The Serial podcast captivated millions of listeners as it dug deep into the case of Adnan Syed, a man convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee. While Syed's sentence to life in prison may initially seem justified, a closer examination of the evidence presented in the podcast raises significant doubts about his guilt. This essay aims to challenge Adnan Syed's sentence by presenting material from three episodes of Serial, revealing inconsistencies in the prosecution's case, unreliable witness testimonies, and the lack of conclusive evidence tying Syed to the crime. Throughout the podcast, several inconsistencies and discrepancies emerge, undermining the reliability of the prosecution's case against Adnan Syed. In Episode 1, host Sarah Koenig highlights how the prosecution's timeline of events is riddled with inconsistencies and relies heavily on the memory of key witnesses, including Jay Wilds. Jay's changing story is documented in Episode 8, where he admits to providing false statements during the trial. It's worth noting that the prosecution's case against Adnan Syed relied heavily on circumstantial evidence, …show more content…
In Episode 5, the podcast highlights how the cell phone records, presented as evidence by the prosecution, were subject to different interpretations. The defense argues that the cell phone tower locations do not definitively prove Adnan's presence at the crime scene. This gives evidence for the innocence of Adnan, but because it was not highly considered or used during the trial Adnan was still proven guilty. Additionally, DNA testing conducted on the crime scene failed to match Adnan's DNA, as revealed in Episode 9, weakening the prosecution's assertion of his direct involvement. The absence of concrete physical evidence connecting Adnan to the murder raises doubts about the validity of his conviction and the severity of his
This Reveals Syed Wrong actions as it connects with the timeline of the calls given by the AT&T records and thus proving Adnan Syed being responsible because the whole story is adding up and connecting to wilds story. Likewise, the testimonies of witnesses proves Syed to be guilty as charged, as it adds up to create a story that proves him as a criminal. In the crime scene 4 witnesses are interviewed or info is obtained from them. According to wilds, Pusateri and vinson, “Wilds contacted Pusateri and asked her to pick him up at the Westview Mall… then he told her that Syed killed Lee that afternoon and placed her in the trunk of her car… he returned to Vinson’s house for the rest of the evening... Vinson testified that Syed and Wilds stopped by her apartment around 6 pm” and According to McClain, McClain had written Syed a letter… reminding him that she … had seen him at the Woodlawn Public Library… before 3 p.m. on January 13.
The court should not have accepted Jay’s testimony. He had a known rap sheet that was promptly ignored by the police. The multiple tellings of his story varied from time to time, and his stories were coached by the police. He is unreliable, and should not have been ignored as a suspect altogether. Adnan also had an ineffective council.
Adnan Syed is a 36 year old who had been convicted of first degree murder at the age of 17 on February 28, 1999. Adnan’s friend Jay Wilds testified that he helped Adnan bury Hae Min Lee’s body back in 1999, but Adnan Syed mentions he had nothing to do with Hae’s death. Adnan was convicted with evidence of his cell phone call logs, Asia’s letters to him, and Jay’s description of the route they took during the day of Hae’s death. Adnan Syed is granted a new trial. Not only has there been mistrials, delay, and not enough evidence but also there has been a conviction towards Adnan resulting with doubt after more than 1 decade later.
Obsidian Mekediak Tyler Bonnette RD 117 19 Dec 2022 Rhetorical Analysis of Sarah Koenig’s ‘Serial’ Adnan Syed was convicted for the murder of Hae Min Lee February 25, 2000. Syed has claimed his innocence since he was arrested. Syed’s conviction was based on Jay Wilds’ testimony. Wilds claimed Syed had strangled Hae Min Lee, and convinced Wilds to help bury her body. Sarah Koenig’s initial purpose of creating the podcast ‘Serial’ and investigating the conviction of Adnan Syed for the murder of Hae Min Lee was to conclude if the state's case against Syed was flawed and in doing that, Koenig was successful.
Adnan syed's original conviction in 2000 was based on cell phone records which purported to place
At the age of 17, Adnan Syed was charged for the murder of Hae Min Lee, but I don’t believe he did it, and I want to tell you why I think it was Jay who committed the murder. In this case there are days worth of reading for evidence. Just in the transcripts, there’s 288 pages, some of it evidence, some of it conversations, and some of it interviews. There are so many people involved that it's very difficult to say for certain that Adnan did it, but it's also very difficult to point out anyone else that could have done it as well.
Adnan Syed couldn’t have killed his former high school girlfriend, Hae Lee, 20 years ago: “I know it’s physically impossible for people to be in two places at one time.” Syed, the subject of Sarah Koenig’s hit podcast “Serial” and Amy Berg’s HBO docuseries “The Case Against Adnan Syed,” was convicted of killing Lee, his ex-girlfriend, in 1999. But McClain, who was never called to testify during the first trial, said she had a 20-minute conversation with Syed in their high school’s library at the same time prosecutors say Lee was murdered”. Another witness who testified to seeing Adnan was Rabia, She claims to have gone into the library and saw Adnan printing papers, they even managed to chat for a bit, As Koenig comments, “And she told me, that
The prosecution case against Adnan Syed was mainly based on the testimony of Jay wilds, who said he helped bury Hae Min Lee's body. Jay's testimony was supported by the cell phone records that placed Adnan on the site on the Day Hae Min Lee disappeared. According to the prosecution, the evidence sayed that Adnan had a motive to Kill Hae, because he was jealous and possessive of her. However, there are inconsistinces in Jay’s testimony, which has changed multiple times over the years. Some people also claimed that He was pressured into providing false testimony by the police.
Text Analysis: Comparative Response Michael Uszynski In both "Serial" and "Making a Murderer," the audience is positioned to view the accusers as potentially malicious through similar techniques. In "Serial," the podcast provides evidence through the use of techniques such as interviews, this is evidenced by the way the detectives interviewed Jay Wilds, who claimed to have helped Adnan bury Hae's body. Jay recounted every detail of the crime and the events before insisting that he had proof that Adnan did the crime. However, Jay contradicted himself by changing his story throughout the investigation.
The audience also knows how much time Koenig has spent looking into this case and for her to still be questioning it makes it hard to believe that the court made a decision in such a short amount of time, supporting the theory that bias played a factor. “I see many problems with the state's case. But I also see many problems with Adnan’s story too.” This antithesis explains how there simply were just too many holes in both sides of the case to make an accurate conviction (Koenig 150). These gray areas within the case are the sole reasons why nobody can confidently say who did it, making it very unlikely that the court's decision was made strictly from evidence.
This includes two crucial details that, in the opinion of many, are difficult to mix up: whether or not Jay actually assisted in burying Hae's body, and where Adnan allegedly showed him Hae's body. In the first recorded interview with Jay, he stated that he was unwilling to assist Adnan in burying Hae's body and that Adnan had allegedly shown him the victim's body on Edmondson Avenue at 3:25 PM. On the contrary, Jay claims in his second recorded interview that he assisted in burying Hae's body and that Adnan allegedly showed him the body in a Best Buy parking lot. The mixing of these two details opposes the suspension of whether or not what he is testifying is accurate. Since seeing a body would be traumatic and not a simple memory you could easily mix up, explain to me how Jay would forget any of these details.
The disregard for the truth and use of the only part of the evidence that worked with their story is a classic case of “bad evidence.” Though it is easy to understand why closing a case for the sake of closure is done, it is also alarming how many real murderers may escape conviction because investigators choose to willingly block out the big picture. All together the only viable pieces of evidence that genuinely work against Syed without question are events, not objects. The cell towers proved to be unreliable, Jay’s testimony is riddled with lies and alterations, and all of the physical evidence proves inconclusive. There were other pieces of physical evidence at the scene of the crime, such as rope and a bottle, both of which were never tested.
These inconsistencies have led some people to doubt Jay's testimony's credibility and question whether he was telling the truth about his involvement in the case. Jay Wilds was Adnan Syed’s drug dealer. He was trying to confuse people with his stories. He shouldn't have been called in to testify and this proves itself with all four different versions of his stories. For the defense team, it should have been a win.
This story alone ultimately convicted Adnan. No physical evidence was ever found. Reporter Sarah Koenig realized the patchy story of this case
Several critics of true crime podcasts are quick to passionately post on their blogs that all supposed perpetrators should not get any coverage, as it is believed that this “glorifies the actions of the alleged perpetrators” (Timea). And while it is true that some perpetrators are guilty beyond reasonable doubt, and should thus be solely depicted as guilty convicts, the flip side must also be considered: the imprisoned whose guilt was never solidified. True crime podcasts are infamous for their ability to examine multiple possibilities, with this critical thinking holding the ability to exonerate and change the lives of innocent individuals. Like Crime Weekly, the Serial podcast examined the murder of Hae Min Lee but, instead of focusing on the victim, chose to examine the supposed killer: Adnan Syed. The podcast’s investigation and reporting into previously unexplored evidence led to hundreds of listeners signing a petition for the case against Syed to be reinvestigated, which not only led to the case being reopened for investigation into other suspects, but also to prosecutors dropping the case against Syed.