Serial Podcast

That final interview with Adnan in this week’s episode kind of swung me back towards doubting Adnan again. His explanation to Sarah about why he didn’t fight harder during his trial just seemed…off. Go back and listen to it. He seems to dance around the topic of innocence way too much for my liking.

I tried donating via credit card, but the website stopped responding when I pressed submit. So then I clicked on Paypal and paid through that. Like Dingus, I’m not sure if I even want a season 2, but I do want to show appreciation for what they’ve done here.

This week’s episode was just almost unbearable for me. I just hate the thought of that kind of injustice happening to anyone. I almost find myself wishing he is guilty just so that he hasn’t been so wronged.

I sent 'em a little love via paypal as well. Completely worth it.

All caught up now after binging over the last couple of days. The pacing, particularly the holding back of obviously important information, is slightly annoying, but understandable. It would probably work better as a series of cliffhangers than all bunched together - I won’t be binging the next season. The sheer amount of legwork that went into it is extraordinary - it’s quite heartening that they feel this is a sustainable model for journalism (albeit with donations).

As for yes/no, I’m definitely leaning toward Adnan being guilty, but Jay being way more directly involved, possibly including being a co-conspirator who turned on Adnan. It’s hard to reconcile that with some of the evidence, but then so is any other theory presented so far.

I’m caught up and here’s what I’m thinking:

Once Hae and Adnan no longer were dating, Jay perceived Adnan’s relationship with Stephanie as a serious threat. Stephanie was “everything” to him – or so it was presented – so Jay killed Hae and framed Adnan to get him out of the picture. Almost all things about Jay’s testimony are crap. Adnan doesn’t have an alibi, though it looks like one probably could be pieced together if they spent enough time interviewing people.

Either way, I don’t think there’s enough evidence for Adnan to be in prison. The state should have built a stronger case (though, I suppose it was strong enough at the time).

Anyone know how many episodes they’re going to do in this season?

Listened to it a second time on a family road trip for Thanksgiving. My gut after the second listen is that Adnan did it, but that the state didn’t really prove its case against him properly. Jay feels like he’s more involved than he’s saying.

The things that make me feel like Adnan isn’t innocent:
[ul]
[li]The fact that he never tried to contact Hae after she went missing
[/li][li]The Nisha call
[/li][li]The fact that he doesn’t harbor an immense amount of ill will towards Jay. If he was innocent and Jay framed him, he’d be way more pissed at him.
[/li][li]His general tone during some of his discussions on the show. And it felt like he slipped up recently when he said it was his fault, and then claimed he was talking about loaning out his car and phone.
[/li][li]Jay was obviously somehow involved. If Adnan wasn’t, why did he spend that entire afternoon hanging with Jay?
[/li][li]
[/li][/ul]

I listened to an interview with Koenig where she said they expected it to run about a dozen episodes, but the number wasn’t finalized. The interview was recorded at the end of October or beginning of November, so there may be more recent info, but I think we’re about 2/3 of the way through the scheduled run.

As mentioned, I don’t think they know exactly how many episodes the season would be but I feel like we’re most of the way through this one.

Overall I have mixed feelings about it. I was hooked right off the bat, but then I felt that Koenig wasn’t handling the analysis very well and took forever to actually present experts analyzing the case (the Innocence Project people). I get tired of her telling me what her gut feels or exercising somewhat poor critical thinking (her reenactment of the 21 minute timeframe got painful at times). Then again, the show does great when demonstrating the abysmal critical thinking abilities of the cops and prosecutor. I don’t know, overall, I enjoy it enough to contribute, but I feel like this format could find a more capable hand at investigative journalism (I know Ms. Koenig’s impressive credentials - but I feel like this topic needs less This American Life storytelling at times and more hardcore breakdowns and analysis). But maybe I’m being overly critical.

…or missing the forest for the trees? I don’t think the point of Serial–no matter what the outcome of Adnan’s last appeal is–is necessarily investigative journalism so much as it is about telling a story. That’s what Serial is, a masterful bit of storytelling. Yes, it’s manipulative, but that’s what a storyteller is supposed to do with a story this worth telling.

I don’t disagree but she spends a lot of time playing amateur detective in parts rather poorly. If it was really storytelling, I guess I would expect her to let those qualified tell that part of the story. I also believe she’s trying to get to the bottom of this, not just tell the story. She is conducting an investigation one way or another, she just doesn’t seem qualified to do so at times, which she readily admits right off the bat in the first episode. I guess you could say that things like the 21 minute reenactment are the manipulative part to keep you hooked on the story, but that feels a bit of Rivera and the Capone business. This part gets me because I feel this is a case that needed to have some light shed upon it and how that light is shed and by whom is a great responsibility.

I’m actually not entirely convinced it’s masterful storytelling for my tastes. Granted, I don’t know what the raw material is that she’s working with so I don’t know what’s going on to shape it, but I often feel she indulges her own thoughts or feelings a bit much, or I don’t jive with how she’s unfolding her reporting. Granted, I don’t really care for This American Life a lot of the time either, so that may be part of it.

When the beginning of the episode summarized what we were going to go over today, I groaned out loud. (GOL?)

But, once again, it was a very informative episode. The money shot was the sound clip of the trial where Ms Guitearez (so?) “got” Jay in a lie. I’ve only been that bored one time in my life, and I had so much trouble concentrating on what she just said. It literally was putting me to sleep. I had already had my cup of coffee at work this morning, but after that clip I had to get another cup so that I wouldn’t nod off. Wow. That was a powerful narcotic. Her sing-songy way of speaking is just so…

Yeah. I would have had a really hard time taking her seriously as a juror, based on the samples that have been played. It’s also interesting that the first trial seemed to be going better and that it seems like she was having some sort of life crisis around the time of the second trial. (It’s probably Gutierrez, that’s the usual spelling.) And it seems really weird that the prosecutor providing a defense lawyer for a key witness who was also implicated in the events, apparently unprecedented and also incredibly fishy, did not constitute grounds for, well…doing anything, at all, from the sounds of it. I mean, I can understand the logic that if Jay weren’t aware that it wasn’t standard practice it wouldn’t influence him. That’s probably sound. But I think that really impinges on the credibility of the prosecutor and their case. I dunno. Maybe that’s just me.

I just caught up on this. One thing that struck me that I haven’t seen discussed much. Jay is consistent the whole thing being premeditated – Adnan had been talking about it for days, etc. That’s one of the things he has stayed solid on and hasn’t changed his story. But if so the plan is just so stupid and weird.

On the day Adnan knew he was going to commit a murder, he gives away his phone, tries to get a ride with the girl he wants to murder after school, (a place with 1500 students leaving at the same time), then calls his friend (on his own phone) from a payphone when he’s done and needs a ride?

I could almost buy the timeline (ignoring the problems like maybe there was no payphone at BestBuy…) as an unplanned murder but not as a plan.

I love how the show keeps showing how changing the context of something has such an effect. “In the trunk they found a map of the area, with the page that had park where the body was buried ripped out, and Adnan’s fingerprint on it.” “The page also had the school and all the local area on it and Adnan had been known to drive her car for months.”

Even if Adnan is guilty, Jay is certainly lying about a ton of stuff perhaps to cover up the extent of his own involvement. Certainly it seems like the timeline for the murder is more like 3:40 or something and that the 2:30 one is absurd – especially with the latest witness coming forward about seeing Hae not leave school right away that day.

Possibly both Adnan AND Jay are somehow lying to protect Stephanie or something.

Reading the transcripts of the interviews of Jay his story is just all over the place. And this is the cleaned up one – after the ‘pre-interview’ that they had first for a solid 45 minutes! http://viewfromll2.com/2014/12/02/serial-more-details-about-jays-transcripts-than-you-could-possibly-need/

(I super recommend that blog btw, some really good analysis there of transcripts, cell phone records, etc.)

News Article about his attorney being disbarred shortly after the conviction:

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2001-07-19/news/0107190108_1_gutierrez-trust-fund-clients

A record number of complaints from people who say they were cheated by one of Baltimore’s best-known criminal defense lawyers have poured into the state fund that reimburses victims of lawyer misconduct.

As of yesterday, 20 people had lodged claims against M. Cristina Gutierrez with the Clients’ Security Trust Fund, more than for any other lawyer. Gutierrez was disbarred May 24.

“I believe this is our all-time record,” said Janet C. Moss, the fund’s administrator. The claims total $226,493, and Moss said she expected several more.

I dunno, it doesn’t seem implausible that someone who is otherwise intelligent would commit a stupidly planned murder. It seems to happen all the time.

The end of the night according to the prosecutor’s timeline is really silly. There had to be some sort of exchange like this involved:

Adan: “Hey Jay, so we just buried a body in the woods, and moved Hae’s car so nobody else will find it, but we still have these shovels and other physical evidence like clothes. I know you don’t have a car but can you call a friend or something and take of that for me?”

Jay: “No problem, I’ll just call my friend Jenn and have her give me rides so we can take care of it.”

Adan: “Cool. Just tell her not to say anything okay?”

???

It’s so crazy that even Jenn and Jay have totally different stories for so many of the phone calls. Even after they conferred before going to the police. What the heck was going on?

Yeah, the prosecutor’s case is like those puzzle pieces that fit together but as you put together more of the puzzle you realize that those pieces don’t actually belong together and fit somewhere else. On the surface it looks right, but it doesn’t all make sense in the big picture.

This is what I was thinking too. Her tone and attitude would get under my skin pretty quickly, but maybe that’s part of some bigger plan, I don’t know. It’s hard to draw my own conclusions with only the little snippets we’ve heard. Koenig seems to keep repeating this basic presentation: “Gutierrez sounds nuts, right? But actually, there might be a reason because of blah blah blah courtroom tactics that are actually pretty common”. But I’m not sure how much Koenig believes that, it sounds like she’s trying to be diplomatic but really doesn’t get Gutierrez either.

At my most cynical, honestly in some of those clips she sounds so over the top I’d believe you if you told me Gutierrez was half drunk. It sounds like such an act. That’s a pretty horrible thing to say about someone who was possibly quite sick, and who’s now dead, totally unable to account for their actions at the time. But yuck, I don’t like her.

Yeah. She does do a lot of objections, but I’ve read some decent arguments from other lawyers that they are generally objections that a lawyer can do on autopilot – stuff that any decent lawyer can do merely hearing the form of a question or sentence, even if they had no specific knowledge about anything else on the case. But the places where objecting required familiarity with the specific evidence and facts of the case (like objecting because a presented timeline doesn’t match up with the presented evidence so far) she did much worse on.

I don’t feel like this week’s installment was very substantive. So Adnan stole a little bit of money from the mosque along with some other kids. So what? I think it suggests he wasn’t a very good Muslim back then, but seeing as the prosecution’s angle on his motive was that it was some sort of Muslim honor thing, that seems like it would weaken the case against him, not strengthen it. And a bit of petty thievery says fuck all about one’s capacity for murder. Similarly, the psychologist was a bit interesting, but ultimately it seemed to amount to “all sorts of people kill and there’s really no way to tell based on that whether Adnan fits the profile”. About the only significant thing I took from it was feeling queasier about the morality of deriving entertainment (maybe not precisely the right word) from dissecting this real case that’s still affecting the lives of everyone involved. I mean, I hope that if Adnan is innocent, it’s helped in some way to work towards his freedom. But hearing how upsetting it’s been for Adnan really doesn’t feel good to me, regardless of his guilt or innocence.