Podcasts

[kostgard]

Dec 19, 2014 17:50:04 GMT -4 @madefortv said:

I wonder if Sarah will keep talking to Adnan now that season one is finished. She seems to be genuinely fond of him (and was noticeably bothered by his statements of "you don't know me that well just from talking on the phone a little bit," etc.). I know it has nothing to do with the case really, it was just something that crossed my mind.

Rabia said that in her last meeting with Sarah a few weeks ago she asked her if she was walking away when Serial was over, and Sarah told her no. So at least according to what she told Rabia she'll be keeping tabs on the situation. I hope they at least post any updates on their website, even if they don't record any sort of "where are they now" follow-up podcast.

ETA: just read Rabia's most recent post on her blog, and she posted transcripts of Jay's testimony where he said that he asked Adnan if he could borrow his car to go to the mall, and that Adnan didn't specifically give him his cell phone, but that he had left it in the car. That blows more holes in the "Adnan gave me his car so I could pick him up after he killed Hae and he gave me his phone so he could call me when he was ready to be picked up" story. Again, Rabia is clearly a Team Adnan...but that is what the transcript says. Another layer of WTF.

[Deleted]

Dec 19, 2014 22:41:36 GMT -4 kostgard said:

Dec 19, 2014 17:50:04 GMT -4 @madefortv said:

I wonder if Sarah will keep talking to Adnan now that season one is finished. She seems to be genuinely fond of him (and was noticeably bothered by his statements of "you don't know me that well just from talking on the phone a little bit," etc.). I know it has nothing to do with the case really, it was just something that crossed my mind.

Rabia said that in her last meeting with Sarah a few weeks ago she asked her if she was walking away when Serial was over, and Sarah told her no. So at least according to what she told Rabia she'll be keeping tabs on the situation. I hope they at least post any updates on their website, even if they don't record any sort of "where are they now" follow-up podcast.

Oh, it seems inevitable that they will do follow-up podcasts from time to time... or at least one or two, right?? Surely? I'm very curious to see how things go with the Innocence Project's involvement in the case.

[save lilo!]

Dec 19, 2014 16:43:04 GMT -4 kostgard said:

I too am really happy about Sarah's success, and the fact that her team (or at least her core team) was all female too.

I get that Occam's Razor says that Adnan did it because he would have to be extremely unlucky for all this to happen to him, but to me, the whole thing is completely effed up, including areas that Adnan obviously couldn't influence. Like, why did the state go out and find a nice non-public defender for Jay for free when that is NOT the usual practice? Why didn't Jay spend a single day in jail when he was, by his own confession, an accessory after the fact at the very least (plus he said Adnan told him that he was going to kill Hae, and he neglected to pick up the phone and call the police). Why did the prosecutor put Don on the stand - TWICE - and then yell at Don for not making Adnan sound like a monster when it seems he made it clear from the start that he didn't think Adnan was a bad guy. Also, they point out that Adnan didn't try to call Hae after she disappeared, but Don didn't either, and he was her current boyfriend at the time.

And add that Josh dude pointed out, why did Jay tell him that he helped bury Hae when he and Josh were only coworkers who occasionally smoked weed together, not BFFs. What a stupid risk - the only reason why he didn't call the police on Jay is that he didn't believe him. And why did Jay agree to help bury her at all? If Adnan threatened to expose his drug - dealing, why didn't Jay say, "Great. And I'll tell them about the dead body you just showed me"? Why did criminal mastermind Adnan leave the disposal of evidence to the dude he had to coerce into helping him? That also seems incredibly stupid. And WTF was up with Jay's story about Adnan knowing a hit man? What kind of 17 year old kid knows a hit man? And how, exactly, was Adnan going to pay the hit man to take out Jay? Hit men don't kill people as favors to teenagers. Was Adnan going to use the "hundreds of thousands" he stole from the mosque three years earlier? How smart of that kid to plan ahead and save up just in case he needed to pay a hit man one day. And why haven't Adnan's people who scared Jay so badly taken him out at any point during the last 15 years? Considering people have been able to find Jay easily on social media, he hasn't exactly been hiding. (Sorry. That part of Jay's story is clearly total bullshit. He even sounded like he was making it up on the spot).

All this at the very least tells me Jay was way more involved than he says. But again... why? Why would he help Adnan or anyone else kill Hae? Why would he kill her himself? And why was the state so eager to overlook all the changes and obvious BS in his story and why did they give him special treatment when he was just a poor, small-time weed dealer who at the very least helped his friend cover up a murder?

This whole thing is still murky as hell.

I am with you. Serial made me disappointed about the whole jury system. And it makes me really sad that so many people think he did it, even though there's no solid evidence of that, just because he was an ex-boyfriend. By that logic, we are all potential murderers.

[prisma]

time.com/3639655/serial-innocence-project-deirdre-enright/

On my phone so I am not sure if that link will work, but Time has an interview with Diedre Enrighr from the Innocence Project that's really interesting. She goes into a lot more possibilities of next steps for the case.

[kostgard]

Dec 20, 2014 19:00:17 GMT -4 prisma said:

time.com/3639655/serial-innocence-project-deirdre-enright/

On my phone so I am not sure if that link will work, but Time has an interview with Diedre Enrighr from the Innocence Project that's really interesting. She goes into a lot more possibilities of next steps for the case.

Thanks for the link - man, that is another layer of WTF. So they swab Hae's body for DNA and never bother to test it. They found hairs on Hae's body that did not belong to her and after testing, determined they didn't belong to Adnan, either. So, did they just stop after that? Did they even check to see if they belonged to Don since she was at his house the night before, just as process of elimination?

What the crap was going on with the investigation and prosecution?

[Millis]

I just powered through this season and cannot stop thinking about it. I guess at the end of the day I think Adnan is probably guilty. I can get over the Nisha call, but I can't get over the cell tower ping in Linkin Park (I know it's not spelled that way but can't remember real name) or that Adnan cannot account for his whereabouts after 6:00. However, there is no way they proved his guilt.

[eveschmeve]

I think the most valuable thing I learned from Serial is that the justice system is run by humans, so it has human flaws. We don't have robots determining verdicts, we have people, so there's a big, messy soup of stuff that affects an investigation and trial. I think we are challenged to make it as fair as possible, but I don't know if it will ever be perfect.

I think I'm in Sarah's corner- I think Adnan is guilty, but I don't know if there was enough evidence to convict. But we're also listening to a much different case than the jury heard, so I can see why their verdict was different. I think the hardest thing about the case is that we will likely never know the truth, since both Adnan and Jay seem to be lying or covering something up.

[kostgard]

From what I understand, the jury basically had Jay's testimony and the cell phone records - seeing as no one bothered to test the physical evidence. And seriously - why did no one do that? If they thought it was Adnan, it could have provided the smoking gun, the irrefutable proof that he did it. Why didn't they check to see if his DNA was on her body?

Jay's story changed a lot and contradicted itself (during the trial he said that Adnan gave him the car and the phone with the express purpose of calling Jay so he could pick him up after he killed Hae. At another point while on the stand he said that he asked for the car so he could shop for a birthday present for Stephanie and Adnan just happened to leave the phone in the car).

As for the cell phone record, only 4 of the pings that day match Jay's story. The rest really don't. And the phone records themselves don't support Jay's story - for example, there are calls from Adnan's cell phone to Jenn's house while Jay was supposedly at Jenn's house with the cell phone. Why was he calling the house he was in?

Yet, despite all that wonkiness, the jury convicted him with only a couple hours of deliberation. That seems...weird. How could there not have been at least a couple of people on that jury who thought the evidence was way too weak to put a 17 year old kid away for the rest of his life?

Of course the justice system is flawed, and this highlights that. But there are some big, really obvious mistakes/oversights that are very glaring to me. I get that Adnan's lawyer did a shitty job and missed a lot of this stuff, but there was stuff that the state really should have addressed and they missed it/ignored it too.

[mementomori]

So do we attribute the conviction to bigotry from jurors toward Adnan's religious background? Rabia certainly does, she was simmering with contempt ( in the AV Club's Serial Serial podcast)towards the podcast's conclusions and what she felt were short-sighted observations from Sarah Koenig. It didn't at all pan out the way she would have hoped. The trial was a bonafide shitshow for sure and on that basis alone an appeal should be sought. But...he did it...that's all I can conclude.

[Deleted]

The hype over Serial has arrived in Europe; I've heard about it from several British YouTubers and it's now the no 1 podcast on iTunes Germany. I listened to the entire thing over the past few days and find it completely fascinating. All I know about the American legal system is from movies and famous cases that made the news here, too. So from my understanding anything seems to be possible under that system and there's a kind of randomness due to the jury system (that we don't have). That's not a criticism, just my impression from the very limited knowledge I have.

I think Adnan did it but knows that there are enough holes to doubt Jay's account of the day so he's sticking to his story. He shouldn't have been found guilty at the time with the "evidence" that was presented then.
I also can't believe that Jay just walked away with the things he (sometimes) admitted to but I guess that was part of whatever deal was made.
Adnan's lawyer was fascinating when they talked about her a bit more but seemed to be really messed up. I don't know if the money thing can be explained away with her detoriating health.
She didn't blow the case on purpose IMHO but really didn't seem to be able to use the things she clearly knew could have destroyed Jay's story and the presented timeline.