4 ms·

how was it less sketchy?

sjm-lbm 10y ago
It's really hard to answer that question without writing a couple thousand words about different things, honestly. Many (most?) of us in this thread have 10 or so hours of information about this case just from listening to Serial, so it's hard to provide a genuine response to that without spending quite a bit of time talking. I don't have the time to write that, and I honestly doubt you have the time to read it. That said, let's just start with the central premise of Serial E1: that it's hard to remember details of a day six weeks before, and that's why Adnan has trouble telling the cops what he needed to know. Remember, this is a day when his ex-girlfriend disappears and a police officer called him about it, but we're supposed to assume that nothing in that series of events is a big enough deal to stamp a few things (even just things related to Hae) in his memory. Furthermore, if we assume that it's easier to remember something that happened same-day, we can assume that he asked Hae for a ride home from school - per what he told the officer the day of - something that he now denies. He did this, of course, despite the fact that he had a perfectly working car in the school's parking lot at that moment. .. and so on. Like I said, it's really hard to start dealing with all of the claims made by various people at various times, but there's a number of ways to view the facts in a (to paraphrase Sarah Koenig) "bad for Adnan" way that aren't at all sketcky.
- xenadu02 10y ago
  I thought Jay had borrowed his car and his phone? It seems like either Jay or Sayed did it. But there isn't enough evidence to determine which one.
  - sjm-lbm 10y ago
    Adnan would talk Jay into borrowing the car and phone later in the day - he asked for the ride before he created the need for it.
  - macspoofing 10y ago
    Could be neither. Undisclosed podcast gave some plausible scenarios.
- macspoofing 10y ago
  The state's problem is that they haven't put forward a plausible timeline. The timeline they used during the original trial is almost certainly wrong since Jay changed his story when he did the intercept interview.
- Sacho 10y ago
  Are you charging him with murder or lying to the police? A weak or even shattered alibi still leaves him with a presumption of innocence which the prosecution must overcome beyond a reasonable doubt.
  - sjm-lbm 10y ago
    I mean, I'm charging him with neither - I'm not advocating for his conviction, I'm just a dude commenting on an internet forum. There's much more evidence where that came from, but that statement cuts into the central premise of Serial S1E1 (particularity of the first few minutes), which is why I picked that to start with. The problem (and the point I'm trying to make) is that there's this sort of "Adnan was convicted by bad evidence" type of myth that the entirety of the Internet seems to believe because that's what a podcast says. In reality, a jury of his peers, after listening to the case in full, decided to convict the guy. Unanimously. I don't know if the guy is guilty or not, but it hits me as a little silly that the entire world has decided that they know better than the jury because we listened to a podcast. There's at least some reason to read that as "Serial didn't provide a totally unbiased story" not "wow, it's good that we are all so much smarter than the people who looked at the evidence in its entirety in the courtroom".

It's really hard to answer that question without writing a couple thousand words about different things, honestly. Many (most?) of us in this thread have 10 or so hours of information about this case just from listening to Serial, so it's hard to provide a genuine response to that without spending quite a bit of time talking. I don't have the time to write that, and I honestly doubt you have the time to read it. That said, let's just start with the central premise of Serial E1: that it's hard to remember details of a day six weeks before, and that's why Adnan has trouble telling the cops what he needed to know. Remember, this is a day when his ex-girlfriend disappears and a police officer called him about it, but we're supposed to assume that nothing in that series of events is a big enough deal to stamp a few things (even just things related to Hae) in his memory. Furthermore, if we assume that it's easier to remember something that happened same-day, we can assume that he asked Hae for a ride home from school - per what he told the officer the day of - something that he now denies. He did this, of course, despite the fact that he had a perfectly working car in the school's parking lot at that moment. .. and so on. Like I said, it's really hard to start dealing with all of the claims made by various people at various times, but there's a number of ways to view the facts in a (to paraphrase Sarah Koenig) "bad for Adnan" way that aren't at all sketcky.

xenadu02 10y ago
I thought Jay had borrowed his car and his phone? It seems like either Jay or Sayed did it. But there isn't enough evidence to determine which one.
- sjm-lbm 10y ago
  Adnan would talk Jay into borrowing the car and phone later in the day - he asked for the ride before he created the need for it.
- macspoofing 10y ago
  Could be neither. Undisclosed podcast gave some plausible scenarios.
macspoofing 10y ago
The state's problem is that they haven't put forward a plausible timeline. The timeline they used during the original trial is almost certainly wrong since Jay changed his story when he did the intercept interview.
Sacho 10y ago
Are you charging him with murder or lying to the police? A weak or even shattered alibi still leaves him with a presumption of innocence which the prosecution must overcome beyond a reasonable doubt.
- sjm-lbm 10y ago
  I mean, I'm charging him with neither - I'm not advocating for his conviction, I'm just a dude commenting on an internet forum. There's much more evidence where that came from, but that statement cuts into the central premise of Serial S1E1 (particularity of the first few minutes), which is why I picked that to start with. The problem (and the point I'm trying to make) is that there's this sort of "Adnan was convicted by bad evidence" type of myth that the entirety of the Internet seems to believe because that's what a podcast says. In reality, a jury of his peers, after listening to the case in full, decided to convict the guy. Unanimously. I don't know if the guy is guilty or not, but it hits me as a little silly that the entire world has decided that they know better than the jury because we listened to a podcast. There's at least some reason to read that as "Serial didn't provide a totally unbiased story" not "wow, it's good that we are all so much smarter than the people who looked at the evidence in its entirety in the courtroom".