Her opinion does have some weight given her background, but this is a clear example of the excluded middle fallacy. Adnan, or anyone else in a similar situation for that matter, doesn’t have to either be innocent or stupid. He also doesn’t have to be a charming sociopath to be committed to a lie. Lots of guilty people lie too, and their temperament and disposition has little to do with anything. They’re essentially orthogonal issues that SK seems to have conflated. It’s understandable in the sense that we naturally think charming and sociable people won’t commit anti-social acts like murder, but that is just something we tell ourselves.
Just look at the baseball steroids scandal. Obviously the stakes are lower, but it is very instructive to see all these guys, some charming and sociable (eg. Ryan Braun) and some prickly and distant (eg. Alex Rodriguez), publicly lying about their cheating. It just shows how convincing liars can be generally nice and charming people, and they can be jerks. The two issues aren’t related. More importantly, you don’t need to be a diagnosed sociopath to lie about your transgressions.
Well, no. Again, her example was stupid. A truly innocent person can help crack a case in any number of ways. Of course they cannot tell you specifics about a crime they didn’t commit, but they can tell you what they were doing and help you dredge up exculpatory evidence.
It’s not necessarily proof, it’s evidence. The strength of that evidence is based on the entirety of the case presented. Him not being able to explain basic facts and seemingly inculpatory evidence presented in the case is suspicious a the very least. When coupled with all the other evidence, it is fairly damning.
More importantly, you are accepting as a predicate that he actually doesn’t remember that day. I sincerely doubt that is the case.
This is just nonsensical for a few reasons:
He remembers the early part of the day. Including fairly insignificant things like talking to Stephanie about Jay. He remembers the whole process of calling Jay, lending him his car, etc. He remembers what he did right after school (eg. missing the ride with Hae). Then a complete blank from around 2:30-6:30.
There were 3 calls he received regarding her disappearance. First from (IIRC) Hae’s brother, and then from the detective. There is also speculation someone else called him giving him a heads up about the detective. He completely blows off Hae’s family, telling them to ask Don. When the detective calls, he tells them he was planning to get a ride with her. The obvious inference here is that he was asked THAT day in REAL time essentially what he did that day as it relates to Hae. This wasn’t something he only had to piece together weeks after the fact. He knew it was something people were asking about and interested in at the time.
Further complicating the above is his behavior after the call. If he is completely innocent, you’d think he would comment on the absurdity or craziness of the situation unfolding before him to the other people present when he receives the calls. Don’t you think he would say something like, “hey Jay, you remember Hae? Her brother and the cops called me cause she disappeared. Crazy, huh?”. Instead he says nothing. Instead, people testify he says nothing substantive, starts acting strange, leaves, then sits in his car with Jay for a while.
He weakly claims he was essentially in a public place interacting with dozens of people. Aside from Asia, whose testimony is problematic, no one has backed his account. Why? More importantly though, this guy shows basically zero effort to bolster his alibi even though his life is at stake. It’s one thing for people to pontificate how they cannot remember what they did 6 weeks ago on some random day, or how they can’t remember everything about the day something significant happened to them. That is somewhat understandable. I bet if you knew the difference between freedom and spending your life in prison was providing a solid alibi, you would be a little more proactive about racking your brain and looking to others for support your claims. He doesn’t even have to only rely on people. He could have asked to look at email logs, etc.
I’m not convinced Adnan is innocent, but I AM surprised he was convicted - moreso after this episode. I thought the idea was that you had to be 100% sure the person is guilty in order to convict them. There are so many holes in the case. Although did they ever address the call that Adnan received around the time of Hae’s death that placed him in or near Leakin Park?
I know I sound like a broken record here but I can’t wrap my head around how so many folks listening to this podcast can even have a shred of doubt that Adnan killed Hae. Sure, there are tiny pieces of the prosecutions narrative that, on their own, don’t 100% damn Adnan, but when viewed together there is not doubt.
IMHO the only reason the Adnan narrative doesn’t hit the target 100/100 shots fired is because the shots that are missing are missing because Jay was an accomplice and if Adnan were to point that out he would admit his own guilt in the process. With all the details that Jay brought to the cops he was, at a minimum, there when Hae was killed, at worst he killed Hae himself while Adnan was there.
As an aside, I’ll say that SK sounds like she is forming a real crush on Adnan. It’s really bizarre to hear it developing.
But, an added wrinkle is that in this case compared to your example, is that Adnan was being contacted about an ex girlfriend being missing. If I got a call from the cops about my ex girlfriend being missing, even if I have nothing to do with it, I would probably not only make sure to remember where I was all that day, I would write it all down to make sure that I had my timeline figured out just in case I’m a suspect at some point.
I guess you could claim that her going missing and the cops being involved didn’t set off any alarms for him if he just thought she ran away from home?
But, yeah, despite the innocence project guys, I still think he did it in cahoots with Jay. This episode didn’t really present anything concrete to change that.
The standard isn’t 100% certainty, but rather beyond a reasonable doubt. Note this is does not mean no doubt, or beyond any and every doubt. Possible doubts or doubts based purely on speculation are not reasonable doubts. Obviously opinions will vary on how to determine what is reasonable, but there are a few things I think people are not considering here:
A trial is not strictly a truth finding mission as much as it is a controlled debate presentation (for lack of a better word). The jury heard a cohesive story presented by the state that was devoid of many of these red herrings and side issues that make the podcast interesting.
The jury doesn’t have to believe everything Jay or anyone else said to convict Adnan. They just have to look at the totality of the evidence and decide that a reasonable parsing of that information would remove any reasonable doubt of guilt. See this sample jury instruction:
There is simply no evidence that the jury bought everything Jay said. We however can reasonably infer that they didn’t envision any plausible scenario in which Adnan didn’t kill Hae. Given they only deliberated for 2 hours, I think they didn’t have much debate.
Holes aside, I just don’t see HOW all of this could happen if Adnan is innocent.
Have any of you smoked a lot of pot in your life? I only ask because these guys smoked a LOT of pot. They were typical teenage stoners and most of their stories start out with “I was high” or “we went here to smoke weed” etc.
If you spend your day in a cloud of THC, you’re going to have some SERIOUS holes in your memory.
I thought this last episode was great–mostly because it broke up the bubble of “this is Koenig’s exploration” of a case.
I was really on the fence on the guilt/innocence thing until the end of the previous episode with the “I wanna shoot myself if another person says ‘Adnan, I don’t think you did it because you’re too nice.’”
He wants someone to say “I know you didn’t do it because of these facts.”
That was such an honest moment–it feels off for a guilty person to say. I just can’t buy into this weird “he’s a sociopath manipulator” idea–that just doesn’t hold water at all.
Fans of big brown eyes would to well in going back and answering #65 point by point.
Plus, like brickbacon said, there’s lots more. Eg: why did Adnan stop paging/calling Hae once she was dead? He’s not that smart, whatever SK may tell us she believes.
I am not confusing Jay and Adnan. I was acknowledging the holes in Jay’s story could lead some to believe that Adnan is innocent, but that the basic framework of Jay’s account which implicates Adnan is backed by lots of other evidence.
On the Slate Spoiler podcast where they talk about Serial, they do worry that this entire thing will just end up being some kind of meditation on the nature of truth.
Jay got a sweetheart deal and the evidence that backs his story is circumstantial at best. Also, cops excluded evidence found at the scene. So it’s not entirely clear to me why Jay’s story was given the weight of credibility it got.
I guess we might learn more next episode when we hear more from Jay, or about Jay. Really not sure what will motivate him to talk with SK. He’d be smart just to keep his mouth shut for the rest of his life.
Circumstantial evidence doesn’t mean bad or lesser evidence. DNA evidence is mostly circumstantial. Pretending such evidence is less damaging either means you don’t understand what the word means, or you don’t appreciate how real trials work.
Yes, Jay got a good deal, but that is what happens in many trials.
What “excluded” evidence are you referring to? Cops cannot exclude exculpatory evidence.
It’s true, IANAL. Most of the people in this world aren’t either. Perhaps some latitude is warranted, counselor, when a layman uses the term to mean that the evidence presented does not seem sufficiently compelling to convict.
I knew our justice system was flawed, but didn’t realize to what extent.
There were bottles and cans in the park next to where the body was burried. Though lab results did show evidence of human cells on the liquor bottle, cops either didn’t collect the cans or go one more step to test the bottles for a dna match. There were fibers found on and under the body that were not tested either. Perhaps they had good reason not to do so? I’m not sure.
Finally, I understand the phone call log is used to construct the movements of the suspect(s) between roughtly 2 and 6pm that afternoon. But is there actual witness corroborated evidence that the phone was actually in Adnan’s posession at the time?
Maybe it’ll be a meditation on the nature of bullshitting.
For instance, even if Adnan really is innocent, I still think he’s bullshitting his way through the interviews. For instance, there’s not a single bad word about Hae, or any hint from him that he was angry with her after the breakup. This could account for some of the strange answers he gives, like why he didn’t try to call her after she disappeared. Let’s say he’s innocent, and the real answer is something like: “I was angry at her. She’d taken off without telling me, and I hated that. Besides, she was ticking me off in all sorts of other ways, too. I didn’t want to talk to her. She could piss off for all I cared.” Which might be understandable. But then he feels that he can’t say that, because he has an idea in his head that expressing anger towards Hae will make him look guilty. So he gives a bullshit answer. And it’s such an obvious bullshit answer that it backfires and just seems suspicious.
I listened to the latest 'cast, and I’m really glad they brought in the law student team. I find it really interesting that after digesting the material in the case for a month, that they are all leaning toward NOT GUILTY. This has to account for something.
I said before that I thought that perhaps the reason Adnan has such poor recollection of that day is that he wasn’t there. Then, the lawyer remarked to Sarah that in her experience, an “innocent client is the least helpful.”
I wonder if we are being caught up in the small details and missing the big picture. It all feels wrong, and I know we aren’t going on feelings here, but to stand back and look at all of it, remembering it was 15 years ago, I can’t help but think there is an important piece of information that we just don’t have. If the lawyers have that piece of information, and think he’s innocent, I’m looking forward to hearing what makes them so sure. It must have to do with Jay. I’m looking forward to the next one.
It seemed strange to me that these law student team actually thinks he is “innocent.” And they point to these tiny little things like certain evidence wasn’t analyzed. Yea, so what? That would be a great point for why he should have been declared “not guilty” in court, but a small piece of missing evidence doesn’t make the suspect innocent.