I know I'm not the only one who's listened to this. I both liked it and was somewhat annoyed by it. I can unpack that, but I won't if nobody's listened.
I was really surprised to see the vast vast amount of electrons that have been spilled on the interwebz speculating about who killed Hae. Well maybe I'm not totally surprised. That was the direction Sarah wanted to lead the listener, and people are sheep. People are all up in arms over how much of a liar Jay is, and it's true, but it's also a red herring to the question of who did it (but perhaps not to the question of whether the jury should have acquitted, to be fair). Yes, Jay may have lied and lied and lied about the nature of his involvement in the murder of Hae Min Lee. But anyway you slice it, his involvement only came at the request of Adnan. Nobody, not even in a billion simultaneous multiverses, thinks that Jay just up and killed Hae Min Lee on his own.* So who cares how inconsistent his story is. If he's involved at all, he's involved because Adnan did it. End of story. And yet....all that being said, Adnan probably should have been acquitted. Yes, I think he did it. No, I don't think the evidence was sufficient to convict under a 'beyond a reasonable doubt' standard.** And, yes, the previous two sentences are entirely consistent. You might be about to counter: "but maybe that was the whole idea, kid. Maybe she wasn't trying to get at who did, but whether it was legally appropriate conviction by the jury." But you don't think that. And I don't think that. And freaking Marsellus doesn't think that. If it were a show about whether the legal standards were met, as opposed to being about the actual events as they played out in real life, it wouldn't be called a "show" because it'd be called "law school" instead. Nobody wants that. 80 million people certainly don't. So, yeah, the show was about whether Adnan Syed killed Hae Min Lee, and I just think it maybe wasn't close enough of a call for it to be an entire show based thereupon. I was pretty well convinced that Adnan killed Hae when the credits rolled on the first episode. I was a good deal more convinced after the 12th. But what the heck do I know? I also think a guy who is 49-0 in his professional career and has had maybe two or three fights that could even be considered close -- and has been inarguably the best P4P fighter in the world since two thousand and [dadgum] three -- is a better pound for pound fighter than a guy who got knocked da funk out -- in his [dadgum] prime, no less -- by a journeyman (to put it nicely), or a borderline scrub (to put it accurately) named Max Schmelling.*** * Did he even know the girl? ** Though, who knows? I've never been on a jury. I might react differently. *** But but but, he served in WW2.**** ****
That would actually make sense, somehow. I thought Adnan did it by the end, but not sure there was ever enough evidence to convict him.
There was a decent sized thread that really went deep into this topic (intentional setup for kb) about a year ago. Seems that's the way most everyone felt. It's certainly how I felt. I quit listening about six episodes in because it seemed to be getting redundant.
I offer nothing unique to this conversation. Listened to two episodes, relatively entertained, but felt certain that Adnan did it. Couldn't see a worthwhile swerve coming with the story, so I disengaged.
Well, I am not convinced Adnan did it. KB, how do you know so absolutely that Jay was involved "because of Adnan?" It's been awhile, so I may have forgot something. I do remember that Jay definitely knew the girl.
He hadn't been ruled out, but then they were going to have to use his Uncle Roger as a witness, and of course the jury wouldn't have understood anything he said, so they thought it safer to go the adnan route.
He barely knew the girl. He was going out with the really hot girl, Stephanie, who I think was in Hae and Adnan's class, and so he may have been on a "hello" basis with Hae, but nothing more. Try concocting a motive for Jay to murder some girl he knew as just an acquaintance. And on top of that, Jay had already graduated HS at that point. He didn't know that Hae was the focking manager for the wrestling team and that they had a match after school. He had no way of affecting when she left after school, or whether she left after school, or with who she left with. he had no idea where she would have been going or what she would have been doing. Hae, at that point, was dating lenscrafter guy, who Jay definitely did not know. So he had no reason -- not even like a "let's brainstorm real hard and come up with something that doesn't sound totally outlandish" reason -- and if he did have a reason that isn't a murder he would have had any means of pulling off at that tme and place. And on top of that, I believe he was playing pool at a pool hall that afternoon and has witnesses to testify to that. So if he's playing pool at a pool hall how was he was gonna execute a plan to kill a girl that he wouldn't known the whereabouts of? Did he have a focking GPS device taped under her car? Wait, that wasn't even invented then. One way that he might have gotten involved though, is if he were at a pool hall and he got a phone call from Adnan, who say "come to [X location fast], i just killed Hae and I need your help disposing of the body". Yeah, I'm gonna go with that. Adnan did it. No question in my mind.
How deeep into the topic we talkin' here? Also, are you talking about a reddit thread, or one on the 8th? Because the subreddit (is that the correct term?) on the Adnan case is ri-[dadgum]-cockulous.
The only thing connecting him to the murder is Jay's word. That's it. There is no evidence otherwise. He even now has an alibi. You've got it backwards: it isn't about something giving me pause about him doing it, it is that no case has been made that he DID, other than a conviction. The police failed to investigate any other possibilities after pumping Jay for a name.
I also think it was the second episode where I had zero doubt it was Adnan. My brother had told me to listen to it, and I texted him after that one and was like "Adnan obviously did it; how are they going to fill 10 more episodes?" He apparently was more of the IP mindset. Which I honestly just don't get, and I've tried flushing out this point with him now that we're both done. i may have been at least partially successful. I was never even swayed by Adnan himself. I never thought i was listening to a man who was wrongfully convicted of murdering his ex girlfriend and, in fact, I actively received the vibe of "yeah, i think I'd talk similarly to Adnan if I had choked my ex girlfriend to death in HS and yet was still maintaining innocence."
He doesn't have an alibi. The Asia alibi only establishes that the state's timeline was off and that she was killed a little later on. And, again, that goes to the question of whether he should have been convicted, not to whether he killed her. There is more than just Jay's jay's word. -asked her for a ride after school -wrote "I'm gonna kill her" on a picture of her or something like a week or two before -The Nysha call -His convenient not remembering anything that happened on a day when his girlfriend went missing and the cops called him about the same. And even if none of that were in existence, Jay -- story changer though he may be -- is a damn strong witness. He happened to have Adnan's phone that day, which was -- correct me if I'm wrong -- the day after Adnan had gotten the phone. Did he also have Adnan's car, or did someone else? Jay took the cops to Hae's car. It can be established that Jay was with him that day. Jay told his porn store buddy -- not even a good friend -- that he was involved in helping somebody kill Hae (or just kill somebody). And there is more of this. And so basically, if you don't think Adnan killed her, then you think Jay did. But Jay obviously didn't kill her, as I thoroughly discussed in a previous post. And so if Adnan didn't kill her, then who the funk did?
Wait, cell phone shit? That's bogus, and that was the point. You can't get reliable location data at that time from a cell phone ping. So toss that notion out, the prosecution shouldn't have been allowed to even consider that aspect. Secondly, his alibi doesn't line up with the time of the murder, yet Adnan's alibi does. I feel like you're letting the conviction cloud your perceptions of guilt/innocence. Jay pleaded guilty as an accessory of murder, in exchange for identifying "the real killer." Ask yourself this: Who was initially on the hook? Jay Who knew where the body was? Jay Who implicated Adnan? Jay How did Adnan call Jay from the Blockbuster, when there was apparently no pay phone there? What evidence do we have that it was Adnan that called? Just Jay All of this is reliant and completely contingent on the word of one person: the guy who actually confessed to a crime. He had every motivation to make shit up, and there is nothing corroborating his story. In fact, there is actually two different individuals (the girl who used to shoplift at the BB who said there was no payphone and the girl who says Adnan was with her in the library) who offer conflicting testimony and have NO personal motivation to gain. I'd also like to point out that Jay was a known petty drug dealer and possibly involved with criminal elements. There's every reason to doubt his testimony, and thus I am not convinced a man is guilty of murder based completely on the unsupported testimony of a known drug dealer and thief who otherwise was on the hook for the murder.
I also find it convenient that a lot of the forensic evidence was "lost" by the police, given that police in that city have a long history of "losing" evidence that doesn't fit their charges.
People get hung up on the fact that Jay is a know liar and that his story changes several times, though in minor way, as he goes along. I feel like I know Jay in this respect. You see, I'm like the anti-liar. Like, if I'm gonna lie about something, I have to have it pre-planned out in my head so that I can override my normal default tendency to be really accurate about things that i say. Like I have to get into character for a second to deliver a lie and make it seem believable. I'm not saying this makes me some kind of usptanding person (I have many other flaws), but it's just the way I am. I had this buddy in college who would lie about just anything. He would just casually lie for no gain or anything. For example, I might see him pulling up to the fraternity house and parking and then walking inside and I'd be like "what up Mac-daddy (I called him this....his last name had a 'Mc' in it)" where you coming from? He might say, "Oh, I just grabbed some taco bell for lunch." And then I might get in his car 30 minutes later and see the Wendy's bag sitting right there on the floor of the passener seat. And this is a throwaway example of literally a hundred others I could give to illustrate that this guy would just lie withotu even thinking about it. I see Jay being the same way. That makes him a less than perfect witness (though still a pretty good one, overall), but it doesn't mean that he sought out to kill some girl he barely knew.
