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.

Also it doesn’t matter if she misremembers which conversation it was.

Sure. So if you ignore the fact that Nisha can’t pinpoint a date, ignore the fact the police didn’t check the cell records for a week or so later for any other corroborating calls to Nisha, ignore the location/descriptive info she gives about where Adnan was at the time, and assume that conversation definitely took place on January 13th, but not at the video store as she states, then sure - that definitely puts Adnan and Jay together.

definitely 😂

hhhmmmm this is why I also swing to thinking maybe Jay wasn't involved at all and the Police were dodgy as fuck, really dodgy, it's pretty clear from hearing the parts of Jays interviews that were recorded that he's being seriously coached into what to say by the Police

Although one thing that I didn't remember (or maybe hadn't heard the first time I looked at the case) was that Adnan says that Jay was supposed to collect him from the school and he was looking for him at 3pm. If the plan was for Jay to come back to get Jay around then and also Hae was supposed to collect her cousin from school around then maybe that's where Jay and Hae's paths crossed and the opportunity presented itself for Jay

Interesting idea!

it’s so hard isn’t it. That poor girl and her family deserve justice and no matter what actually happened, it’s pretty clear that shitty police work and prosecutorial misconduct have damaged many lives.
Its terrifying.

Yeah absolutely. I don't hold out much hope but regardless of who killed Hae the Police behaved very badly and underhand in the case and they should be held accountable for that

You’re laughing (and I thought it’s been a civil discussion so not sure why you’re now being rude) but in my opinion you’re not appreciating the significance of the call. The call happened. We know that from the records. We know that the call happened while the phone was with Jay because of the other calls he made. We know that Jay had no reason to call Nisha. We know that that call lasted 2 minutes 22 (from recollection - certainly a couple of minutes not mere seconds). We know nisha didn’t have a voicemail. We know it was charged on the bill and therefore under AT&T wireless policy, the call was answered.

what is the reason for saying it’s a pocket call? No corroborating evidence of that at all. The pocket call idea has come about because it is the only way to explain that call without placing Adnan with Jay. It’s a theory, and the only exculpatory theory there is for Adnan. But that doesn’t make it likely.

a pocket call doesn’t make a great deal of sense as it lasted over 2 minutes and was answered, by a person not by a voicemail. So nisha would have sat on the end of that call with no one on it for 2 minutes, which is odd. Not physically impossible of course. But it’s far more likely that it was a proper call made by Adnan, who was with Jay at the time.

Also Nisha’s evidence is that she is told they were at a video store, which ties in with the idea that Adnan wanted to use the call as an alibi until the location data came out (and Jay turned on him).

You can try to imply this is simple and laugh at me all you want. I am an experienced professional lawyer who analyses evidence as my day job, which doesn’t mean I’m right in my conclusion but I am not being ridiculous either. You aren’t engaging with the detail of this piece of evidence, you’re just saying nisha mentioned a video store so she is wrong about when the call was, ignoring that even if she is wrong about the date, it still doesn’t follow it was a pocket call. It still remains most likely - not certain, but likely - given the factors I set out above that Adnan made that call deliberately.

I'm not sure the spurned ex story works well, as when Hae's car broke down a week after she broke up with Adnan a second time, it was Adnan she called to help her fix the car. Don also arrived and his testimony was that Adnan was friendly to him. This was on 23 December, so a few weeks before Hae's murder.

@Cantanka

The call happened. We know that from the records. We know that the call happened while the phone was with Jay because of the other calls he made. We know that Jay had no reason to call Nisha. We know that that call lasted 2 minutes 22 (from recollection - certainly a couple of minutes not mere seconds). We know nisha didn’t have a voicemail. We know it was charged on the bill and therefore under AT&T wireless policy, the call was answered.

Whilst I think a pocket call lasting 2.22 mins is unlikely, I think Sarah Koenig did speak to AT&T and they confirmed that if a phone is unanswered for too long, then AT&T do charge for it. SO I don't think we know that the phone was answered.

@Cantanka
I happened to have just finished the Serial podcast on this last week, so details are quite fresh. They did an investigation into the Ts & Cs of the phone provider. I can't recall the exact wording but there was a disclaimer that said something along the lines of outgoing calls would be charged, even if unanswered, but was ringing for a significant time. So their theory was that it was a pocket call, no one answered but as it rang out for over 2 minutes, this fell into the category of significant time and was therefore charged. I don't know if this was explored at any of the follow up hearings though.

I've copied and pasted this from Reddit: From the Serial Podcast Ep. 12:

"Meaning the Nisha had to have been answered because it shows up on the bill. But there was fine print to the fine print. When Dana flipped through to the last page of the contract she found a loophole. The loophole says AT&T won’t charge for unanswered calls unless the call isn’t terminated within a “reasonable time.” So if you call someone and it rings and rings and you don’t hang up within a “reasonable time,” AT&T will charge you for that call even if it’s unanswered. So what is a reasonable amount of time, or rather, an unreasonable amount of time? That loophole actually still exists today and the unreasonable amount of time today is thirty seconds or longer, they’ll charge."

Yes, it seems like on the one hand they were still close and got on OK but then there was the letter that had "I going to kill" written on it. Could be just hurt after a break up, could be a controlling ex who is still inserting himself into her life but also seething that she's moving on. Maybe Hae was a bit mean and kept stringing him along and he realised that, who knows?

@AryaStarkWolf that's possible, perhaps he was fine with it some times and angry at other times, who knows. Adnan says in the podcast he moved on after Hae and slept with other girls (he was also interested in Nisha). If yes, it does seem unlikely that he would be trying to get with Nisha and planning Hae's murder on the same day. But who knows?

That call to Nisha makes no sense a part from it being a butt dial imo even if I thought Adnan killed Hae it still doesn't make sense

You might be a lawyer but a number of the assertions you state that ‘we know’, we actually don’t.

if you’d read the analysis from other lawyers I posted earlier you’d see that there is a lot of grey to the things you think ‘we know’ and it’s nowhere near as black and white as you suggest.

A good explanation of why there’s a lot we actually can’t be certain of about the Nisha call lawprofessors.typepad.com/evidenceprof/2014/12/ive-done-eighteen-posts-herehereherehereherehereherehereherehere-hereherehereherehereherehereherehere-an.html

plus of course the issues with the butt dial/connection/unknown 1990s voicemail explained in earlier links.

I’m not saying it’s not possible that a 17 year old boy murdered his ex girlfriend, then staged a call with her and his mate in a location where his mate did not yet work but was deliberately selected to cause date confusion around the call (though how this would then give him an alibi for the murder , I’m not sure? And if it doesn’t then why is he making the call? )

all of that is possible. My point is that I’m not sure it’s evidence of anything, or even a particularly compelling narrative.

Also Nisha’s evidence is that she is told they were at a video store, which ties in with the idea that Adnan wanted to use the call as an alibi until the location data came out

Nisha’s testimony in court is “I remember [Adnan] telling me that Jay invite- invited him over to a video store that he worked at.”

how does that give Adnan an alibi considering Jay didn’t start working there til 10 days after Jay’s death?

*Hae’s death

The only thing it would be evidence of would be that Adnan was actually with jay at that time like Jay says but Adnan denys

And only if you ignore several of Jay’s timelines and trial testimonies where he says he wasn’t with Adnan during the 3.32 Nisha call timeframe (out of interest do we know when Jay changed his story to say he was with Adnan for this call?)

serialpodcast.org/maps/timelines-january-13-1999

i

No but Jays story changes so many times, it's really hard to follow. If I was a betting woman though I'd guess it was after the Police had the phone records and wanted to make that call fit and support their narrative.

Oh so cynical! 😁

Who me? 🧐😅

So am I right in thinking the police have several DNA samples they never tested?

If so, they really just need to swab Jay, Adnan, his uncle/cousin, the new boyfriend and the guy who ‘happened upon her’.

Its one of them, surely?

They’ve definitely tested some (12 I think) and found no match to Adnan (potentially a very forensically aware 17 year old in the 1990s! 🤔)

I think more testing may be in the pipeline

Absolutely no way Steven Avery is guilty of anything. That police force is SO CORRUPT.

Always suspected Adnan Syed may be guilty, but having read about a few Asian girls being murdered around the same time, I think there’s a chance it was someone else

If you listen to the undisclosed podcast it goes through the evidence and completely dismantles the states case.
Serial was great in that it made people aware of the case, but undisclosed investigated it fully and showed how much Jays testimony was false. Also crucially the cell tower evidence was wrong.
I hope the real killer is/are now brought to justice.