I had a couple inches left last night, it’s all gone this morning…but another chance of more snow Saturday night :smack:
Still no opinion on the OP’s question.
I’d forgotten the name, but I’d listened to a couple of episodes of Serial and gave up on it in disgust. It all seemed horribly voyeuristic; now that you remind me I recall some listeners dividing themselves into “Team Adnan” or “Team Jay” as if this were some gameshow rather than a real event. If anything, I was “Team Hae”, for the poor murdered girl who seemed to be little more than a prop to the drama.
I don’t know who is guilty, but I feel sorry for Hae’s family.
I really liked that series. There were several key points which would have raised red flags for me.
I think that the most telling part is that the expert witness who had testified about the cell phone pinging has now stated that the new facts have changed his testimony and he no longer is able to stand by his previous views. It was that testimony which was relied upon to “verify” Jay’s (ever changing) story.
It also does sound like the prosecution may have withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense, which would lessen the weight of the conviction.
I believe that if the evidence which was discussed in the podcast had been entered into the trial, then it would not have been enough to convict him.
However, I can’t presume to know if he actually committed the murder.
I think this is the perfect answer as to why have this poll looking at the question compared to political parties.
It doesn’t surprise me that Shodan wouldn’t be interested in new facts and would feel quite qualified to weigh in without listening to the podcast. If fact, I would expect that from him.
I think that more conservatives have a “law and order” view which presumes that “criminals” are naturally guilty and discount the possibility of government misconduct or mistakes.
“Now” as in after the failed defense of a trial sure. But I’m curious why you think he couldn’t use that as a defense. The “I didn’t do it he did” defense is used often. If the jury can’t decide who is telling the truth then it’s reasonable doubt.
I’ve read several articles on the case and listened to the Generation Why podcast(s) on the topic. I think the problem is that Jay, also, should be in prison rather than that Adnan should not.
Right, right - I was so sure that I was qualified to weigh in that I voted for option 7, and so uninterested in new facts that I said several times that I wanted to see what new facts could be definitely established.
Out of curiousity, did you read the document that Gray Ghost linked to?
Regards,
Shodan
This. I’m a Democrat. There isn’t an option on the poll for this opinion.
Since Jay changed his story so much and there were no witnesses, doesn’t that leave room for reasonable doubt? IANAL but since there’s no physical evidence or anything else to prove Adnan did it, I would lean toward a not guilty verdict even though I think he might be guilty. It’s probably pretty likely that Adnan did it, and maybe Jay was involved also by burying the body if not actually part of the murder itself.
But there’s just nothing to show that Adnan did it. No one saw it and they don’t even know exactly when the murder was committed that afternoon.
I’m a Dem and I think Adnan is not guilty. IMHO, it isn’t a even a case of reasonable doubt; its pretty substantial doubt in my mind.
If one sets aside the question of guilty/not guilty, I’m quite conflicted on the factual question of whether he murdered her or not.
Whichever way their dictators tell them to.
Unlike others, I interpreted the question as being about factual guilt, not how I would have voted on a jury. I think Adnan is guilty as hell, I think Jay almost certainly is too, but I don’t think the prosecution proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt. I voted that he’s guilty, because I think he is, even though I also think he was wrongly convicted. I’m a Democrat.
It sounds like the evidence for him being “not guilty” is principally that the lead witness against him, Jay Wilds, is a questionable source. Potentially, he was lead to make a case against Adnan by the police.
If we remove Jay, though, that still leaves the case that:
- Hae Min Lee was scared of Adnan and trying to escape him, during their relationship.
- She died soon after dumping him.
- He wrote “Gonna kill you” on the breakup note that he received.
So…basically, he did it. Were it not the modern day, where people expect smoking gun evidence from all the CSI shows they watch, he’d be locked up no worry based on just the above. And, reasonably, that’s about as good as evidence is likely to get in the majority of cases. It would really take some pretty good evidence to demonstrate that he wasn’t the murderer, and that doesn’t seem to exist. There’s only varying levels of evidence showing that he was the murderer and that he was in all the right places in the right times.
Possibly, the police did coerce Jay to create a fictional account of what happened - and the fact that they let him go free, despite supposedly taking part in burying the body - makes me think it’s plausible that this is the case. But that’s evidence that the police have committed a crime not evidence that Adnan wasn’t guilty.
I’d be happy to see another court case go forward, without Jay’s evidence, but I’d want to see a court case made against the officers first. If it seems like they had, indeed, done something fishy, then proceed with a retrial for Adnan. But it makes no sense to just retry Adnan without first putting to trial what the police may or may not have done. If you let Adnan go free, without trying the cops, then what are you really accomplishing? You’re assuming that the police are dirty, but letting them stay, and release a probable criminal into the public without putting any other criminals in, in his stead. How does that make sense? The officers may be annoyed that Adnan goes free, but presumably they see lots of crimes go unpunished anyways. I doubt that they’re going to lose a ton of sleep over it, nor reform their ways.
Again, I’m not surprised that you would read the document which Gray Ghost linked to, but did you read the articles which he also linked to? The ones that are not automatically supporting the prosecution.
As I said early, there is a law and order world view, in which it’s assumed that the police and prosecution are always or almost always on the side of justice, and this is held by conservatives. I don’t automatically assume that they are wrong, but I think they get it wrong enough to be cautious.
To restate, I’m also not surprised that you would weigh in with your opinion that you trust a trial is more than a podcast, without having listened to the podcast. You have no idea what was in the podcast, but you will automatically place greater weight in the trial. I never said anything about you deciding if he was guilty or not.
The whole point of the very well done series was introducing questions concerning the trial and evidence.
The series itself is interesting and it’s not a knee-jerk reaction.
The following post really summarizes my feelings:
As I stated before, I don’t know myself if he is actually innocent or guilty. However, the series, which you place no faith in, did present a number of issues which if he is given a new trial could make a difference.
You do say that you are interested in new information.
The series is still available on the internet.
In general, I would view it as being a good Doper to try and avoid materials that are inherently propagandic. I wouldn’t view it as being a mark of Republicanism to want to avoid the podcast and instead listen, principally, to the full trial.
Given enough sophistry, you can degrade almost anyone’s ability to distinguish between reasonable and unreasonable doubt. OJ’s lawyers (in my estimation) won their case by doing “very well” at implanting similar doubt.
But doubt does not equal reasonable doubt.
A good lawyer or a good podcaster isn’t necessarily the best way to come to the truth on an issue. If you had two excellent advocates arguing opposite sides of the same case, you’d probably end up with the jury being both completely convinced that the suspect did and did not do it. They wouldn’t have a better view of what actually transpired, they’d just be forced to hold two competing world views since both sides would have such a compelling argument (and subsequently, they would probably vote in favor of the defense).
It’s possibly/probably almost better to have second rate advocates arguing a case. They won’t do much more than present the evidence available, make a reasonable argument for/against the suspect based upon it, and leave well enough alone. The good advocates are the ones who go beyond that and introduce a layer of thought beyond reasonableness. That’s probably not actually good for a functioning court.
FWIW, I’d be happy to link to a defense brief or Motion for New Trial, or some such: I just didn’t find a full-text easy-to-link version in my very cursory search. I find such briefs to be really useful for obtaining a ‘brief’ yet complete idea of what a side is arguing happened in the case, as well as listing evidence that I can go and evaluate to determine whether IMHO, each point of the prosecution’s case was proven.
I’m fully aware that a Statement of Facts in a motion like the linked one is a piece of appellate advocacy, and as such it’s going to be slanted to one side. I just hadn’t seen or heard elsewhere, a few of the facts that the Motion mentioned, like Wilds’s drug dealing. It may be mentioned in either the podcast or the TV series; I haven’t watched/listened to either.
Just keep in mind that, again, documents like these motions are deliberately biased, and while the facts they relate aren’t lies (it’s a gross violation of legal ethics to lie to the court), they might not contain as much context as an unaffiliated observer would like to fully evaluate the situation. OTOH, there’re few better ways to kill one’s credibility than to claim X, not mention Y which fully explains X, and then read about Y in the other side’s Response. Losing an advocate’s credibility before the court is A Bad Thing.
The other links I thought were useful in explaining to me the question I thought Omar Little was asking: "Why would Wilds have gone to the cops in the first place? In my limited knowledge of the criminal justice system and its practitioners, I’ve been told that people like Wilds don’t go to the cops unless they have problems with the accused, they’re trying to save their own asses or unless they need reward money. (And then the problem is how to get the reward money w/o implicating themselves, something Wilds failed spectacularly in doing.)
Anyway, until I saw that link from EW.com, I didn’t see that any of the three reasons I listed were implicated, and it struck me as strange. OTOH, a drug dealer trying to give the police some info, even if there isn’t an explicit crime committed by the dealer that his testimony is trying to ameliorate, is a story that makes sense to me. Similarly a small time dealer calling the cops to try and score three thousand bucks for a dirt bike.
If/when I have more time, I’ll try to supplement this thread with some of the other documents filed in the post-conviction period. At one point back in November/December, Syed’s current lawyer (C. Justin Brown) had a few documents available on the website, but there don’t seem to be many, now (or I’m just not readily finding them).
At any rate, here’s a link to a filing Syed made not long after the most recent hearing concluded, supplementing the record for that hearing: http://cjbrownlaw.com/syed-files-post-hearing-motion-to-supplement-record/.
ETA: Here’s the original Motion to Reopen Post-Conviction Proceedings filed by Syed [WARNING: Direct Link to PDF]: http://cjbrownlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Motion-to-Reopen-As-Filed-w-Exs.-optimized.pdf
Here’s a supplement to the original motion above: [WARNING: Direct Link to PDF]: http://cjbrownlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Supp.-to-Mot.-to-Reopen-FINAL.pdf
I’m having trouble finding the state’s opposition brief, but here’s a link [WARNING: Direct Link to PDF] that contains the exhibits they attached to it. It’s a fairly lengthy set of exhibits (86 pages) that contains some of the evidence cited by both parties: http://cjbrownlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/States-Consolidated-Response-EXHIBITS1.pdf
Here’s Syed’s Reply Brief in support of his motion: http://cjbrownlaw.com/syed-files-reply-brief-upload-here/
Here’s a page that contains the court’s order to reopen the post-conviction proceedings:
http://cjbrownlaw.com/syeds-motion-to-re-open-granted/
I can’t vote in the poll because I don’t know what happened - it really could go either way, although if Syed isn’t guilty he’s definitely the unluckiest guy in the world. I do know that if the state was supposed to convince me that he was guilty without a reasonable doubt, they did not do that, and I do not believe that it’s possible for their story of the crime to be true.
I’m a Democrat.
Again, this is absurd because he is not looking at studying the whole trial, which isn’t the point anyway, because the podcast covers problems with the trial. He also didn’t avoid reading the motion from the prosecutor, which is by nature going to be one sided.
Did you listen to the podcast? How did you determine that it’s inherently propagandic, especially when several posters have commented on how it is not.
How much of the podcast was based on sworn testimony, and subject to cross-examination?
Regards,
Shodan
Every single word. Podcasts are now how we dispense justice.
But great question, thanks for asking.
How did I determine that a podcast made to question the conviction of a man serving time is unbiased? :dubious:
By sheer nature of the sales point, it must be. There would be no plug for the show if the end result/goal was to say, “Yup, that boy dun it. Everyone involved did their job impeccably and the world is well.”
And from the fact that it was popular, we know that it does not present a balanced view. Things which force a person to think, rather than railroading them down a particular course, are almost always going to be unpopular. Only if the presenter can end the series fist pumping in their complete victory will people have responded to the show positively. It is, after all, the presenter of the podcast who is, by nature, the protagonist of the story. We want the protagonist to kick ass. If they aren’t doing it, then we aren’t interested.
But, in real world terms, we know that 12 people who were presented both sides of the case by professional lawyers, felt fit to convict a young student to many years in jail. If there’s important new evidence to exonerate the current suspect or implicate someone else, then we could say that there’s a good argument against the case as it stands. But, that would just mean that they would need to submit the new evidence to the court and we could expect the case to be retried. It wouldn’t make for a good show, if there’s a simple, “Nope, he was actually in Tibet at the moment, I have photos of him and the Dalai Lama to prove it.”
But if the show largely consists of nitpicking the existing evidence and yet ends up with the broadcaster fist pumping at the end, we can be sure that it’s a biased report. There’s just no way to get from 12 people convicting a teen boy with no criminal record to a slum dunk, “Set that boy free!” without exonerating evidence except a pretty skewed presentation.
And we know that there wasn’t any significant new evidence. They did just nitpick the existing evidence. And yet, the show was popular and the reports of it state that the presenter was kicking ass all the way through.
I’m willing to accept some of the outcomes of the show, but I also know that it is unmitigated biased reporting and I - personally - detest the idea of subjecting myself to such a thing, regardless of whether I’d be congratulating all the investigative and logical deduction work that went into it. I’m sure that I’d be pretty impressed by the trail of evidence in a Shakespearian authorship book as well - if well written. But I’d still avoid reading it.