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[Serial] podcast. A case study in how our justice system sucks.
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http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/6ab2d45a77/the-last-episode-of-serial
Haha, "Sorry this isn't Jay, I'm borrowing his phone today." Perfect.
The random serial killer part seemed to me like an excuse to meet the legal requirements to get the DNA tested. That is why the Innocence Project person said "Big picture, Sarah, big picture."
Yes, Jay lead the police to the car as well as described what she was wearing and how the body was buried. So Jay, without a doubt, was involved somehow. So the real question the entire time seemed to be "Did Adnan do it and get Jay to help or did Jay do it and pin it on Adnan." There are some theories out there where Jay buried the body with some other third party but I find those rather far fetched.
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I thought the last episode wrapped up the series nicely. It added some ambiguity because of the Josh story about Jay being scared, but my only problem with the whole thing was - who the hell tells a coworker they have known for less than a month that they were involved in a murder? It might be mental gymnastics, but I thought it might be possible that Jay was doing the scared thing and telling people about the murder as an act. If Jay murdered Hae alone he knew he had Adnan's car and cell phone so he seemed like the only one he could convince the police was the suspect.
Also the bit Dana brought up about how unlucky Adnan is was completely missing the selection bias of the story they chose. Of course you aren't going to research a case for a year and do 12 episodes on a case when it has clear evidence. There certainly are people who have been exonerated who were also incredibly "unlucky."
I was very glad that Sarah Koenig brought this up and clearly stated she thought Adnan shouldn't have been convicted because of the reasonable doubt involved in this case.
This is a really good article about some of the problems with the justice system that could have been brought up by Serial. It is rather frightening IMO.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/17/serial-missed-its-chance-to-show-how-unfair-the-criminal-justice-system-really-is/
PSN: jrrl_absent
That seems a little too conspiracy theory-ish for me. I think the cops did a horrible job in this case. I guess having Jay find the car lends credibility to Jay's story, but that would require a lot of shitty corruption for them to manufacture Jay's story as well as the car find just so they could put Adnan away.
It really had me feeling like Adnan had nothing to do with this murder and it was really Jay and (possibly) someone else.
It's insane to me that they had that much physical evidence against Jay (Shovel, gloves, at least) plus his own testimony that he knew about the murder and helped bury the body AND LIED TO THE POLICE ABOUT IT but no he is above suspicion for anything beyond exactly what he admitted to and, in some cases, lied about.
I just don't understand. I'm sure they could have gotten a jury to convict on the "he was afraid Hae was going to tell Stephanie Jay was cheating on her" or something.
Edit: I do agree with the above comments though; the original investigation seems poorly executed, and there should never have been a conviction in this case.
This is where I feel I end up. It feels like the real motive and suspect are not mentioned in this. Jay's motive is too cloudy, and his story too mixed to believe he's not more involved than what he admitted to.
Yeah, the more into the series I got, it started shifting from Law & Order episode to Coen Brothers Movie. I think none of us will ever know the full story, and that nobody's even theorized it.
In my opinion I think the basic possibilities of the case have been theorized. Since Jay knew where the car was that leaves us with:
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Some other things I learned from reddit about the case that weren't in the podcast: http://www.reddit.com/r/serialpodcast/comments/2pw5dv/serial_reddit_since_the_start_of_the_series_what/
Part 1.
Part 2.
Part 3 out tomorrow.
Yeah this is the part that really bugged me. Like someone else said, the police had confirmation bias most likely...but I'm just shocked that Adnan was convicted.
Also, learning more about his defense attorney makes me really sad...just how one person's fuck ups can condemn a person to prison.
by Alan Dershowitz professor emeritus at Harvard University Law School
Here are the important parts of the article
This got me thinking. Should we lower the burden of proof in the post conviction appeals to allow for new evidence that would create reasonable doubt instead of this stricter standard that it would definitely prove innocence. Would a change like that inundate the appeals courts with people trying to reopen cases? It seems interesting that they do not allow evidence that was available at the time of the original court case but was not used for some strategic reason or oversight on the part of the defense attorney. For example in this case the defense had no idea when the prosecution was going to say Adnan had killed Hae. Based on most of the interviews with Jay it sounded like the "Come pick me up at Best buy" happened around 3:30 or so. So they would have prepared for that scenario. However in the actual court room arguments the prosecution argued that the murder occurred around 2:30 which was the only call that matched up with the cell records. The Asia alibi would have covered this time frame but without prior knowledge of the prosecution's case the defense was trying to find an alibi for the wrong time frame. So in this case the Asia alibi was known to the defense but they considered inconsequential. So with the Maryland rules it sound like that would not constitute new exculpatory evidence.
Also how much time did they have between pretrial discovery where the prosecution shares information and the actual trial?
What is considered a sufficiently early time? I've googled but I can't seem to find what is considered sufficiently early or what the average time is.
Edit: I started thinking how likely is it that different sets of 12 jurors come to the same conclusion given the same court case. From some quick googling the answer is somewhere between "they would probably come to the same conclusion but the research / statistics behind this conlusion is kind of shaky" to "we really don't know more research needs to be done"
This paper goes over this topic but covers a little bit about criminal juries and more about civil juries. Most of the research has been done with mock trials and usually involves university students as jurors which is not really a representative sample of the population.
http://www.lawcourts.org/subpages/reviews/overland1009.htm
On the positive side, I really appreciated the set-up for the podcast--the ability to take the investigative journey with Koenig was really affective. I'm very excited for season 2.
wish list
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Yeah, it's obvious they didn't expect this one to blow up like it did, and I doubt the intent was ever for this to be a murder mystery show.
If we're talking about dream S2 topics though, I'd love love love a 12 parter on the 2008 financial crisis.
But seriously, the one thing I took away from this podcast more then anything is that it's like an 8.5 hour in-depth testimonial on the terrifying arbitrarity of even the basic idea of how our criminal justice systems function.
But yeah, I think we all see it as the obvious alternative. Everything that makes Jay their star witness makes him the most obvious suspect as well. Except he lacks a motive and that's what the detectives are really after. That's what they build their biases and the case around. Dead girl => Boyfriend or Ex because that's the obvious motive.
What seems obvious to me by the end is what Sarah brings up in last episode: that both Jay and Adnan seem to be lying about something. It really seems to me like something weird is going on that day. The only other thing I can pin down is that Jay is involved somehow.
Another point I noticed in one of the early episodes is the story of how the police come to locate Jay. The impression you really get from the story is Jay panicking and feeding his friend(s) a story about what happened to cover his ass. It really all feels after-the-fact.
But that's clearly what it is about. The podcast established reasonable doubt within a few episodes. Sarah even states as much (at least, in her opinion). It's clearly about alot more then that, both when she started looking in to this, when she got obsessed and by the time she finished the podcast.
I get the impression this is not about Adnan's trial except tangentially. The summation of the series, for all that it's a bit of a letdown imo, seems fairly clear that what this is really about is the fact that for all their effort, for all their searching and pushing and pulling, they ultimately have no idea what the fuck happened. Not even a really plausible theory. And she isn't talking about something that will hold up in court or something that will exonerate Adnan or whatever, but simply something that would fulfil the fundamental need everyone had by the end of the first episode: a story that explains the murder of Hae Min Lee that isn't just pure speculation. And that's the one thing, for all her obsession and frustration, that seems out of reach. And that's why she became so obsessed with the case and part of why I think many listeners did too.
The podcast begins with the idea that ultimately this case comes down to either Adnan or Jay is lying. And the only change by the end is that they both seem like they might be lying. Nothing about the damn thing makes sense.
@shryke
So you are annoyed that they had to adhere to journalistic ethics? Like you said they did a pretty good job of laying out all the facts without coming out and making wild speculations about how Jay murdered her and setting up Adnan. The audience can easily take those facts and come to the obvious conclusion that Jay is another possible suspect. Also, in one of my earlier posts there is a possible motive from the court documents for Jay to kill Hae. It isn't a great motive but IMO it is about as good as Adnan's possible motive.
If you want speculation how Jay could have done it you can easily find it all over the internet and especially on the subreddit /r/serialpodcast. If you haven't read The Intercept interviews Jay and his family are already getting harassed by some internet crazies. If the Serial team made some speculations about him being the murderer it could have sent even more crazies his way.
I'm not annoyed they had to adhere to journalistic ethics and never said anything of the sort. I did say the show suffered for it though and it does. And your whole post points out exactly why. Look at all the discussion about it. Look at the evidence you post that's not in the podcast. There's simply a huge section of this story they won't go anywhere near and you can feel it's absence in the show.
Sorry, I read this line as "I kinda understand why they had to adhere to journalistic ethics but I'm still annoyed at them."
The problem with the ending is how inconclusive it is. And I don't mean "they don't solve the case" but more "there's no real wrap up". When it ended both me and the wife were like "That's it?". There was no real feeling we were building to an ending.
A big part of this is because they can't actually propose what they think is the more likely scenarios then the states case or the like. So they are left able only to really say "Well, Adnan probably didn't do it, but we can't be certain".
Which is kind of an ending (the lack of ability to ever find certainty here kinda qualifies in a Zodiac way), but it feels undercooked and unsatisfying.
Personally, I was fine with the end of the podcast but I'm curious what you think could have been done better.
A build-up to the ending. A better summation of the facts and their take on it. Really, a better summation. If you can't tie the whole case up you can at least tie up the facts and the unknowns and all that. (though you have to be careful here). You are ending a 12-part story, you need a definitive conclusion to your story/reporting/etc.
Some interesting tid bits:
So who cares if the collateral facts were wrong? Next question. The collateral facts were totally consistent!
Is it just me or does that sound like sloppy work?
We also learned that Christina Guiterrez had 80 people at the mosque who were willing to say Adnan was there when his cell phone pinged Leakin Park. So either as a community they were going to lie to protect Adnan or Adnan was actually there and only his cell phone was in Leakin Park. I find it interesting that the prosecutor pretty much assumes that if Adnan's phone is somewhere then Adnan must also be there. Even though he is known to lend out his phone and had done so earlier in the day.
To me this really seems like the prosecutor had blinders on and completely ignored anything that they deemed irrelevant or didn't think helped their case.
This is serious, and needs to be investigated. And if he did do this, Urick needs to be disbarred at the very least.
Because this time, she's willing to take the stand for the defense. There's also the fact her statement is in an affidavit, which is a bit more serious than just a statement.
I'm not sure if this would matter but they could get Don to write an affidavit about how Urick yelled at him for his testimony in the trial. IE he was pissed Don didn't lie about Adnan. I doubt that would really do much good but at least it would be another data point to show how Urick went about his business.
Currently going through The Wire, and this about matches up with the perverse incentives on display there in the Baltimore PD. Depressing.