Syed's Guilty Case Study

Syed is spending his fifteen years behind the bars because of Wilds’ testimony; however, throughout the four interviews with the police and at the trial testimony, Wilds provided different statements that made his word a part of invalid evidence of Syed’s guilty.

Eyewitness is not the most reliable evidence, for mistakes can be made if a witness misleads the information. In Syed’s case, it is clearly that Wilds was not a reliable person based on his rapidly changing testimony. According to Richard. R Stack, a lawyer and an associate professor at the American University, an eyewitness is only reliable if s/he met all psychological processes, such as acquisition, storage, and retrieval (Stack 88). In Dead Wrong: violence, vengeance, and the

In the second interview, Wilds said that Syed’s motivation killing Lee was because she had broken his heart, but at the trial, Wilds shifted his answer to Lee made Syed mad. When the police officer asked if Syed planned to kill Lee in advance, Wilds confirmed yes in the second interview but then declined this in the third interview. Wilds testimony about the number of days before Lee’s murder and the place where Syed killed and showed her body did not match. Based on Stack’s ideal of a witness, Wilds was not a credible witness for his memory was vague during the police investigation. He was not consistent with his testimony and later on, admitted that he was lying in the first two interviews to cover up the fact that he was a drug dealer. In Serial, Koenig was questioning the consistently of Wilds testimony by saying that, “In Jay’s statements, while the particulars shifted, the spine of his story did not. Adnan told Jay he was going to do it, Adnan showed him the body, they buried her in Leakin Park, they ditched her car. Jay has been consistent on those point” (Koenig Ep.5). Koenig’s point of view clarified that Wilds should not be considered as a witness for the credible