to take the sting out of the prosecution’s outline of proof, if possible startle the jury into a receptive state of mind in which every element of the DA’s proof will be treated with skepticism. Bill gets an “A” for the effort.
But like all trial lawyers, Bill Bu Bois is constrained by the firm bones of the evidence and by every word that comes from the client’s mouth on the witness stand. In my experience, when the lay of the evidence is such that the defense claims, “he was framed”, the jury will demand more than a mere technical possibility that such a thing took place. And like everything else in this case, the absence of a corpse cuts both ways.
The Reiser boy – his name is Rory we are told - is to testify Tuesday. Now that will be high theater.
As promised, I’ll try to provide an overview of the expected evidence on Monday’s post. So far it still very much looks to me that the tipping point in this case will be the intangible matter of the apparent character of the key players.
Many case details can be found on reporter Henry Lee’s blog at www.sfgate.com/ZBLS.
JBG
