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.

I think its more likely Steve Avery is guilty than Adnan. Way more likely

Apparently there is evidence from the Steven Avery case that never made the show.
That they had scrubbed the garage clean with bleach, and both their jeans were bleach stained

So how does it work, would they still have the physical DNA samples? How long is this stuff kept for and where?
Is it like in storage? Or the digital results kept?

They can’t keep evidence for every crime forever, can they?

Ive never really thought about how long evidence etc is kept before

Yep, plus the fact that he was a creep who was harrassing Teresa and who Brendan said used to sexually abuse him and some of the cousins

Not sure tbh.

I think they have to use the actual sample cos in the west Memphis 3 case the rationale for not testing the dna in the knots on the rope is that it would ‘use up’ all of the sample.

I think a lot of it depends on how evidence is stored. If it’s cool and dry the dna lasts pretty well. A lot of cold cases are solved because forward thinking detectives took potential DNA samples. Similarly a LOT of exonerations have happened when the fab evidence indicates an alternate perpetrator. I still wonder if that might be happening here and we’ll see a DNA-based arrest (Mr S?) fairly soon.

“The state is waiting for the results of DNA testing which they hope could advance the investigation, Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby said on Monday.

In March, prosecutors and Adnan Syed’s defence attorneys filed a joint request for Hae Min Lee’s clothing to be tested using new touch DNA testing, which was not available at the time of the original trial.

The analysis came back in August without anything conclusive.

But, Ms Mosby said on Monday that further testing is under way.

She added that if the tests come back with Syed’s DNA, then her office would pursue a new case against him.

But, either way, he is still entitled to a new, fair trial, she said – after pointing out multiple issues with his original case.”

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/adnan-syed-freed-hae-min-lee-suspects-live-b2172791.html?amp

I’m listening to the original Undisclosed too, and they said there were still samples from eg under Hae's fingernails which had never been tested. But that was in 2015 so who knows if they still exist. Plenty of other evidence in the case has mysteriously disappeared.

But then, the police also had fingerprints from inside Hae's car which didn’t match to any of the main protagonists, and they never pursued that line either. Adnan's prints were there but of course you’d expect that; he’d travelled in the car plenty of times.

They didn’t measure the car seat position and match it to the likely height of whoever drove the car to where it was found. They didn’t think it was odd that the car looked completely clean, and had fresh green grass stains on the wheels, even though it had supposedly been parked there for 6 weeks, all the way through a massive snowstorm and subsequent thaw.

The police were useless.

Yes I think the undisclosed team had a grass expert (botanist?) state that there was no way there would be fresh green grass underneath a car parked over it for 6 weeks, so clearly the car had been fairly recently moved.
plus neighbours reported it hadn’t been there that long.

Does anyone know if there is an in depth podcast about the Theresa Hollbach case? I really am 50/50 about the guilt of Steven Avery. I wouldn’t be surprised either way. I am 99.99% sure that Brendan Dassey had zero to do with it though.

There’s this one about Brendan Dassey podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/sixth-hour-the-wrongful-conviction-of-brendan-dassey/id1512638999 but surpringly little about the whole case centering Theresa 🙁

Thanks, I’ll give that a listen.

It’s horrible how so often the victims just get forgotten. I think the worst case of this is the West Memphis 3. Although this could refer to the 3 young victims it never does. 3 young boys almost forgotten and denied justice.

Generation why also have a decent overview of Steven avery’s case
podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/steven-avery/id541481026?i=1000361314442

I think the level of investigative/legal expertise shown by Undisclosed is rare though. Some of their other seasons are also excellent - the Joey Watkins case is one that stuck with me

Other great investigative crime podcasts are
in the dark (especially the Curtis flowers season)
Breakdown

I’ve listened to all those podcasts you mention, and I love In The Dark. I was hoping for an ‘Undisclosed’ type one on Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey, a deep dive podcast on that case without bias would be amazing.

Agree. It’s such a frustrating case.

I think maybe Brendan was involved but I still feel like he was also a victim of Steve

I was watching The Case Against Adnan Syed the other day, and one of the lead detectives was talking about the man who found her body. He had previous convictions for indecent exposure, yet the detective said yes, sure he’d exposed himself in the past but that didn’t make him a killer, it just meant he was a bit of a weirdo. The sheer lack of knowledge about sexual offenses and their progression to violence was just shocking.

The detective in that documentary gave off this air of arrogance that really rubbed me up the wrong way. He kept making comments like ‘don’t think x/y/z person wasn’t ‘looked at’. He also had this really irritating smirk when talking.

The fact that Mr S also intially failed the polygraph test and then ‘passed’ an entirely different one after also has a lot to say for itself.

I was discussing this with my friend yesterday (a fellow true crime addict), and whilst I've been heavily leaning towards Adnan being guilty, she told me 2 things that actually swayed me back.

1. There was a serial killer loose in the area at the time who had previously strangled a young Asian woman
2. Jay's story of seeing Hae's body in the trunk is impossible. The pattern of lividity on her body showed definitively that she had not been moved at all for at least 8-10 hrs post-mortem. It's not just a misrecollection of where he saw it etc. Its totally impossible. It's not entirely academic for her either as she was actually on a jury where she voted to aquit a man of murder, through gritted teeth. She felt like he was guilty. But the evidence wasn't there. Then we had the whole conversation of imagine being innocent and being on the stand with the jury looking at you like 'hmm...do I feel like this person is guilty?' rather than looking at the evidence. Terrifying.

Yeah we’ve discussed the lividity a bit on the thread.
for me it’s one of the most compelling pieces of evidence and it entirely discredits the states timeline

hae simply could nod not have been moved and buried as they claimed

Worth remembering Jay was a young black man, so who knows what tactics the police used to coerce him and how he knew what they could do to him if he didn't go along with what they said.

Now I'm wondering if the police just hammered a confession out of Jay - a demographically easy target for them to bully - so they could lock up Adnan and close the case. And I don't think Adnan is this wonderful guy by the way. To me he comes across as a bit of a dick. No law against being a dick though.

Sorry to keep banging on about Undisclosed but it really is THE podcast to listen to for all this, because they went into it in minute detail.

Basically, Jay was already facing charges for assaulting a police officer and maybe drugs - can’t recall exactly; he was found in a car with Jen causing an affray and was arrested (after Hae had gone missing, but before the discovery of her body). The police and prosecutors made those charges go away, or at least suspended them. And then there was a lot of extremely suspicious coaching of Jay by the police re his statements about Adnan and his own suppose part in the murder.

Jay was eventually charged as an Accessory after the Fact, but police first dangled a murder charge in front of him, and Undisclosed pointed out that he could potentially have faced the death penalty if convicted of that (Adnan couldn’t, as he was underage). So Jay did a plea deal in return for agreeing to testify for the prosecution (with a lawyer provided for him by the prosecution, which is apparently unheard-of), and there was a mysterious closed session with a judge (not the judge in his trial; a different one), Jay and his lawyer…..and at the end of all that, he got off with a suspended sentence, 2 years' probation for being an accessory after the fact.

All very strange indeed.

I think many 17 year old males are dicks!
it’s not an arrestable offence though 😁

Real crime profile does a deep dive into ‘Making a murderer’, it features an ex FBI profiler and Laura Richards who has already been mentioned on this thread. It was really interesting although not quite as in depth as Undisclosed

Adnan confirmed innocent after the new dna testing excludes him as the murderer!!