The “big picture” thing means “just because we’re using this serial killer scenario as the basis of our appeal to get the DNA tested, what we really just want is to get the DNA tested.”
I also thought the ending was good. I think it’s pretty clear that nothing huge was going to come out (because surely that would make the real news), but I think the show did a good job of summing up. I was impressed they dug up the information about the cell phone contract showing that a charge for an unanswered call was realistic – supporting the butt dial view of the Nisha call. To me, Nisha’s testimony about Jay being at the video store when he didn’t have the video store job on the day of the murder is one of the most problematic parts of the state’s case.
It cracked me up when Jay’s coworker (Josh?) said something like “well, if I was involved with a murder, I wouldn’t be telling some guy I worked with at the PORN STORE.” Duh.
Every time I am really convinced Adnan is innocent, I remember that Jay knew where the car was, and how would he know that unless Adnan was involved somehow? From what I understand, Jay really only knew Hae through Adnan. Like how would Jay know about the car if the real murderer was that random criminal?
One thing I was intrigued by, and wish there was more information about, was when she pointed out that both Jay’s story and Adnan’s story have a big missing piece that seems unrelated to the murder – it makes me think that they could have been up to something sketchy that neither of them came clean with, even something sketchy that was completely unrelated to Hae. (This reminded me of a story I read once, where a guy was in prison for a crime he was adamant he didn’t commit – because he had been committing another crime at the same time, so he couldn’t really use that as his defense. I don’t think that’s really what happened here, but it called that to mind.)
I can’t believe they didn’t spend any time talking about the anonymous call. That bothered me, for some reason.
Since this was the end, I really think there should have been a moment at the end to bring Hae back to mind. The words about Hae from the interview with Don were lovely, but I really think Sarah Koenig should have acknowledged there would have been no wildly popular successful podcast if a young woman hadn’t died tragically.
Some possibilities for Jay knowing where the car was:
Jay could have been fed that information by the police.
Jay could have happened to stumble over it at some point while strolling around the neighborhood.
Jay did the murder by himself.
All long shots, sure. And I don’t really believe that any of them is what happened. But none of them are impossible.
I was really troubled by Don’s account of how the prosecutor yelled at him for not making Adnan seem “creepy” enough. Especially since it apparently happened at both trials. Major kudos to Don for not “improving” his testimony at the second trial. A weaker person might have. Or someone who simply believed Adnan was guilty, and wanted him locked up, might have.
It makes me wonder who else were encouraged to spice up their narratives between trials.
On an unrelated note: SK mentions that a local TV station had done an interview with Hae earlier in the day on the 13th. I’ve seen that interview, it’s floating around the internet. I linked to it earlier in this thread. Or, well, at least I’m assuming that it’s the same one. I had no idea that it was from that very same day that she disappeared. That’s just so… spooky.
I agree. If this had happened a year or two earlier, Gutierrez might have been up to the task and given proper representation, but at the time, she was not up to it.
That makes sense. They can’t just say “we want the DNA tested”, they have to say “we want the DNA tested because we think the real killer is this specific guy for these reasons”. It’ll be interesting to hear what comes from that.
I agree, that was very troubling. There was also in a previous episode about how the prosecutor hired an attorney for Jay, or something like that, and them talking about how unprecedented that was. There are very troubling things about this case in particular, and our court system in general.
I also tend to think he is guilty. I also tend to think there’s no way I could find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. If you’re on the jury (assuming the trial is occuring today with everything you know now even if they might not have known it at the time), what do you vote?
Overall, I enjoyed *Serial *and will tune in for Season 2. I do feel like it could have been tightened up quite a bit. It seems like a lot of things were rehashed over and over. I know some of that was to reflect the investigative process of going back over information again and again, but for a podcast it got a little tedious at times.
I’m okay with the no-resolution ending. As Sarah said, it was a very messy case and to expect some sudden revelation that clears everything up would be foolish. It will be interesting to see if *Serial *will do a follow-up after the Innocence Project folks have done their thing.
I feel really bad for Hae’s family (and feel kind of guilty as a listener) for having her murder used as the centerpiece of what is essentially entertainment for the rest of us. It must be awful to have these events dredged up fifteen years later. That is not to say it isn’t worthwhile to question and reinvestigate the guilt or innocence of Adnan, but still…
Huh. Well, now there’s also this, which I just noticed on Reddit.
It’s a news report from just after Adnan’s arrest. Quote:
Interesting wording there. It makes it sound like the cops had known about the car for a while.
I know, most likely the reporter just misunderstood something, or phrased it poorly, and the car had in fact just been found. That sort of thing happens with news reports all the time. Big freaking woop.
So, it’s almost certainly nothing…
But I just had this chill down my spine for a moment. Could the rest of us be misunderstanding something?
Remind me again of the wording from the police interview with Jay. Do the cops ask him to take them to the car, or to the location where the car was parked? Those are not the same thing. And it’s obviously a hell of a lot easier for any hypothetical monkey business to occur in the latter scenario.
Although I’m most likely making up fairy tales here. So, if anyone could just kill this stupid idea for me, it would be appreciated.
To acquit.
Yeah. I still think he’s most likely guilty, but the timeline the prosecution put forward is just too screwy. I’ve got reasonable doubt at this point.
I agree she probably could have called, but the letter itself seems really shady. That said, there are 2 reasons floated as to why she didn’t follow up:
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Adnan admitted his involvement to her (on some level) and she didn’t want a witness corroborating he was at the library/crime scene
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The prosecution was supposedly gonna argue Hae was killed closer to when Jay said he actually got the call from Adnan, but switched later on which caught CG by surprise.
I think she could have followed up, but if she was a caring as Adnan said she was (eg. getting his medications), I have to think she would have at least tried to call or told Adnan why she didn’t.
I don’t know about that. The reality is much of this case hinges upon whether you believe Jay. We didn’t hear or see Jay on the stand. Most accounts make it seem he seemed pretty forthright and honest. If you trust him, it’s hard to find Adnan not guilty.
But why is that a necessary pretense? I agree that is likely what she meant, but that doesn’t seem more likely or a more rational reason for a court to grant testing than to argue that Jay or someone connected to him did it. It’s one thing if you argue Jay’s DNA being there is not inculpatory because he buried the body, but at least one sample was underneath her fingernails. That alone is damaging to Jay’s contention that he was only involved in a limited sense.
Why would you go to a court alleging one of two serial killers may have done it rather than the guy who admits to burying the body did it? Doubly so if you think the latter is what the test will actually show?
I don’t know what the threshold is to get the state to re-examine evidence, but I think it’s pretty high and you have to show that your new potential suspect has a real reasonable chance of being the person involved.
When the news came out about the DNA appeal, I thought I’d heard that hey had 3 new viable suspects. I assumed one was Jay.
Also, if Jay has already admitted to helping bury Hae, than it’s not that odd for his DNA to be at the scene in a general sense, thus making it unlikely to sway a judge to allow the new testing. Perhaps they’ll test some samples from under her nails that give them a match against Jay, and that would be damning, but just having his DNA there isn’t a big reveal on its face.
There are so many holes she could have poked in Jay’s story using the very evidence that the state presented. But she didn’t. She didn’t use the call record or the cell tower pings to disprove the state and Jay’s whole timeline. Sure, she pointed out that he had lied, but she didn’t press the evidence that disproved the state’s case because she didn’t actually spend time analyzing the case and the best way to beat it.
She was solid on the procedural stuff because that’s the sort of thing that you can wing if you have sufficient experience in a courtroom.
But on arguing the actual case, she was hopeless.
This is absurd.
It looks like a letter written by a 17-year-old girl. A 17-year-old girl who claims to have seen him on the day of the murder, and points out that there was a video surveillance system that could help him!
For a defense attorney to have that letter and not make a single call to follow up on it because, what, the tone of the letter? Come on.
Your two suggested reasons might be good reasons not to call Asia as a witness at trial. They are not reasons to not call her on the phone and see what she knows. Not even a little. I simply don’t understand how you can give what appears to me to be grossly incompetent representation such a pass while going ten rounds on how damning it is for Adnan that his fingerprints are on a book of maps in her trunk.
For what it’s worth, I was 17 in 1999, and I had a book of maps in my trunk, and it wouldn’t surprise me if some of them were missing, since it was a hand-me-down out of date book that had spent a few years bouncing around in trunks and backseats and wherever.
Yes, and your credibility is undermined when you posit that two different serial killers might be involved despite zero evidence of that fact and lots of evidence that undermines those theories.
Did you actually read what I said? I said almost the exact same thing.
She tried. It didn’t work. I don’t know where this misconception comes from, but she pointing out the lies Jay told multiple times in exhaustive detail. They jury believed him in a general sense anyways. It’s hard to know why hey did without having been there, but people rely on the statements of liars ALL THE TIME.
That is just strategy though. She instead tried to prove the cell tower pings didn’t matter since otherwise she would have to explain why Adnan was in Leakin Park that night.
Impossible to say without having read the entire transcript. Do you somehow have access to that, and if not, why are you so confident her work was shoddy in that particular aspect?
But you have no idea about anything else that happened. Maybe she did check the library and found out the footage was gone by that point, or maybe Adnan said he wasn’t in the library. The idea that Adnan would give her this letter, then she would never follow up for any reason, and that Adnan himself while sitting in court wouldn’t have asked her what Asia said, is odd to me.
And the letter is shady. She is either offering to play amateur detective for Adnan, a guy she doesn’t know very well, or offering to commit perjury by giving him an alibi for an absurdly long period of time. Neither inference makes her a credible witness.
As I said multiple times, she probably should have called. But, not calling was not a game changing, egregious mistake.
Of course they are. If she thinks the state is gonna say Hae was murdered at 4pm (for example), why would she call a witness who could alibi him at 2:30? By that logic she should have called everyone he had last period with and everyone on the track team.
It’s just another small piece of evidence that points to his guilt.
It’s just another small piece of evidence that points to his inadequate representation.
I guess I agree. Care to point to anything else substantive and substantiated? Adnan himself doesn’t seem to think she did a poor job.
I’m pretty sure that I remember Adnan saying that he does think she did a bad job.
I’ve been thinking about Jay being scared, the white van, and the “West Side hitman” story. And, overall, just WTF is the deal with Jay. How much of this stuff is in his mind. Everyone seems to agree that Jay makes up stories. The guy he worked with at the porn store said that, too, and he didn’t even know Jay all that well.
Someone on Reddit suggested that Jay may have some form of mental illness. Maybe that is going to far, but at this point I’m honestly beginning to wonder. He seems to be living in a fantasy world at times. I’m not saying that he’s a compulsive liar, but maybe he doesn’t know what is the truth and what isn’t. Of course, that kind of personality is prime territory for false testimony and police manipulation. Even accidental manipulation.
Some of the things he says to the cops are just so bizarre. Like when he talks about what Adnan has on him, to make him go along with the burial. That Adnan knew he sold drugs. “Here’s this drug dealer, and he has a rap sheet this long, go get his ass”. The cops remind Jay that he has only been arrested once (which apparently was for disorderly conduct, BTW, and not even drug related). Jay starts in on a story about how the police harassed him, made him lie down in the snow outside his house, at gunpoint, and chased him with helicopters.
Helicopters? Seriously, dude? You want us to believe that something like that ever happened?
He seems to imagine himself as this big-shot drug lord, living an action-packed life of crime. “The criminal element of Woodlawn”. The reality is that he didn’t even have a car or a phone, and was at the most a small-time dealer., the kind of guy who could hook up his friends with some weed.
So… how far can we go with this? Is it all in Jay’s mind?
On the flip side, again, there’s Jen. Jen is starting to become my “Nisha call”, as it were. Like SK, I can go pretty far in some hypothetical directions, but then there’s this one thing that makes it all crumble. Jen told the police that Jay told her about the murder on the 13th. And I don’t see why she would lie. So Jay must have known about it then. And then it can’t be all fantasies.