‘Serial’ case: Adnan Syed released, conviction tossed | Hacker News Reader

‘Serial’ case: Adnan Syed released, conviction tossed

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224 pointsdjoldman161 comments

Serial was blowout success, but flawed in many ways. For me, chief amongst these is not updating the podcast with new (and potentially exculpatory) information as it came to light over the years.

What really progressed the case was the Undisclosed podcast [0]. Rabia Chaudry, a childhood friend of Adnan and an attorney, first took Adnan's story to Sarah Koenig, who documented it in the Serial podcast. But in Undisclosed, Rabia and her colleagues Colin Miller and Susan Simpson dissected the case with scalpel, found new evidence, and ultimately set the groundwork for today's result.

Undisclosed stuck with it, and have covered other similar cases. Their twitter [1] says they've had 400m+ downloads, which is more than Serial, albeit over many series.

If you liked Serial, or even if you didn't but do like True Crime, go check out Undisclosed.

If long podcasts are not your thing, HBO's The Case Against Adnan Syed [2] is quite information rich across just 4 episodes.

[0] https://undisclosed-podcast.com/episodes/season-1/ [1] https://twitter.com/Undisclosedpod [2] https://www.hbo.com/the-case-against-adnan-syed

I tried a bit of Undisclosed but it was... too much for me. In Serial, I was able to keep all the details of the case straight in my head, but Undisclosed went too far.

That said, their objective wasn't to entertain and I respect that.

Wow, lucky kid that his case got this much attention. It can't be the only ambiguous case out there.

There are many thousands more.

He's a 41 year old man now.

Would Undisclosed have even covered the case were it not for Serial?

One of the hosts of Undisclosed is Rabia Chaudry, who was a childhood friend of Adnan Syed. So really what you are asking here, is whether Ms Chaudry would still have created a podcast without the success of Serial - which is an unanswerable question (but I'd guess yes).

You're quite right about my wording. Agree it's unanswerable but I was also implying the answer would be no. Serial opened a door - for further investigation into the case, and for using a podcast to explore it - that may have remained closed otherwise.

I admire Chaudry but Undisclosed was just a little too much for me. Obviously, dismantling the faulty cell "ping" evidence was great work, but a lot of the content and theories seemed to veer into "throw everything but the kitchen sink at em" territory.

But obviously there was a post-Serial audience and hunger for that kind of focus. Serial may have been the catalyst that brought huge national attention to Adnan, but Rabia et al. deserve top credit for being faithful and persistent advocates all these years.

> but a lot of the content and theories seemed to veer into "throw everything but the kitchen sink at em" territory.

In theory, all that should have been necessary is reasonable doubt, so dismantling multiple theories is useful.

I was uneasy with "Serial". Too much obsession I thought with the accused, scant discussion of the murdered. It was just a sad, dark place I felt it was asking me to be a voyeur of. But, yeah, I guess I don't like "true crime" entertainment.

The victim's family refused to participate or provide anything for Serial to use, so they (respectfully) didn't dig up much else about her.

The producers of the podcast were very upfront about wanting to give airtime to understanding Lee as a person, but also not feeling like they had her family's blessing or other verifiable information to go on.

With the caveat that I do not like/watch/listen to any true crime precisely because of the voyeuristic aspect of it (I’d much rather read, listen to or watch a fictional crime story), I don’t see it necessarily as a negative that a story didn’t get into the victim when the story is about the judicial system.

The victim’s story is absolutely minimal here, and in fact, using their background, etc is a key tool used by the prosecution to mislead the jury.

Whether the victim was a straight A student or a straight F student has absolutely no bearing on whether the accused killed them (unless the motive is jealousy over their grades or something like that), and yet, the prosecution will present the former (and the defense the latter) in fairly effective bids to manipulate the jury.

This is why I stopped listening to Serial as well. The prospect of listening to details of someone's death as entertainment felt morally problematic to me.

I hated Serial so goddamn much. I honestly felt like it did a terrible job of establishing much reasonable doubt and it just sort of... ends? Would you still recommend Undisclosed?

No - it is much worse!

> I honestly felt like it did a terrible job of establishing much reasonable doubt and it just sort of... ends?

The goal of Serial wasn't to establish reasonable doubt. She was asked to look into the case, and she's reporting what she found. There was hope that there would be some conclusion, but it wasn't the expectation when she began the story.

As for the ending, what exactly would you want? I thought it was clear from the outset that it would be an open ended investigation, and the early episodes were released before she was done with all the interviews, etc. That it may end without a conclusion was kind of the default expectation. That a reporter would be able to dig deep and either exonerate or damn him is closer to the realm of fantasy. His case was not a slam dunk in either direction.

I'm not mad that Serial didn't provide doubt or prove guilt, though I am somewhat frustrated that the reporter seemed to have so much doubt that (in my opinion) wasn't justified by what she presented in the show, what I am mad about is that it largely amounted to just several hours of someone saying "Maybe he is guilty, but also maybe not?" without any real narrative or arc or progression. I felt like the story ended exactly where it started with no real meaningful change in how the reporter felt, the facts of the case, or even without giving us a particularly compelling biography of Adnan.

Everyone made such a fuss over this podcast and in the end absolutely nothing happens in it on any of the axis that could have been interesting and it felt like such a waste of my time after I finished it

It's been a long time since I've listened to the show so I may be way off here, but it did demonstrate that the prosecutor's timeline was flawed, the cell phone data was unreliable, and that Syed's counsel overlooked a potential alibi witness.

In any case Serial was a landmark in the fields of true crime and podcasting, so it holds some merit as a historical piece if nothing else.

Not listened to Undisclosed, but I did read a fair amount of Rabia Chaudry's book, and to be blunt, it was very off-putting. She was critical of any objective take/perspective. Her presentation was basically the Truth: Adnan Syed is innocent. Anything that supports that statement was accepted relatively uncritically, and anything that didn't was always suspect.

BTW, she's not merely a friend - she's his relative.

> BTW, she's not merely a friend - she's his relative.

I don't know that she is. She describes herself as a family friend. Her brother was friends with Adnan. I'm sure they now all consider themselves "family", but I couldn't find any statement declaring blood relation. Perhaps in her book she goes further than I could find on the interweb.

Seems my memory was off. I looked at the original source where I had read it, and it also says "friend".

    Exculpatory - tending to clear from a charge of fault or guilt.

Serial left me thinking that Syed was probably guilty, or at the very least the case was a close call. The practical truth is that if we required this level of scrutiny for every conviction to stick, we’d multiply by an order of magnitude or two the number of guilty criminals who cannot be convicted.

> The practical truth is that if we required this level of scrutiny for every conviction to stick, we’d multiply by an order of magnitude or two the number of guilty criminals who cannot be convicted.

While reducing by an order of magnitude or two the number of innocent people being sent to prison.

"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." --William Blackstone (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio)

The standard for criminal conviction is "beyond a reasonable doubt."

There is no possible way Adnan Syed's conviction reached that standard.

A witness (Jay) testified at the trial that he saw Hae Min’s dead body in the trunk of Syed’s car. He stuck by that testimony when he was interviewed later: https://theintercept.com/2014/12/29/exclusive-interview-jay-...

Forget the feels and focus on Bayesian probability. Hae had left Syed and she winds up dead shortly thereafter. Just statistically, it’s almost always the ex husband/boyfriend that killed her. Jay’s testimony clinches it.

Probability isn't beyond reasonable doubt though. Like I finished the Serial podcast thinking Adnan probably was at least involved in her death, but I still think "just convict the boyfriend/husband based on a single testimony and probability" is a lower standard than I'd like.

"Beyond a reasonable doubt" can be expressed as a statistical probability. Most people put it at 98-99% probability. I think there's a 99% chance that Syed killed Hae.

Riiiiiight but "Well statistically it's the boyfriend/ex boyfriend so lets lock him up" is different to "Well there is evidence that makes us think it probably was the ex boyfriend in this specific case"

Is it possible that Jay could have given false testimony in exchange for unrelated drug charges being dropped?

Why would he stick to the story all these years later?

> chief amongst these is not updating the podcast with new (and potentially exculpatory) information as it came to light over the years

I don’t think it makes sense to hold a show perpetually responsible to keep producing content to keep it up-to-date.

Serial was flawed because they didn't re-record the episodes as new information came out? That's an odd take

When I finished the podcast I was not at all convinced of his innocence. For me was 50/50 or even 60/40 against innocence. Just my takeaway/opinion of course..

EDIT However, reading both of the AP News articles on this now, it does serve to sway me more toward his innocence. Crazy that the prosecutors withheld this at that time.. Par for the course unfortunately I guess.

Seems as though the SA office is trying to do the right thing now, and appears they will continue investigating, and hopefully if appropriate, may deem that the next best step is to drop his case fully and prosecute the other now-uncovered suspects.

I remember feeling similarly. I also don't remember feeling as though he was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

> guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

How the American Legal System is supposed to work, not as a way to punish people who 'look guilty'.

I think the wrong bar is being evaluated, its important to get the correct person off the streets. I was not satisfied - and am still not satisfied - that any of this is occurring. So that exempts Adnan Syed as well and means he should be released.

> For me was 50/50 or even 60/40 against innocence.

Totally, but the standard for conviction is "beyond a reasonable doubt". By that standard, a 40% chance of innocence means "not guilty". I don't know whether the law has ever translated "reasonable doubt" into a specific percentage, but I have to imagine it's less than 10%?

I don’t disagree. I guess it’s kind of like an additional psychological bias that one plays into when he’s already been convicted and in prison.

Alexander Volokh wrote a tongue-in-cheek law review article titled "N Guilty Men" that tried to quantify that percentage:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=11412

It's obviously subjective, but a YouGov poll in the UK found that 47% of pelt required 99% accuracy or higher to be considered beyond reasonable doubt. Only 12% set the bar below 90%.

Source: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/1...

20% said they would require 100% certainty, which is equivalent to stating that not even the most obviously guilty person in existence deserves to be convicted. I'd posit that this is more so evidence that the general population's knowledge of probability is abysmal.

Can you statistically evaluate such a thing? Its all black swan.

If you look at it in a bayesian way this is not an issue. "I can't put a number to it" would definitely be a legitimate answer, but "100%" is just wrong.

Or their concept of “certainty” or “doubt” is different from yours.

I'm not even sure what that is really supposed to mean. If 100% precludes the potential of an event with infinitesimal likelihood (mass delusion, possession by ghosts, etc.), then as I said nobody ever gets convicted.

Otherwise, any "concept of certainty" that uses "100%" to refer to something that might not occur, is either gravely misusing mathematical notation or self-contradictory.

While technically correct this is obviously not how people speak. If you ask someone 'what is the percent chance that drinking this glass of water I just got out of the tap in New York City will kill me within a few seconds?' They would respond '0%', even though by a mathematical definition that is not true.

People generally consider context for their choice of words. Alongside 100% they were also given options such as 99.9999999%, it's clear that 100% in this case is not just used as "very likely".

I didn't know they were given specific options.

I was 50/50 after the podcast but Jay's interview after the podcast heavily swayed me towards Adnan's guilt.

Jay was't a suspect, but definitely knew about it and where the body was.

He gave conflicting testimony to the police because he was dealing drugs out of his grandmother's house and didn't want himself or his family in prison. (Using these hostile testimonies to undermine the official one entered in court is very misleading) But he had no reason to continue lying after all these years.

I don’t remember whether Jay had an alibi. Did he? One question I always had is why he was not a suspect.

I’ve always had that as a question as well. I never remember hearing an alibi or why he wasn’t a suspect.

Then again, it is most often the boyfriend. I think when I initially listened to Serial I didn't realize that fact to quite the degree I know it now. That doesn't make him legally guilty, but it does seem to be the Bayesian center of likelihood.

She had a different boyfriend when she was murdered, so by your logic shouldn't it be Clinedinst in prison and Syed free?

Well, that's a pretty extreme interpretation of what I said. It's just one piece of bayesian evidence, not a 100% determiner. Are there any witnesses who claim that this other individual killed her? Because there is one for Adnan. Also, it seems like a recent ex is probably more dangerous than a new lover.

Isn't there a rather large, obvious reason for Jay to continue lying after all these years?

I think that's part of the recipe.. All the editing and cleverness of This American Life, a crime and then enough open questions to let you feel one way or the other and wanting more.

I don't remember my exact feelings on his guilt or not but I felt really strongly that the system hadn't worked correctly. Makes you wonder how many less charming guys are in prison because they didn't get a fair defense. The other thing that I also strongly remember was that the prosecution, the victim's family and some of the police were 100% convinced of his guilt. I don't know if it's good or bad but Serial showed that clearly and it created doubt; there was clearly some evidence that suggested misconduct but then the state steadfastly seemed to ignore that.

I don't know what it is, maybe suburban white man fear or something but being wrongly convicted of something like that is a strong and resonating fear for some of us.

'Serial' was the podcast that launched all podcasts. It was the defining podcast. It isn't that it was hyper monetized or incredibly financially successful; simply it showed that the audience was there.

It has over 340 million listens as of 2018. With this eviction of conviction, I suspect that number will be over a billion.

It is fitting that it has come full circle and fulfilled the ultimate purpose of investigative journalism: to shine a light on a small part of the world that otherwise would be ignored... and maybe right a wrong.

If interested, there was an HBO documentary that covered his case after Serial.

“The Case Against Adnan Syed 2019 ‧ Documentary ‧ 1 season” on HBO max

> 'Serial' was the podcast that launched all podcasts

Sorry, but this statement is objectively wrong. Podcasts have existed for close to 20 years in the way we understand them today.

Serial may have helped to popularize podcasts, but in no way was original.

I think that commenter may have not been that literal and meant something more along the lines of "made podcasts more mainstream in an exponential manner." I know plenty of people in my life who weren't podcast people at that time but were constantly talking about it or walking around saying "mail... keemp?" as a joke. (A reference to Serial)

They’re using hyperbole as a device. It’s not meant to be “literally” true.

Indeed you’re very right! Not the original, but Serial contained all the elements that made a podcast mainstream and proved it out as a real business. Prior to it they were indie.

Serial is the first podcast I can recall being referenced in mainstream network TV pop culture. SNL did skits about it. It was mentioned in dialog on other shpws. BoJack's girlfriend used it as her ringtone.

It was everywhere in a way no other podcast had been previously.

Maybe Serial launched the modern commerically produced crime podcast format, but I'd give a shout out to The History of Rome by Mike Duncan as the "defining podcast." It started quite a bit earlier (2007) and proved that there is a big audience (65 million downloads) for obscure topics covered in depth. Serial spun out of This American Life, so it had some audience to begin with, but THOR is truly "let me put this out there and see if anyone listens." It's also interesting to see how apologetic Mike Duncan was when he introduced monetization through direct to consumer ads, and this is now the standard monetization model.

An absolute gem. I’ve listened all the way through twice.

Have you listened to Revolutions, his more recent podcast? Also great — and there are ten seasons, each about a different revolution, in-depth.

Back in 2006 I wrote an "Internet Radio Recording" app: https://sourceforge.net/projects/radiorec/ based on the interface of DVRs on TVs at the time.

It's interesting that people thought to put live streamed radio online before just dumping the mp3s.

Karl Pilkington was eating a knob at night a decade prior.

I could eat a knob at night.

The Ricky Gervais Podcast, on the original iPod. The kids will never know how magical that was. Monkey news, Karl's inventions, "None of this now needed, baby dead".

Still the funniest "3 people just having a chat and being funny" podcast in existence. Cumtown doesn't hold a candle to it imo

Serial definitely was an inflection point in the history of podcasts.

Serial is the original true crime podcast, and IMO, nobody since has done it as well as they did.

And holy shit. What an incredible piece of news. I think, though, that if the state vacates a conviction, then they lose the right to prosecute you again. Being let out and then having to relive your nightmare trial with the possibility of going back? That’s sadistic by any definition.

They haven't set aside the conviction - just released Adnan Syed from prison until the competent authority can decide whether they want to retry him or look elsewhere for the killers.

Basically, the equivalent of declaring a mistrial after the prisoner has been convicted and sent to prison. Adnan is out of prison but under GPS monitoring for now.

In the UK there is a limited Double Jeopardy. If they conclude that there's significant new evidence, they can re-try you for certain serious crimes, including murder, rape and armed robbery with their new evidence. There is an extraordinary case where somebody was tried, convicted, had the conviction quashed (for procedural reasons) then was tried again and convicted again twenty years later.

This assertion has always been strange to me. This American Life was releasing their episodes as podcasts for something like 7 years before they decided to do Serial. Shows like Adam Corolla, WTF with Marc Maron, the BS Report, Joe Rogan Experience, etc were all very successful before Serial. Major media companies like NPR, CBC, BBC were releasing podcasts and dedicated podcast companies like TWiT.tv had existed for years. I think you can kind of credit Serial for popularizing true crime podcasts but it gets way too much credit for the success for the medium.

I listened to at least one proto-podcast back in the pre-iPod era of the late 90s: Pointless Audio with Kevin Pereira. It's still available in some form: https://youtu.be/XXqxUAzt6u4

In fairness I think Bill Simmons, Joe Rogan, Marc Maron and Adam Carolla have had their praise for moving podcasts along. Same with This American Life.

Serial was different, though in that it was a multi episode look at something. This American life had segments and still had to be designed with the radio listener in mind - who was probably only in the car for 30 min. I don't think Serial is that uniquely good - but it was different. We just are kinda dumb for having all of "podcasts" under one term instead of a bunch of genre terms.

You could also just call them “radio shows”. It’s a weird thing that the company that made iPods for a few years defined that term and we have gone with it since.

As for the earlier part of your comment - it’s there in the name, “serial”. That was the experiment. But there have been serialized radio shows back when radio was the leading medium. We just don’t remember that time.

What I think is key here is that these people had formal experience and mentorship in doing radio. Lots of it. To them it was just applying that expertise to something we call something different due to shifts in distribution tech.

Well, they're not really 'radio' either. 'Audio series' might be a better generic term, but for better or for worse, 'podcasts' has stuck.

> It’s a weird thing that the company that made iPods for a few years defined that term and we have gone with it since.

Apple didn't coin the term. People started using the word in 2004, but iTunes didn't have podcast support until 2005.

Oh this I did not know! I guess they absorbed the trend right when everyone was buying an iPod and it all merged for some like me.

Serial didn't create the demand for podcasts — that had already existed, as you say — but it proved out that demand, in a way that made advertisers take notice; made it possible to commercialize podcasting; and so led to an explosion in the number of podcasts, because it was now a predictable media business model that the stodgier kinds of investor could get behind.

> 'Serial' was the podcast that launched all podcasts.

It feels like we were listening to This American Life in podcast form in the car for at least five years before Serial even existed. And Serial was being marketed on TAL during what I'd describe as TAL's slow decline from popularity, with Ira personally shilling for Serial and teasing the first entire episode on TAL, IIRC.

If either of these were responsible for launching the modern podcast era, I'd point at TAL, not Serial.

The difference is that TAL is a radio show that was also distributed as podcast.

Serial was only a podcast.

Sure, except I never listened to TAL on the radio. We would download a bunch of the episodes into someone's mp3 player (later a phone) and listen to them in the car through a tape deck headphone adapter.

That's the era I lived through, the transition to mp3s and ipods becoming commonplace, and TLA was right there with us. They are called podcasts after all, this is pre-streaming parlance.

I don't think it's fair to be discredit TAL's role in the shift to podcasting just because they were a radio show first.

Serial basically arrived when everyone was streaming everything, that's pretty late in terms of podcasts. Serial didn't even exist in the era of iPods and Zens...

Podcasts have been a thing since the mid-2000s or so. The name comes from the fact that you were supposed to download them and listen to them on your iPod. It may be a popular, influential podcast that established norms for the true-crime podcast format, but calling it the podcast that launched all podcasts is like calling JavaScript the language that launched all languages.

C/C++ were the languages that launched all languages. Serial is like C. It’s not the first language, but it’s the most important modern language.

I'll be honest and say I found the podcast rather frustrating.

Koenig was clearly an outsider to the legal system, and had the benefit of telling a different, big long narrative. But at the end of it, I don't know if it was any more or less truthful than the first one. It was still built on old memories, circumstantial evidence, and bias (she even admitted she only started the investigation because she found Adnan so charming).

And the interview with Jay after the podcast especially scrambled my thoughts - I found him really compelling too! And there was a lot of stuff the podcast left out without telling you! Over 12 episodes!

So in the end, I honestly don't know about Adnan! I don't know if the case against him was actually weak or if there was just enough of an army of hole pokers who could have poked through anything.

> One of the suspects had threatened Lee, saying “he would make her (Ms. Lee) disappear. He would kill her,” according to the filing.

> “Given the stunning lack of reliable evidence implicating Mr. Syed, coupled with increasing evidence pointing to other suspects, this unjust conviction cannot stand,” said Assistant Public Defender Erica Suter, Mr. Syed’s attorney and, Director of the Innocence Project Clinic. “Mr. Syed is grateful that this information has finally seen the light of day and looks forward to his day in court.”

> The suspects were known persons at the time of the original investigation and were not properly ruled out nor disclosed to the defense, prosecutors said.

source: https://apnews.com/article/adnan-syed-conviction-baltimore-p...

I think this is enough to justify letting him get out and they can decide if they want to do another trial. That's a pretty important miss on the prosecutors originally and the other suspects should have been ruled out before focusing all on him.

EDIT: Also, on a personal level and in a normative sense, it's been 20 years and he should be allowed to re-enter society and of all the crazy people we let back, he's probably one of the safer choices for rehabilitation.

I would love to hear from an actual neutral legal party if that's actually the case. Adnan had a motive and a strong testimony against him from an accomplice who's story had checked out. Is it actually a big miss to not rule out every possible suspect?

But on your broader point, I largely agree that anyone freed from unnecessarily long and potentially unjust prison sentences is a good thing.

> "accomplice who's story had checked out"

I'm not sure that's how i would put it. He changed his story several times until it fit.

The first few times police interviewed him he thought they were going to go after him on drug charges. After he had a plea deal and a lawyer his story was pretty straight. He even pointed out where the evidence was. And this is the testimony that was offered to the jury and scrutinized on cross examination.

The entire sub-plot in the podcast about his testimony was somewhat misleading on Serial's part.

I don't find that to be a very convincing argument. His story could have become more consistent because he stopped lying, or it could have become more consistent because he had more practice telling his lie. Lying is hard at first, but once you've gone through a few takes and once you have the advice of a lawyer to keep you from saying anything stupid, it becomes much easier to tell a coherent story.

Jay's story "checked out" because it matched the cell phone evidence and also the testimony of another witness. The problem was that the cell phone evidence was later proven to be completely misinterpreted, and the other witness's testimony apparently misremembered the day (it was something along the lines of her being in class at a certain key time). Without those, it sounds like there's nothing left for his story to rest on.

We're forgetting that Jay knew the location of key evidence.

The cellphone data was only "misinterpreted" in that it was not a slam dunk, but we can still conclude they don't line up with Adnan's testimony for the day.

> witness's testimony apparently misremembered the day

... based entirely on a random interview about what another person remembered 20 years later.

I believe Adnan is factually guilty. Undoubtedly there were significant procedural failures and biases that played into his conviction, and those are a black mark on the justice system. But today is a tragedy for Hae Min Lee's family. Adnan could very likely be a redeemable man who acted unfathomably during a crime of passion. But at present he is an unrepentant murderer. How very sad.

He is not "factually guilty". The cell tower ping evidence was basically all the "science" the state had against him, and it was the foundation for the constantly evolving and self-contradictory claims of the state's key witness, Jay Wilds.

I don't know what Jay's deal is (seems very implausible that he was the murderer), but with the cell tower pings being all but useless for tracking location, then Jay's stories are just circumstantial claims.

(again, it can't be emphasized enough how nonsensical and mutually contradictyory all of Jay's stories were over the years)

We can't just disregard Jay's testimony -- he led police to Hae's car.

He discusses some inconsistencies here: https://theintercept.com/2014/12/29/exclusive-interview-jay-...

Edit: A Reddit comment claims to identify more inconsistencies in the interview: https://www.reddit.com/r/serialpodcast/comments/2xytci/comme...

How Jay came to know where the car was parked is indeed confusing -- because it's hard to believe how the cops could know about it before him, which would presumably be a prerequisite for the cops conspiring with Jay to frame Adnan.

But according to the state's motion to vacate[0], the car was parked near the home of one of the current alternate suspects, i.e. one of the suspects whose existence the cops and district attorney for unknown reasons, illegally withheld from the defense. So I can't explain why Jay would know where Hae's car was parked, but that mystery is ultimately superseded by the mystery of the police's handling of the alternate suspects.

[0] https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/crime/bs-md-ci-cr-adnan-sy...

I gotta do my due diligence and source this but I think there was a podcast called the "truth and justice podcast" that found a interview with the head of police before Jays testimony that said the police had located the vehicle and were withholding the location from the public at the time.

This means the police already knew about the whereabouts of Hae's car before Jay. This part gets slightly more conspiratorial but the police could have lead Jay to the car instead of the opposite.

Agreed, it's possible. Though we'd also need to explain why Jay is still sticking to a made-up "I buried a murdered woman" story decades later. And find the "real killer" who happened to murder Hae the same day Adnan loaned Jay his car and phone...

(PS: You can bypass the paywall to read parts 2 and 3 of Jay's interview by disabling Javascript.)

I have changed my comment to add 'I believe'. But I do think that if you simply look at the basic evidence you can only logically conclude that he is guilty. Certainly Jay has tried to paint himself in the best light possible, but he admitted to helping Adnan and took the cops to the car. Adnan admits to being with Jay on the day of the murder. This alone means that if either Jay or Adnan are telling any form of truth, then he is guilty. While obviously not evidence enough for conviction, the fact alone that Adnan never tried to call or page Hae after the day of the murder, even though he had continued to reach out continuously prior, has no other explanation in my view.

> failures and biases that played into his conviction

People are playing this up both ways.

Had he not been convicted it would have been another example of police ignoring crimes against minorities.

Regardless of the outcomes, it seems like investigators did a pretty okay job of focusing on whodunit. The only mark against them was that due to fallout from the war on drugs, their primary witness was afraid to talk to them and two other key suspects weren't provided to the court because of pending drug investigations.

If there was a failure in the justice system then he is not "factually guilty". That's the entire point. You either get a fair trial or you are innocent.

For a hilarious lampooning of true crime podcasts, check out The Onion’s podcast “A Very Fatal Murder”.

Truly a great piece of satire: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-very-fatal-murder/id...

Not a podcast, but there's also the Netflix mockumentary series "American Vandal".

American Vandal may be my favorite piece of satire ever made. It mocks true crime shows... by being an extremely good true crime show. It demonstrates well that it's not the content, but the presentation that makes it so compelling.

Well, not actually "true".

'Only Murders in the Building' starring Martin Short, Steve Martin, and Selena Gomez playing podcasters in a Hulu show is also amazing.

Only Murders in the Building is like American Vandal meets Agatha Christie.

I'm wondering if anyone here has real insight into the economics of his situation at this point. On one hand it seems like his life has been ruined by the state after spending 20+ years in prison, costing his family everything in legal fees, and forever being associated with this murder. I feel like anyone wrongfully convicted (or even just accused) should have some serious recourse but I suspect that there isn't any. On the other hand, can he realistically make out better than most of us (i.e. turning this into a mid-7 or 8-figure fortune and living happily ever after) by getting book / movie / TV / speaking deals now that he's out?

I don't have real insight but I have real hope that your sentiment comes true at least in part, and that Adnan is both exonerated and compensated appropriately. Listening to Serial from episode 1 you cannot ignore the fact that it wouldn't be compelling (or wouldn't have been researched or serialised) if the suspect's guilt was clear and unequivocal.

No.

Going to prison in the United States ruins your life.

Restitution for a wrongful conviction varies dramatically on a state-by-state basis.

In some states you need a ruling of actual innocence by a court, not just vacation of conviction, to get compensation. That high bar can make it impractical to get compensation. Other states have special boards or commissions that review vacated convictions. Prosecutors declining to re-file charges or even recommending vacation of the conviction is usually a really good sign though - commissions/boards and courts still give them a lot of deference.

The amount varies but federally it is $50k for each year incarcerated. CA is around 50k. WA pays 200k. NV pays 50k/yr for up to 10, 75k/yr for 10+. Some states and the feds have adders if you were on death row: +100k/yr federal, CO +50k/yr on death row. Others have adders for every year on parole or having to register as a sex offender (KS/WA +25k). And some states offer tuition assistance (or full ride), healthcare, counseling services, and so forth.

As for this case... Maryland used to require a pardon from the Governor or a "writ of actual innocence" so in practice it was impossible to get compensation. From 1984-2020 the Board of Public Works only compensated 5 people and from 2004-2019 they didn't accept a single claim. But they changed the process in 2021 to make it easier... now an Administrative Law Judge considers the circumstances and the compensation pays the daily median wage for each day in prison (around 41k/yr). Maryland also now gives healthcare coverage, job training, housing assistance, and so on.

I forgot the exact numbers we used for this exercise but we did a standard hypothesis test on wrongful convictions in my stat 101 class and even mathematically, only 95% convictions are “rightful”. So essentially there is 5% innocent people. The 5% mainly consist of the poor and/or non-white.

To me this proves the party with the loudest voice and most money wins in the long run, or the squeaky wheel gets the grease. They just made a big enough stink for long enough that eventually someone caved in. I followed the podcast and definitely didn’t think the case that he was innocent was very strong. Reminds me of The Staircase, but with more social justice and identity politics to really muddy the conversation.

The victim’s family wasn’t even given a heads up or time to prepare and find a lawyer to speak at the hearing.

Does anyone know if the new evidence exonorates him or if it simply proved that the case and trial were mishandled?

Only procedural, no exoneration at all.

Brady violation by original prosecution team (they did not let the defense know of other evidence). The current prosecution did the right thing.

He is not exonerated. The state has 30 days to decide whether they want to try him again, and I believe are waiting on some DNA test results to make that determination.

I'm so curious as to what evidence there is or isn't. I hope he is re-tried unless there is some bombshell evidence, as I believe he is guilty from what I know as a laymen consumer of the media content..

The State’s Attorney (Mosby) doesn't want to admit to any Brady violations because that might open the door for Syed to seek compensation from the state for the time he served. I expect there will be more drama about this.

I never understand the lack of humility by prosecutors and often the victim's families. People's confidence in people's guilt is just so high, I don't understand it.

People always want blood and will latch on to the most likely choice. I'll say that we should expect the victim's family to act rational though. Tragedy makes emotions run high. We should hold ourselves accountable though.

It's mind blowing that some people admit the case was funny and still call for his head. If there's a hole in the case, that's not enough for me.

Wondering if they have those 2 other now uncovered suspects in custody? If not, would they not now skidaddle at the soonest??

Just goes to show what can happen when you get featured in a viral hit podcast. That’s a great outcome for him but I shudder to think about what it tells us about our judicial system.

There was a similar case in Italy regarding its own version of the 90s satanic panic, which led to dozens of kids separated from their parents, parents committing suicide from shame and grief, an overall travesty of justice. Until Pablo Trincia made a podcast out of it and conducted an investigation the case was considered closed. The podcast entirely overturned it two decades later, reuniting many of the kids (now adults) with their legally estranged parents and sending a bunch of people to jail for intentional malpractice: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/polis/2021/08/04/investigative-podca...

Serial is still one of the best true crime podcasts, because the case has so much more underneath the surface.

One example is this podcast going over a cleared suspects apparently falsified alibi records (his mom who was a manager at his store chain and may have doctored his work record to prevent police going after him): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l6dApX2rIY

The main summary points are here, taken from this reddit page (which links to the primary sources) https://www.reddit.com/r/serialpodcast/comments/xea7pu/here_...:

1. Two new suspects that were not properly ruled out.

2. One of the suspects had a) threatened to kill the victim and b) provided motives for the threat.

3. The victim's car was located directly behind one of those suspects relative's house.

4. One of the suspects attacked a woman in her vehicle, engaged in serial rape and assault, engaged in violence against women he knew, and was improperly ruled out.

5. Incoming call data was determined to be completely unreliable, as the network sends the signal through multiple towers and the billing records can show the last tower a phone connected to instead of the one it is currently on.

6. Kristina Vinson said she would not have missed a class at the same time she said Jay and Adnan were at her house, which showed that her recollection of what day Jay and Adnan had visited was wrong.

7. Because Jay had told numerous lies and versions of events to detectives, his testimony was only relied upon because the cell records and Vinson's testimony corroborated it. Without those, his testimony does not stand on its own. Thus, they could not have secured a conviction.

8. One of the lead detectives on the case engaged in egregious misconduct in another case, resulting in a wrongful conviction and 17 years of incarceration.

I listened this podcast when it first came out, so I’m probably misremembering this, but the key thing about the case to me was point 7:

They had detailed witness testimony which fit the evidence AND the witness was able to show the police the location of the victim’s car which backed up his story. So it is hard to explain another version of events where the witness was not actually involved in the crime. I’m curious if any of this new evidence points to him as being involved.

Even "great outcome for him" seems like a stretch. That podcast was six years ago. He has been in jail for 22 years, more than half of his life. It's hard to imagine where he goes with his life from here; I wish him the best of luck.

That's the "great" outcome of a one-in-a-million burst of publicity. Everybody else has it much, much worse.

Our justice system is pretty busted, to be honest. And it's end to end busted - we trust police too much and with too much power, we don't have enough public defenders to protect everyone, we have long backlogs of cases, court fees and fines can be unending even if you are innocent (to say nothing about civil asset forfeiture), people are goaded into plea deals for crimes they don't commit, our jury selection process leaves a lot to be desired, our judges have done things like make deals to get a financial kickback for everyone they send to jail, our sentences are too long for minor crimes, our prisons are dangerously overcrowded making prison basically psychological and physical torture, we invest almost nothing on reducing recidivism, we fail to support inmates post incarceration and make it hard for them to find work, and we generally stigmatize anyone who has had a brush with the system.

All of the above plus the racial and income inequality, nonsense war on drugs, etc.

Yeah, I'd say we should all shudder quite a bit more about our judicial system.

To be honest I don’t understand how it’s thought that police have to much power. Especially since every case makes it’s way in front of a judge.

A case eventually making its way to a judge isn't really a counter-argument to how much power police have.

Things like asset forfeiture, qualified immunity, etc. are all pretty strong arguments that police have too much power. Not to mention all of the cases where someone innocent is killed by police, where the victim doesn't get to go in front of a judge because they are dead.

Something like 95% of cases end in a plea deal, where a judges involvement is pretty minimal.

To expand on this, plea deals are most common for poor defendants. The police convince a magistrate to set cash bail the defendant can't pay, and the defendant has the choice of taking a guilty plea for a "lesser charge" or sitting in jail for months until the case can be tried, at which point they are defended by an overworked, overwhelmed public defender.

In many cases, the potential sentence for these cases is exceeded by the time they would actually spend in jail waiting for the trial; even being found guilty would result in time served. In these cases, the plea deal is literally a lesser sentence than being found not guilty.

Except, of course, that now there's a guilty mark on the record, which works against you if you're ever wrongfully picked up by the police again...

> Especially since every case makes it’s way in front of a judge.

This is not at all true, at least in the sense that it provides a major check on police mistakes or abuse.

You can spend a great deal of time in jail, literally decades in extreme cases, just by being charged with a crime -- no conviction needed. Criminal penalties in the US are so extreme, and conviction rates so high, that there is a huge risk in going to trial. Even if a person is innocent and/or the evidence is weak, the incentives often push them to accept a plea deal; and that's exactly what we see. The vast majority of cases reach a plea deal and never come to trial.

Police have the power to do this and get away with it.

https://youtu.be/VBUUx0jUKxc?t=200

Serial season 3 - where they hang out at a courthouse for a year, learning all of the ins and outs - illustrates all of this very well.

There's a lot of injustice tied up in expediting cases. Massive backlogs of work, not enough people to do the work, and massively asymmetric funding for prosecution and defense.

Well stated. We have normialized - minor or not - human rights infractions. Yet have no shame in calling out others.

His conviction is vacated but they can put him on trial again.

I doubt that will happen unless something else is revealed as the prosecutors are the ones that asked for the conviction to be vacated.

There is a third possibility, he pleads guilty to time served. He was a minor when the murder happened. He pleads, gets 25 years, with time served + good behavior, he never actually goes back to prison.

Right, I was even wondering about an Alford plea.

yes, this is what I meant. A no contest type of plea. He can say he is pleading guilty because he has spent 20+ years in prison and just wants to be/stay out, not that he is guilty. State can say he is guilty but he has spent 20+ years in prison so we are agreeing to this in order save taxpayer $ and move on.

I remember listening to Serial and thinking Adnan Syed's advocate Rabia Chaudry seemed more convinced of his innocence than he was. Like he was maintaining his innocence for his family then she came along and started pushing harder to get him out and he was along for the ride.

Victims don't always act as we might expect. So that might just be the way he is. Hopefully concrete proof will come out to say exactly who it was. I hope this for the family of Hae Min Lee. But is possible it never does.

I think the point of the podcast was to make a case that "probably did it" isn't enough for a life sentence.

Unfortunately I think many people are uncomfortable with the lack of closure behind such a situation, but that's another angle of our justice system more people should probably be conscious of.

I thought there were no exceptions to double jeopardy? Is that a popular misconception? What makes it possible in this case?

Double jeopardy only prevents you from being retried after a not guilty ruling. Since Syed was initially found guilty, it does not apply in this case.

“Phinn ruled that the state violated its legal obligation to share evidence that could have bolstered Syed’s defense. She ordered Syed to be placed on home detention with GPS location monitoring. The judge also said the state must decide whether to seek a new trial date or dismiss the case within 30 days.”

He wasn’t ruled innocent… there was something technically wrong with the trial proceedings.

Periodically I go back and check on Mumia Abu Jamal. Yep, still in jail [previously, I had said "on death row"]. He had far more coverage but I guess it happened before things went viral.

Mumia Abu Jamal is still in prison but he is not on death row.

He's no longer on death row for what it's worth. He was moved to gen pop in 2012. Still incarcerated, but not on death row. " In 2011, the prosecution agreed to a sentence of life imprisonment without parole. He entered the general prison population early the following year." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumia_Abu-Jamal

I read the Wikipedia article on him, and I don't see why you think he's innocent? Other than an automatic assumption of racism there's nothing in there that would make me think it was a bad trial.

This isn't a case of mistaken identity - he was shot by the person he shot. He had a gun that had been discharged 5 times.

What am I missing? What's his explanation for having fired 5 times? All I saw was a vague claim that police shot him randomly as he crossed the street.

I didn't say I think he was innocent- I have no idea. My only point was that there was a "free mumia" movement that also pointed out problems with the legal case, such that there was no airtight prosecution that would have led to the resulting death penalty.

> I shudder to think about what it tells us about our judicial system.

Coincidentally, this is the general topic of season 3 of Serial.

If you're worried primarily about wrongful convictions, don't forget that we only solve 50% of murders in the US.

Wrongful convictions are tragic, but the 50% of murderers that are free is also tragic.

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/07/poli...

Married to Sarah Koenig when?

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