[HN Gopher] 'Serial' case: Adnan Syed released, conviction tossed
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'Serial' case: Adnan Syed released, conviction tossed
Author : djoldman
Score : 134 points
Date : 2022-09-19 20:26 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (apnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (apnews.com)
| achr2 wrote:
| Adnan is factually guilty. Undoubtedly there were significant
| procedural failures and biases that played into his conviction,
| and those are a black mark on the justice system. But today is a
| tragedy for Hae Min Lee's family. Adnan could very likely be a
| redeemable man who acted unfathomably during a crime of passion.
| But at present he is an unrepentant murderer. How very sad.
| danso wrote:
| He is not "factually guilty". The cell tower ping evidence was
| basically all the "science" the state had against him, and it
| was the foundation for the constantly evolving and self-
| contradictory claims of the state's key witness, Jay Wilds.
|
| I don't know what Jay's deal is (seems very implausible that he
| was the murderer), but with the cell tower pings being all but
| useless for tracking location, then Jay's stories are just
| circumstantial claims.
|
| (again, it can't be emphasized enough how nonsensical and
| mutually contradictyory all of Jay's stories were over the
| years)
| syntaxing wrote:
| I forgot the exact numbers we used for this exercise but we did a
| standard hypothesis test on wrongful convictions in my stat 101
| class and even mathematically, only 95% convictions are
| "rightful". So essentially there is 5% innocent people. The 5%
| mainly consist of the poor and/or non-white.
| aardvarkr wrote:
| Just goes to show what can happen when you get featured in a
| viral hit podcast. That's a great outcome for him but I shudder
| to think about what it tells us about our judicial system.
| rgovostes wrote:
| > I shudder to think about what it tells us about our judicial
| system.
|
| Coincidentally, this is the general topic of season 3 of
| Serial.
| BadassFractal wrote:
| There was a similar case in Italy regarding its own version of
| the 90s satanic panic, which led to dozens of kids separated
| from their parents, parents committing suicide from shame and
| grief, an overall travesty of justice. Until Pablo Trincia made
| a podcast out of it and conducted an investigation the case was
| considered closed. The podcast entirely overturned it two
| decades later, reuniting many of the kids (now adults) with
| their legally estranged parents and sending a bunch of people
| to jail for intentional malpractice:
| https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/polis/2021/08/04/investigative-podca...
| dayvid wrote:
| Serial is still one of the best true crime podcasts, because
| the case has so much more underneath the surface.
|
| One example is this podcast going over a cleared suspects
| apparently falsified alibi records (his mom who was a manager
| at his store chain and may have doctored his work record to
| prevent police going after him):
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l6dApX2rIY
|
| The main summary points are here, taken from this reddit page
| (which links to the primary sources) https://www.reddit.com/r/s
| erialpodcast/comments/xea7pu/here_...:
|
| 1. Two new suspects that were not properly ruled out.
|
| 2. One of the suspects had a) threatened to kill the victim and
| b) provided motives for the threat.
|
| 3. The victim's car was located directly behind one of those
| suspects relative's house.
|
| 4. One of the suspects attacked a woman in her vehicle, engaged
| in serial rape and assault, engaged in violence against women
| he knew, and was improperly ruled out.
|
| 5. Incoming call data was determined to be completely
| unreliable, as the network sends the signal through multiple
| towers and the billing records can show the last tower a phone
| connected to instead of the one it is currently on.
|
| 6. Kristina Vinson said she would not have missed a class at
| the same time she said Jay and Adnan were at her house, which
| showed that her recollection of what day Jay and Adnan had
| visited was wrong.
|
| 7. Because Jay had told numerous lies and versions of events to
| detectives, his testimony was only relied upon because the cell
| records and Vinson's testimony corroborated it. Without those,
| his testimony does not stand on its own. Thus, they could not
| have secured a conviction.
|
| 8. One of the lead detectives on the case engaged in egregious
| misconduct in another case, resulting in a wrongful conviction
| and 17 years of incarceration.
| bryan0 wrote:
| I listened this podcast when it first came out, so I'm
| probably misremembering this, but the key thing about the
| case to me was point 7:
|
| They had detailed witness testimony which fit the evidence
| AND the witness was able to show the police the location of
| the victim's car which backed up his story. So it is hard to
| explain another version of events where the witness was not
| actually involved in the crime. I'm curious if any of this
| new evidence points to him as being involved.
| jfengel wrote:
| Even "great outcome for him" seems like a stretch. That podcast
| was six years ago. He has been in jail for 22 years, more than
| half of his life. It's hard to imagine where he goes with his
| life from here; I wish him the best of luck.
|
| That's the "great" outcome of a one-in-a-million burst of
| publicity. Everybody else has it much, much worse.
| nostromo wrote:
| If you're worried primarily about wrongful convictions, don't
| forget that we only solve 50% of murders in the US.
|
| Wrongful convictions are tragic, but the 50% of murderers that
| are free is also tragic.
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/07/poli...
| socialismisok wrote:
| Our justice system is pretty busted, to be honest. And it's end
| to end busted - we trust police too much and with too much
| power, we don't have enough public defenders to protect
| everyone, we have long backlogs of cases, court fees and fines
| can be unending even if you are innocent (to say _nothing_
| about civil asset forfeiture), people are goaded into plea
| deals for crimes they don 't commit, our jury selection process
| leaves a lot to be desired, our judges have done things like
| make deals to get a financial kickback for everyone they send
| to jail, our sentences are too long for minor crimes, our
| prisons are dangerously overcrowded making prison basically
| psychological and physical torture, we invest almost nothing on
| reducing recidivism, we fail to support inmates post
| incarceration and make it hard for them to find work, and we
| generally stigmatize _anyone_ who has had a brush with the
| system.
|
| All of the above _plus_ the racial and income inequality,
| nonsense war on drugs, etc.
|
| Yeah, I'd say we should all shudder quite a bit more about our
| judicial system.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Well stated. We have normialized - minor or not - human
| rights infractions. Yet have no shame in calling out others.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Serial season 3 - where they hang out at a courthouse for a
| year, learning all of the ins and outs - illustrates all of
| this very well.
|
| There's a lot of injustice tied up in expediting cases.
| Massive backlogs of work, not enough people to do the work,
| and massively asymmetric funding for prosecution and defense.
| wowokay wrote:
| To be honest I don't understand how it's thought that police
| have to much power. Especially since every case makes it's
| way in front of a judge.
| rurp wrote:
| > Especially since every case makes it's way in front of a
| judge.
|
| This is not at all true, at least in the sense that it
| provides a major check on police mistakes or abuse.
|
| You can spend a great deal of time in jail, literally
| decades in extreme cases, just by being charged with a
| crime -- no conviction needed. Criminal penalties in the US
| are so extreme, and conviction rates so high, that there is
| a huge risk in going to trial. Even if a person is innocent
| and/or the evidence is weak, the incentives often push them
| to accept a plea deal; and that's exactly what we see. The
| vast majority of cases reach a plea deal and never come to
| trial.
| ziddoap wrote:
| A case eventually making its way to a judge isn't really a
| counter-argument to how much power police have.
|
| Things like asset forfeiture, qualified immunity, etc. are
| all pretty strong arguments that police have too much
| power. Not to mention all of the cases where someone
| innocent is killed by police, where the victim doesn't get
| to go in front of a judge because they are dead.
| neaden wrote:
| Something like 95% of cases end in a plea deal, where a
| judges involvement is pretty minimal.
| banannaise wrote:
| To expand on this, plea deals are most common for poor
| defendants. The police convince a magistrate to set cash
| bail the defendant can't pay, and the defendant has the
| choice of taking a guilty plea for a "lesser charge" or
| sitting in jail for months until the case can be tried,
| at which point they are defended by an overworked,
| overwhelmed public defender.
|
| In many cases, the potential sentence for these cases is
| exceeded by the time they would actually spend in jail
| waiting for the trial; even being found guilty would
| result in time served. In these cases, the plea deal is
| literally a lesser sentence than being found not guilty.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Except, of course, that now there's a guilty mark on the
| record, which works against you if you're ever wrongfully
| picked up by the police again...
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| His conviction is vacated but they can put him on trial again.
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| I doubt that will happen unless something else is revealed as
| the prosecutors are the ones that asked for the conviction to
| be vacated.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| I thought there were no exceptions to double jeopardy? Is
| that a popular misconception? What makes it possible in this
| case?
| ryeights wrote:
| Double jeopardy only prevents you from being retried after
| a not guilty ruling. Since Syed was initially found guilty,
| it does not apply in this case.
| dwighttk wrote:
| "Phinn ruled that the state violated its legal obligation
| to share evidence that could have bolstered Syed's defense.
| She ordered Syed to be placed on home detention with GPS
| location monitoring. The judge also said the state must
| decide whether to seek a new trial date or dismiss the case
| within 30 days."
|
| He wasn't ruled innocent... there was something technically
| wrong with the trial proceedings.
| dekhn wrote:
| Periodically I go back and check on Mumia Abu Jamal. Yep, still
| in jail [previously, I had said "on death row"]. He had far
| more coverage but I guess it happened before things went viral.
| ars wrote:
| I read the Wikipedia article on him, and I don't see why you
| think he's innocent? Other than an automatic assumption of
| racism there's nothing in there that would make me think it
| was a bad trial.
|
| This isn't a case of mistaken identity - he was shot by the
| person he shot. He had a gun that had been discharged 5
| times.
|
| What am I missing? What's his explanation for having fired 5
| times? All I saw was a vague claim that police shot him
| randomly as he crossed the street.
| dekhn wrote:
| I didn't say I think he was innocent- I have no idea. My
| only point was that there was a "free mumia" movement that
| also pointed out problems with the legal case, such that
| there was no airtight prosecution that would have led to
| the resulting death penalty.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Mumia Abu Jamal is still in prison but he is _not_ on death
| row.
| 8kingDreux8 wrote:
| He's no longer on death row for what it's worth. He was moved
| to gen pop in 2012. Still incarcerated, but not on death row.
| " In 2011, the prosecution agreed to a sentence of life
| imprisonment without parole. He entered the general prison
| population early the following year."
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumia_Abu-Jamal
| warner25 wrote:
| I'm wondering if anyone here has real insight into the economics
| of his situation at this point. On one hand it seems like his
| life has been ruined by the state after spending 20+ years in
| prison, costing his family everything in legal fees, and forever
| being associated with this murder. I feel like anyone wrongfully
| convicted should have some serious recourse but I suspect that
| there isn't any. On the other hand, can he realistically make out
| better than most of us (i.e. turning this into a mid-7 or
| 8-figure fortune and living happily ever after) by getting book /
| movie / TV / speaking deals now that he's out?
| jmkd wrote:
| I don't have real insight but I have real hope that your
| sentiment comes true at least in part, and that Adnan is both
| exonerated and compensated appropriately. Listening to Serial
| from episode 1 you cannot ignore the fact that it wouldn't be
| compelling (or wouldn't have been researched or serialised) if
| the suspect's guilt was clear and unequivocal.
| codelord wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220427161552/https://www.nytim...
| "a friend of Adnan's named Jay Wilds, who told the police he had
| helped Syed to bury Lee's body after Syed confessed to killing
| her, on Jan. 13. According to Wilds's court testimony, Syed had
| told him earlier that day that he intended to kill Lee. Wilds
| then borrowed Syed's car for the day."
|
| I didn't follow this case, but what incentive did this guy have
| to testify against himself? Other than telling the truth.
| legitster wrote:
| I'll be honest and say I found the podcast rather frustrating.
|
| Koenig was clearly an outsider to the legal system, and had the
| benefit of telling a different, big long narrative. But at the
| end of it, I don't know if it was any more or less truthful than
| the first one. It was still built on old memories, circumstantial
| evidence, and bias (she even admitted she only started the
| investigation because she found Adnan so charming).
|
| And the interview with Jay after the podcast especially scrambled
| my thoughts - I found him really compelling too! And there was a
| lot of stuff the podcast left out without telling you! Over 12
| episodes!
|
| So in the end, I honestly don't know about Adnan! I don't know if
| the case against him was actually weak or if there was just
| enough of an army of hole pokers who could have poked through
| anything.
| shishy wrote:
| > One of the suspects had threatened Lee, saying "he would make
| her (Ms. Lee) disappear. He would kill her," according to the
| filing.
|
| > "Given the stunning lack of reliable evidence implicating Mr.
| Syed, coupled with increasing evidence pointing to other
| suspects, this unjust conviction cannot stand," said Assistant
| Public Defender Erica Suter, Mr. Syed's attorney and, Director
| of the Innocence Project Clinic. "Mr. Syed is grateful that
| this information has finally seen the light of day and looks
| forward to his day in court."
|
| > The suspects were known persons at the time of the original
| investigation and were not properly ruled out nor disclosed to
| the defense, prosecutors said.
|
| source: https://apnews.com/article/adnan-syed-conviction-
| baltimore-p...
|
| I think this is enough to justify letting him get out and they
| can decide if they want to do another trial. That's a pretty
| important miss on the prosecutors originally and the other
| suspects should have been ruled out before focusing all on him.
|
| EDIT: Also, on a personal level and in a normative sense, it's
| been 20 years and he should be allowed to re-enter society and
| of all the crazy people we let back, he's probably one of the
| safer choices for rehabilitation.
| legitster wrote:
| I would love to hear from an actual neutral legal party if
| that's actually the case. Adnan had a motive and a strong
| testimony against him from an accomplice who's story had
| checked out. Is it actually a big miss to not rule out every
| possible suspect?
|
| But on your broader point, I largely agree that anyone freed
| from unnecessarily long prison sentences is a good thing.
| stingrae wrote:
| > "accomplice who's story had checked out"
|
| I'm not sure that's how i would put it. He changed his
| story several times until it fit.
| legitster wrote:
| The first few times police interviewed him he thought
| they were going to go after him on drug charges. After he
| had a plea deal and a lawyer his story was pretty
| straight. He even pointed out where the evidence was. And
| this is the testimony that was offered to the jury and
| scrutinized on cross examination.
|
| The entire sub-plot in the podcast about his testimony
| was somewhat misleading on Serial's part.
| tunesmith wrote:
| Jay's story "checked out" because it matched the cell phone
| evidence and also the testimony of another witness. The
| problem was that the cell phone evidence was later proven
| to be completely misinterpreted, and the other witness's
| testimony apparently misremembered the day (it was
| something along the lines of her being in class at a
| certain key time). Without those, it sounds like there's
| nothing left for his story to rest on.
| blobbers wrote:
| 'Serial' was the podcast that launched all podcasts. It was the
| defining podcast. It isn't that it was hyper monetized or
| incredibly financially successful; simply it showed that the
| audience was there.
|
| It has over 340 million listens as of _2018_. With this eviction
| of conviction, I suspect that number will be over a billion.
|
| It is fitting that it has come full circle and fulfilled the
| ultimate purpose of investigative journalism: to shine a light on
| a small part of the world that otherwise would be ignored... and
| maybe right a wrong.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Karl Pilkington was eating a knob at night a decade prior.
| jphoward wrote:
| I could eat a knob at night.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Serial definitely was an inflection point in the history of
| podcasts.
| thomasahle wrote:
| Back in 2006 I wrote an "Internet Radio Recording" app:
| https://sourceforge.net/projects/radiorec/ based on the
| interface of DVRs on TVs at the time.
|
| It's interesting that people thought to put live streamed radio
| online before just dumping the mp3s.
| geuis wrote:
| > 'Serial' was the podcast that launched all podcasts
|
| Sorry, but this statement is objectively wrong. Podcasts have
| existed for close to 20 years in the way we understand them
| today.
|
| Serial may have helped to popularize podcasts, but in no way
| was original.
| blamazon wrote:
| I think that commenter may have not been that literal and
| meant something more along the lines of "made podcasts more
| mainstream in an exponential manner." I know plenty of people
| in my life who weren't podcast people at that time but were
| constantly talking about it or walking around saying "mail...
| keemp?" as a joke. (A reference to Serial)
| hardtke wrote:
| Maybe Serial launched the modern commerically produced crime
| podcast format, but I'd give a shout out to The History of Rome
| by Mike Duncan as the "defining podcast." It started quite a
| bit earlier (2007) and proved that there is a big audience (65
| million downloads) for obscure topics covered in depth. Serial
| spun out of This American Life, so it had some audience to
| begin with, but THOR is truly "let me put this out there and
| see if anyone listens." It's also interesting to see how
| apologetic Mike Duncan was when he introduced monetization
| through direct to consumer ads, and this is now the standard
| monetization model.
| ekanes wrote:
| An absolute gem. I've listened all the way through twice.
| listless wrote:
| Serial is the original true crime podcast, and IMO, nobody
| since has done it as well as they did.
|
| And holy shit. What an incredible piece of news. I think,
| though, that if the state vacates a conviction, then they lose
| the right to prosecute you again. Being let out and then having
| to relive your nightmare trial with the possibility of going
| back? That's sadistic by any definition.
| jbpnoy6fifty wrote:
| If interested, there was an HBO documentary that covered his
| case after Serial.
|
| "The Case Against Adnan Syed 2019 . Documentary . 1 season" on
| HBO max
| indigodaddy wrote:
| When I finished the podcast I was not at all convinced of his
| innocence. For me was 50/50 or even 60/40 against innocence. Just
| my takeaway/opinion of course..
|
| _EDIT_ However, reading both of the AP News articles on this
| now, it does serve to sway me more toward his innocence. Crazy
| that the prosecutors withheld this at that time.. Par for the
| course unfortunately I guess.
|
| Seems as though the SA office is trying to do the right thing
| now, and appears they will continue investigating, and hopefully
| if appropriate, may deem that the next best step is to drop his
| case fully and prosecute the other now-uncovered suspects.
| oconnor663 wrote:
| > For me was 50/50 or even 60/40 against innocence.
|
| Totally, but the standard for conviction is "beyond a
| reasonable doubt". By that standard, a 40% chance of innocence
| means "not guilty". I don't know whether the law has ever
| translated "reasonable doubt" into a specific percentage, but I
| have to imagine it's less than 10%?
| antognini wrote:
| Alexander Volokh wrote a tongue-in-cheek law review article
| titled "N Guilty Men" that tried to quantify that percentage:
|
| https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=11412
| closewith wrote:
| It's obviously subjective, but a YouGov poll in the UK found
| that 47% of pelt required 99% accuracy or higher to be
| considered beyond reasonable doubt. Only 12% set the bar
| below 90%.
|
| Source: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-
| reports/2019/1...
| indigodaddy wrote:
| I don't disagree. I guess it's kind of like an additional
| psychological bias that one plays into when he's already been
| convicted and in prison.
| legitster wrote:
| I was 50/50 after the podcast but Jay's interview after the
| podcast heavily swayed me towards Adnan's guilt.
|
| Jay was't a suspect, but definitely knew about it and where the
| body was.
|
| He gave conflicting testimony to the police because he was
| dealing drugs out of his grandmother's house and didn't want
| himself or his family in prison. (Using these hostile
| testimonies to undermine the official one entered in court is
| very misleading) But he had no reason to continue lying after
| all these years.
| advantager wrote:
| I remember feeling similarly. I also don't remember feeling as
| though he was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
| hinkley wrote:
| > guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
|
| How the American Legal System is _supposed_ to work, not as a
| way to punish people who 'look guilty'.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I think the wrong bar is being evaluated, its important to get
| the correct person off the streets. I was not satisfied - and
| am still not satisfied - that any of this is occurring. So that
| exempts Adnan Syed as well and means he should be released.
| TheCondor wrote:
| I think that's part of the recipe.. All the editing and
| cleverness of This American Life, a crime and then enough open
| questions to let you feel one way or the other and wanting
| more.
|
| I don't remember my exact feelings on his guilt or not but I
| felt really strongly that the system hadn't worked correctly.
| Makes you wonder how many less charming guys are in prison
| because they didn't get a fair defense. The other thing that I
| also strongly remember was that the prosecution, the victim's
| family and some of the police were 100% convinced of his guilt.
| I don't know if it's good or bad but Serial showed that clearly
| and it created doubt; there was clearly some evidence that
| suggested misconduct but then the state steadfastly seemed to
| ignore that.
|
| I don't know what it is, maybe suburban white man fear or
| something but being wrongly convicted of something like that is
| a strong and resonating fear for some of us.
| adultSwim wrote:
| Does anyone know if the new evidence exonorates him or if it
| simply proved that the case and trial were mishandled?
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Wondering if they have those 2 other now uncovered suspects in
| custody? If not, would they not now skidaddle at the soonest??
| robga wrote:
| Serial was blowout success, but flawed in many ways. For me,
| chief amongst these is not updating the podcast with new (and
| potentially exculpatory) information as it came to light over the
| years.
|
| What really progressed the case was the Undisclosed podcast [0].
| Rabia Chaudry, a childhood friend of Adnan and an attorney, first
| took Adnan's story to Sarah Koenig, who documented it in the
| Serial podcast. But in Undisclosed, Rabia and her colleagues
| Colin Miller and Susan Simpson dissected the case with scalpel,
| found new evidence, and ultimately set the groundwork for today's
| result.
|
| Undisclosed stuck with it, and have covered other similar cases.
| Their twitter [1] says they've had 400m+ downloads, which is more
| than Serial, albeit over many series.
|
| If you liked Serial, or even if you didn't but do like True
| Crime, go check out Undisclosed.
|
| If long podcasts are not your thing, HBO's The Case Against Adnan
| Syed [2] is quite information rich across just 4 episodes.
|
| [0] https://undisclosed-podcast.com/episodes/season-1/ [1]
| https://twitter.com/Undisclosedpod [2] https://www.hbo.com/the-
| case-against-adnan-syed
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I tried a bit of Undisclosed but it was... too much for me. In
| Serial, I was able to keep all the details of the case straight
| in my head, but Undisclosed went too far.
|
| Now, their objective wasn't to entertain and I respect that...
| danso wrote:
| I admire Chaudry but Undisclosed was just a little too much for
| me. Obviously, dismantling the faulty cell "ping" evidence was
| great work, but a lot of the content and theories seemed to
| veer into "throw everything but the kitchen sink at em"
| territory.
|
| But obviously there was a post-Serial audience and hunger for
| that kind of focus. Serial may have been the catalyst that
| brought huge national attention to Adnan, but Rabia et al.
| deserve top credit for being faithful and persistent advocates
| all these years.
| orblivion wrote:
| Wow, lucky kid that his case got this much attention. It can't
| be the only ambiguous case out there.
| jmkd wrote:
| Would Undisclosed have even covered the case were it not for
| Serial?
| SECProto wrote:
| One of the hosts of Undisclosed is Rabia Chaudry, who was a
| childhood friend of Adnan Syed. So really what you are asking
| here, is whether Ms Chaudry would still have created a
| podcast without the success of Serial - which is an
| unanswerable question (but I'd guess yes).
| doitLP wrote:
| For a hilarious lampooning of true crime podcasts, check out The
| Onion's podcast "A Very Fatal Murder".
|
| Truly a great piece of satire:
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-very-fatal-murder/id...
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Not a podcast, but there's also the Netflix mockumentary series
| "American Vandal".
| wayne wrote:
| 'Only Murders in the Building' starring Martin Short, Steve
| Martin, and Selena Gomez playing podcasters in a Hulu show is
| also amazing.
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