Adnan Syed is released!

[Squisita]

Adnan Syed was yesterday released from jail, after a judge ruled that the state violated its obligation to share evidence with the defence that would have helped his case.

Having listened to the Serial podcast about the case, I think this was the right decision and it's come 22 years too late. Based on the evidence, Adnan should have been acquitted.

I hope this now opens the path to finding Hae Min Lee's real killer.

And sorry for leaving you to speculate what I meant (while I was trying to get my own work prepped for tomorrow! 🤣)

Oh of course - I mean we’re all idly die speculating really - none of us know ‘the facts’ I guess I’m just interested in why the speculation stacks up to ‘guilty’ cos to me there’s nothing I’ve seen that shifts him from the ‘innocent’ baseline into the ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ camp, so I guess I’m interested as to what has influenced others.

the uncertainty about the day thing was fascinating for me - to me it’s a total non- issue (but then I can barely remember what I did yesterday so it’s totally reasonable someone wouldn’t know what they did over a month previously), but clearly others see that as being really quite problematic (which makes me glad I’ve never been caught up in a crime cos I’d be up shit creek by that standard 😂)

I don’t think he does shift into the beyond reasonable doubt camp - for me he’s in the slightly shifty looking camp…
But I would shit myself if I was ever falsely accused of a crime, I simply don’t have faith they’d get it right…

@FurAndFeathers You know what's interesting though, often people are confident they 'remember' where they were or who they talked to at a particular time, but they didn't. They're not lying, it's just our brains are really good at filling in gaps with what we expect to happen and we don't have any reason to question it until we're confronted with evidence to the contrary. Its why two witnesses will give a different account of the same scene. I wouldn't be able to lie to an interrogator, I'd just crack, so as soon as someone said to me 'what were you doing on Tuesday afternoon three weeks ago' I'd just have to say I don't know. I know where I usually am on Tuesday afternoons, that's the best I can do.

Yes in the Adnan syed documentary they interviewed Cathy/Kristy who testified that Adnan and Jay were at her house on Jan 13th and Adnan was being shifty. She was adamant about it. then they showed her a class schedule that shows she was actually attending a class that day and couldn’t have been home so it couldn’t have been that day.

ditto Aisha (I think) who said Hae had been to a wrestling match after school) but there was actually no wrestling match that day. Clearly there were plenty of folk who couldn’t remember where they were/what happened on Jan 13th and just attempted to ‘fill in the gaps’.

all of that stuff formed part of the police narrative but actual evidence (class schedules, registers etc) contradicts the testimony. Clearly Adnan was not the only person who didn’t have a clue what he did on the 13th!

I was leaning towards him being guilty (but agree the evidence wasn't good enough for beyond reasonable doubt)

For me, I couldn't get passed Jay's story, although he himself was an u reliable witness I just couldn't think of a reason why he'd not online completely lie about a friend of his doing it but also implicate himself in it too. The only reason I could see for that is if he actually killed her himself and it doesn't even seem like he knew her that well or has any kind of motive/have any reason to be in her company etc

Also, for him to have and Adnan to have had no involvement at all would mean you would have to believe that Police had found Hae's car but hadn't reported or seized it but instead sat on that information until during an interview with Jay told him to tell them that the car was parked where it was. Of course that's not impossible but it just seemed really far fetched to me

I wondered if Jay could be one of the alternate suspects mentioned in the prosecution statement - the one heard by 2 witnesses threatening to kill Hae. To me that sounds like someone who knew her (even slightly). I guess it could also have been Don, or someone else?

pretty sure Jay does have a family member who lived next to where the car was found, so he could have left it there, and he has a history of violence against women. I wonder if Hae snubbed Jay in some way and he got angry?

to me the biggest motive for Jay implicating Adnan all these years, is that he was involved himself and shifting the blame. He’s the only person in the whole narrative that had a clear connection to her death (knew where the car was, had a story about it etc) but no one ever seems to think he’s the actual murderer which is odd.

I find it interesting that folk often use Jay’s ‘knowledge’ as an indication of Adnan’s guilt. But no one ever seems to use it as an indication of Jay’s guilt!

It is very odd @FurAndFeathers - but I think what I’ve always thought about Jay, is that the police had something on him - not this - and they used that as leverage to get him to implicate Adnan. Which seems far fetched, but one of the two detectives on the case has turned out to be dodgy…and all the business with the tapping and cell phones towers was always very suspect!

I think I read somewhere that the alternative suspects are rumoured to be Adnans uncle Bilal & Alonzo Sellers (Mr S)The man who found Hae's body (no idea how true that is though.)

The reason again I don't lean towards Jay having killed her is because according to Hae's diaries, notes, or nothing any of her friends or anyone in her life we hear from ever mentions any kind of a relationship at all between her and Jay. It would have had to be a very secret meeting/relationship for Hae to blow off giving Adnan a lift that day (if he wasn't involved at all) to secretly run off to meet Jay for some reason. Jay had a girlfriend and Hae had a B/F who she seemed really into, it just seems to me very unlikely with the information we have (of course that doesn't mean it wasn't the case but I'm just going with the information we do know)

Yeah, I have heard that theory as well around Jay, the Police would have had to be very corrupt and been massively underhand but that could have happened. I actually think that's more likely than Jay having actually killed her himself and the reason I think that's more likely is because of how much his story changes according to fit changing information the Police get (plus the paused tapes and the possible prompting noises etc during his taped interviews)

I think I read somewhere that the alternative suspects are rumoured to be Adnans uncle Bilal & Alonzo Sellers (Mr S)The man who found Hae's body (no idea how true that is though.)

I just listened to the Serial catch-up episode and Sarah K says one of the possible suspects had two polygraph tests at the time. Mr S had two polygraph tests (the first of which he failed, after which the police changed the questions for the second one) and it’s always seemed very strange that he ‘happened’ across Hae Min’s body when it was quite a way into the woods and he had to force his way through undergrowth. Rather an odd thing if he was, as he said, just stopping off momentarily to ‘take a leak’.

Re. the police having something on Jay - they did. According to Undisclosed, he was already facing some other charges, which were officially paused (they put a ‘stet’ on them, in legal parlance, iirc), which involved the agreement of higher-up legal authorities. The police couldn’t do it themselves. So it looks very much as though something was happening behind the scenes that gave Jay some kind of protection if he cooperated with what they wanted him to do.

It would make you wonder though why the Police wanted it to be Adnan that bad that they would try and make Mr S - who as far as I can see wasn't anyone wealthy/powerful/important, in fact the opposite, he would have fit the profile better than 17 year old/criminal record free Adnan.

make Mr S seem innocent if he was likely to have killed Hae (or atleast more likely than Adnan)

**sorry finished my last post without finishing it!

I think the problem was that they’d already gone down the rabbit hole of creating the ‘Adnan did it’ narrative by the time Mr S found Hae’s body. By then they’d got the cell towers, Jay’s testimony and the ‘spurned lover’ story. Easier to carry on with that than start a new suspect from scratch.

Agree mr S is one of the 2 suspects highlighted. I was wondering if the second might be Jay rather than Bilal? There’s zero evidence Bilal ever had any interaction with Hae - he was a friend of Adnan’s from the mosque. Whereas Jay was dating a classmate of Hae’s and would know Hae through Adnan and Stephanie. Surely he’s more likely to have run into her (and kept the focus on Adnan to save himself) than Bilal was. How would Bilal even be aware of Hae’s existence?

Maybe Mr S ultimately didn’t have anything to do with it, but they didn’t investigate properly. It was basically lazy policing. Adnan Syed was the easy suspect, the ex-boyfriend, they automatically assumed he had a motive (he’d be consumed with rage towards Hae), AND he was Muslim - lots of ‘othering’ going on too.

Fair enough if they arrested Adnan then found more evidence that cast doubt and let him go, or conversely they tied up the niggling loose ends. But they didn’t. They hushed up or ignored all the inconsistencies, eg how come Hae’s body had clearly been kept for hours lying face down (proved by medical evidence) yet Jay testified they’d stuffed her in the car boot then buried her - lying on one side - within 5 hours? Simply couldn’t have happened.

There are so many of these facts that can’t be made to fit. Now they’ve looked at the case again it’s finally hit them that the conviction just wasn’t safe.

I honestly had to google Bilal when i read that he may be a suspect so he clearly wasn't on my radar at all when I first watched the show/listened to the Podcast. One theory I read about him though are that maybe he was abusing Adnan (he's currently in prison for abusing boys) and Hae found out and he wanted to shut her up

I think there’s a lot of reaching there 😁

again it seems odd to me that there are lots of convoluted theories (with no evidence) to make other suspects ‘fit’ because no one seems to want to go with Jay. Why not?

Is it a reach to think he might have been abusing Adnan when he was his "Youth Leader" at Church and he has abused many young boys?

I suppose the Police must have reasons for whoever the two people are to say they are possible suspects so we'll just have to wait and see

I don't know why I think it's so unlikely to be Jay, he does seem like a not very nice guy and certainly a liar, it just doesn't feel right to me 😂

There were some allusions to Jay being jealous of those in the Magnet (gifted and talented programme) at school. Both Adnan and Hae were in it.

Jay's friend Jenn Pusateri also said she found Hae stuck-up. So I wonder jealousy played a part.

Bilal was convicted of assaulting sedated patients whilst he worked as a dentist. I don’t know if there’s any evidence that he attacked any boys at the mosque? Or Adnan specifically? Or had any interaction with Hae? I’m not aware of any evidence to support that, so I’d call it a reach - we don’t know that he was ever aware of her existence, and considering she was a prolific journaller I think it’s unlikely Adnan would have disclosed something as significant as that to her and she’d have created no personal record of it - she wrote about everything!

on the other hand Jay admits to burying Hae’s body, and knew where to find her car after she died and would likely have interacted with her via mutual friends . that strikes me as a much clearer connection.

and yet it appears I’m often the only person who thinks so 🤷‍♀️

having said that, Mr S is number one on suspect my list

There was a 14 year old refugee boy as well I think that was through the Mosque (I think)

I know what you're saying and I get why you're frustrated that no one is thinking the same as you because you do raise good points. I don't know, I just don't think he did it. I just get the feeling from him that he either did help Adnan bury her body or he's made a deal with the Police who were feeding him information

I just don't see why a serial flasher known to the police would draw attention to himself by telling them he found Hae's body.

Not frustrated - more bemused. I find the mental gymnastics (with the limited evidence we have access to) fascinating. I think it offers useful insight into why wrongful convictions occur - as humans we like a ‘story’ and we’ll overlook inconvenient facts if the story is good.

Jay being guilty would mean we’ve all overlooked the blindingly obvious for 20-odd years and that the justice-system actively protected a murderer. No one likes that story!

And yet he did, and other killers have done similar - think of Ian Huntley inserting himself into the investigation.
It happens fairly frequently that they want some input, though I agree it doesn’t make rational sense.