Interesting episode. I’m not sure that it moves anything forward, but it’s nice to have a look at the case from a different perspective. It sounds like the case was handled poorly from an evidence standpoint, which is unfortunate. But I think the facts as we have them still implicate either Adnan or Jay. To me, it still currently looks bad for Adnan, despite the flimsiness of the prosecution’s case.
It probably goes without saying that I’m very much looking forward to next week’s episode focused on Jay. This is a very big piece of the puzzle that’s been missing for all these weeks. I want to know where Jay is now. I want to know what motives he might have had going on to get involved in this. I want to know what kind of legal bargaining might have been going on between him and the detectives/prosecution. There are just too many outstanding questions regarding Jay’s involvement for me to feel strongly one way or the other about this case.
Agreed about the case and about Jay. The details you mention are all glaringly missing and obviously being held back for maximum drama since the very first episode.
I wonder if there are any lawyers (specifically prosecutors or defense attorneys) who are listening to this podcast and have any thoughts on it. My wife (a lawyer, although not a criminal lawyer, and she did work in the courts briefly) was commenting that there are some aspects of the case that may seem suspicious / shocking to the layman, but are pretty unsurprising if you’re familiar with the process.
She speculated that there might be a bit of “Law and Order”-ing of criminal investigations. The same way that CSI trained people that forensics is magic, people only familiar with legal procedurals might have an unrealistic expectation of criminal investigations being neat and tidy where everything makes perfect sense and there aren’t any coincidences (an effect that would probably go back as far as Sherlock Holmes…who’s also seeing a bit of a popularity bump recently).
Not that it makes a difference per se, as at it’s core it’s still about presenting an interesting story in a well told manner (i.e. above notes about holding back details for dramatic purposes). But I was curious if anybody with more experience in the field had any thoughts.
And next week, finally, Jay. It’s entitled (from the website) “The Deal With Jay.” Which says a lot, because, like, what the fuck? Even if Jay didn’t murder Hae, he should be in jail as an accomplice.
What a great podcast… very rare for a TAL story to have this amount of juice. My major takeaway is how unbelievably messy these cases are. The second people get involved in any capacity, you introduce all this uncertainty. Memory is so faulty – this person swears with certainty this guy told her a particular story, and then the guy swears with certainty that he never said any such thing. And then you just have all the “I can’t remember.”
So that was a bit shocking to me, but once I calibrated to this, Jay seemed completely off to me. His demeanor in the interview is so polished, so confident. And he narrates events like a lawyer: “Adnan then proceeded to…” Then throw in the changing story and the weird, slightly grandiose self-perception (remember how he described himself as the criminal element, the kinda guy who never calls the cops, who’s had police choppers circling his house?).
I only recently started listening to this, but it is brilliant; and thanks for starting this thread. On the question of guilt or innocence, I found the comments by Deirdre Enright of the innocence Project valuable - she says you need to keep the balls in the air until all the questions have been answered, to avoid falling into the trap that she says law enforcement does, of coming to a conclusion too early and having this colour your perception of the evidence one way or the other.
However, this is incredibly difficult in practice. At the moment, I am leaning towards Adnan’s guilt because he never tried to call his friend when she went missing. In my view, given the evidence that they were still close, this is inexplicable. While some folk say he knew of all these other people trying to call her so knew there was no point, he supposedly had a closer bond with her. If I was him and I was innocent, and didn’t know where she was, I would be assuming that she had run off after an argument with someone/family, or was shacked up with someone and not answering calls/pages; so I would think “we are close, she’ll take my call” and I would at least call several times and leave messages. Wouldn’t anyone here do the same if a loved one or close friend was reported missing for so long?
In my view, he didn’t do this because he knew exactly where she was and what had happened to her.
In terms of the dodgy stories of Jay and the timeline inconsistencies, I reckon the killing didn’t go down the way the Crown/State thinks it did in their case. I think there was premeditation and recruiting of Jay to be involved (hence the detailed story of sitting in the park watching the sun and talking about the crime - I think this occurred, but happened before or after the crime, rather than on the day) and Jay’s lying is intended to minimise his involvement, particularly in planning it. I reckon he was involved from before and assisted in the crime much more actively (hence the clothes disposal, cleaning shovels etc).
I think Adnan (who, if I am hearing the podcasts properly) knew Jay quite well as a smoking partner and regularly hung out with him/was dropped off by him, recruited Jay for the exact reason put forward in one episode - that he was so dodgy he was deniable and his evidence could be questioned. It’s not in Jay’s interest to tell the full truth because he would go down for it in a big way; and Adnan would be admitting guilt.
Still, I’m prepared to listen to the rest of the show with an open mind. It is brilliantly conceived and executed.
Hmm, I don’t know? It’s a head-scratcher. Adnan may have had some influence over him through knowledge of something he’d done or told him? Maybe he got caught up in the plans out of some need for friendship or something?
I don’t know enough about the characters, but a close relation of mine got mixed up in some stupid and bad stuff simply because someone asked him to and that seemed to be enough. No thinking through of consequences (which were dramatic and life-changing), just a spur of the moment decision to take part in something that he hoped he’d be respected for later.
Maybe Jay was drawn into it bit by bit, the seriousness escalates, but he is part of it already, so the next step almost seems normal (take his female friend who sees him ditching his clothes and cleaning shovels, but only when interviewed seems to notice that this contradicts his assurances he wasn’t involved in disposing of the body - I assume she is so caught up in the drama of it that she can rationalise the inconsistency, or be blind to it).
Unfortunately, having been exposed to stupid criminals through this relation’s actions, I understand how dumb they can be - they will often go out of their way to draw attention to themselves at times when they shouldn’t (its like a wish to self-sabotage) and they will go to great lengths to get themselves involved in some drama that until then has nothing to do with them - its like a desire to be part of something big or important without thinking at all about the consequences. I know enough at least to not rule out total stupidity as a reason for things that don’t make sense.
Still, all the questions are what make this so compelling!
Today’s episode left me just as ambivalent as before. All the reactions we got from Jay and through his friends would fit whether he helped Adnan with the murder, or if he helped someone else. The guilt, talking about it as little as possible, everything like that mentioned here. For the lack of a different suspect though, I still would have to lean towards Adnan.
I’m catching up and totally not reading page 2 of this thread…
…but holy cow! This is great…and I have a confession: I thought this was a radio play. I was like “These actors are really good. They sound very believable as these people.”
Yes, it’s real life which makes it strange. All the people featured are real people having their real lives raked over like a TV soapy. I even saw on Reddit someone talking about “Team Adnan” FFS! Feels very voyeuristic.
I can understand the reluctance of some folk to revisit the crime and I always have to remember that 15 years has passed. The taped interviews at the time were with teenagers and the present ones are with adults.
Good episode last night. I had expected Jay to be in jail or dead.
OK, here’s where I come down on this as of the end of Episode 8.
Spoilers ahoy.
I would like to buy into Adnan’s innocence, but I can’t. No matter how many ways I turn this puzzle around and look at it, here are the reasons why I think Adnan is guilty.
We know that Jay has intimate knowledge of the murder. He led the police immediately to Hae Min’s car. This is new information the police were lacking. It was not a shot in the dark. Only someone who knew pretty surely the information would be able to do this.
We know that, based on cell phone calls and even Adnan’s own admissions that he and Jay were together that day. We know that the two weren’t friends, but acquaintances.
Adnan maintains that he knows nothing about anything to do with Hae Min’s murder. There’s just no way to square that circle between Jay and Hae Min without Adnan knowing something. If he was saying “Jay did it and here’s how I got mixed up in trying to help him cover it up,” I might be able to find some ability to not fault him. But him saying that he knows absolutely nothing? That just doesn’t hunt.
I haven’t listened to the latest one yet so maybe it’ll be the one that convinces me, but from the last few episodes the only answer I have is that yeah, there’s something fishy with the timeline but they shouldn’t have had near enough to convict. It’s surprising (not shocking) what our justice system gets away with calling evidence. If the cell towers fit some of the testimony and others don’t, well, just ignore the ones that don’t fit and call that “evidence”.
I appreciated that an actual lawyer agreed with my feeling that the case was really thin against Adnan and probably should not have been enough to go ahead with. This latest episode does give me a sense of how Adnan got convicted anyway, though. It’s not that it’s a strong case, but presented by a capable prosecutor in a much less even-handed manner, with a sympathetic-seeming witness being apparently badgered by the defense lawyer in a potentially racially charged way, with the defendant’s failure to testify on his own behalf prejudicing the jury against him despite it not being considered legally relevant, etc…and of course, in the absence of any other more compelling scenario? Yeah, I could see that.
The thing is…I get that from what we’ve been told about so far, Adnan is about the only possible identified suspect (I mean, aside from Jay, but I’ve never been particularly sold on that scenario. It has most of the issues that the case against Adnan does and then some.). But that’s not the same thing as him being the one that actually did it. It just means that they may not have identified someone else with a potentially stronger case against them. Not that it’s not perfectly understandable to want to focus on the bird in your hand, as it were, and not that that mere possibility rules Adnan out, either.
The most puzzling thing to me about all of Serial is how someone decides to pronounce Mail Chimp as “Mail Shimp?”.
Oh, and the most recent episode has swung me back to thinking Adnan is guilty. I got a shiver when I heard that Jay claimed that Adnan had threatened to hurt his girlfriend Stephanie, too. Putting myself into his shoes, as a wannabe-tough guy/stoner who was really, really into my too-good-for-me girlfriend, and some guy who I knew in my capacity as a dealer comes to me like a cold psychopath and says, “I killed my ex, and if you don’t help me, I’ll kill your girlfriend, too. And oh, by the way, the body’s in the trunk, and the cops will never believe you weren’t involved because you’re a known shady guy.” But of course, even as I type this, I switch back around and think, “Really? Back to the charming psychopath thing again?”
It’s just that Jay’s remorseful statement at the sentencing hearing was just so damned powerful…
Man, this is a great podcast. Elevates the whole genre to a new level.
