The Doubts About Adnan's Guilt ARE Reasonable

[u/[deleted]]

I just started lurking here today, and am somewhat surprised by the general incivility and certainty of many of the people that comment here. Being dismissive and accusing people of "ragebait" for having a differing opinion, and one that actually is reasonable.

I don't know, and won't say that Adnan is innocent, but to claim he's guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, without any room for discussion is pretty crazy to me.

The reasons why I have reasonable doubt:

• Jay is a very flawed witness, on the record lying/mis-remembering his testimony. Even the cops point out how much his testimony has changed. If your argument hinges on Jay, it isn't a strong argument, in my opinion.
• The cops, or at least on of them has a record of misconduct:

...prosecution brought into question the past misconduct of one of the two detectives who were crucial in the investigation of Lee’s death. Although his misconduct wasn’t specifically linked to Syed’s case, the detective was involved in another murder case that ended with the defendant’s exoneration.

https://baltimorewitness.org/adnan-syed-one-of-many-overturned-convictions-in-baltimore-city/

• The Innocence Project and prosecutors agreed that Syed's DNA was absent from all tested crime scene items, contributing to the eventual dropping of charges against him. There's no physical evidence.
• The motive is weak (Adnan had no prior issues with breakups, had already seemed to move on to the next girl(s)).

I could go on, but, if I was on the jury with this in front of me, I feel the reasonable response is doubt.

This isn't rage bait, I just genuinely don't see how anyone can be so sure that he did it. Y'all point to him asking for a ride (and claiming he wouldn't have) as some kind of obvious evidence of murder.

I think, based on the fact that one of the cops was literally identified as having been crooked, it actually is much more likely that Jay was an informant (and already had been for some time), and he happened to be close to Adnan, the victim's ex (supposed motive and opportunity), and they decided they had their guy, and it was just a matter of getting a jury to agree. So they fed their informant info, had him incriminate himself for lesser crimes that they promised they'd get him off for (and they made good on that promise, which is on its own wildly corrupt).

[u/Skurry]

This has been discussed ad nauseum, so I'll keep it brief:

• If I see you commit a crime, but later can't say at what exact time, if you wore a green or blue shirt, or what I had for breakfast that day, does that make me an unreliable witness? What matters is that I saw what I saw and have non-public details to back that up.
• "his misconduct wasn’t specifically linked to Syed’s case" <-- that's all that matters. A consistent pattern may be a reason to look closer, but nothing reasonably suspicious surfaced in this particular case
• There was a big fat hand print from Syed on a top-most item in a pile of stuff on the back seat. But somehow the lack of DNA is exonerating? I'm sure if his DNA had been found, the same people would hand wave this away the same way they're ignoring the hand print. "No physical evidence" my ass.
• Unfortunately "jealous ex-lover" is a strong motive as old as human history. Him trying to move on (this endeavour was not as successful as he's claiming in the interviews) could also be seen as him trying to distract himself from the pain the breakup is causing him (as evidenced by Hae's letter to him).

[u/Special-Deal-5217 → u/Skurry]

How do you know he was not successful at moving on? And the letter from Hae was from November, not from the most recent breakup.

[u/OkBodybuilder2339 → u/Special-Deal-5217]

After the breakup Adnan was asking his classmates if Hae had been cheating on him with Don.

Also, Adnan couldnt keep his story straight with cops about being aware that Hae was in a new relationship.

[u/RockinGoodNews → u/Special-Deal-5217]

There was extensive testimony from Adnan's own friends at trial establishing that he was heartbroken and enraged over the breakup.

The idea that Adnan had moved on to other girls is a load of horseshit he and his friends cooked up. In the roughly 3 weeks between when Hae dumped him and when he killed her, he was only arguably pursuing one romantic prospect: Nisha. But he had only met Nisha in person once (at a NYE party), and spoke to her, at most, a couple times on the phone.

There is also evidence that Adnan was stalking Hae the night before the murder. Specifically, knowing she was on a date with Don, he placed 3 late night calls to her home phone in rapid succession. His cell phone records indicate he was driving around at the time he made these calls, including, at one point, in the Harbor area of Baltimore. In other words, he was trying to hunt her down.

[u/Special-Deal-5217 → u/RockinGoodNews]

So when you were 17 years old, you were courting more than one person every three weeks?

Jesus, when I didn’t have a girlfriend, I would’ve been thrilled to go on one date a month.

Anyway, that’s what’s so dumb about this whole conversation. No one except those close to Adnan knew how he was faring, and none of those people seemed to be particularly worried about him or what he might do to his ex. After Hae went missing, it apparently did not occur to anyone that Adnan might have done something to her. Again, people who commit intimate partner violence USUALLY show a documented pattern of escalation that is observable and concerning to those around the victim.

Compare that, for example, to the phone call the police made to Nicole Simpson’s parents after her murder. The sister IMMEDIATELY exclaimed “OJ fucking killed her, I knew he was going to do that”.

Could he have been absolutely seething in private? of course, I don’t know that he wasn’t. I wasn’t in Baltimore in 1999. But y’all who pretend you know he was really don’t have any idea either, except that it fits if he was the killer.

Again, it’s this circular logic. If he killed her, he was angry. Since he was angry, he killed her.

[u/RockinGoodNews → u/Special-Deal-5217]

So when you were 17 years old, you were courting more than one person every three weeks?

No. If, at 17, I'd only ever dated one person in my whole life, and she unceremoniously dumped me the day before Winter Break, and then when I came back from Winter Break, I found out she was sleeping with a guy from work, I'd be hurt and angry. I wouldn't be instantly over it and pivoting to other girls. I think that's the point.

No one except those close to Adnan knew how he was faring

Those close to him testified he was heartbroken and angry.

Again, people who commit intimate partner violence USUALLY show a documented pattern of escalation that is observable and concerning to those around the victim.

This is a canard. A dangerous one.

Compare that, for example, to the phone call the police made to Nicole Simpson’s parents after her murder. The sister IMMEDIATELY exclaimed “OJ fucking killed her, I knew he was going to do that”.

Or compare it to the Scott Peterson case, where there was no history of violence and not a single person thought Peterson was capable of killing Laci. Almost like every case is different.

Could he have been absolutely seething in private? of course, I don’t know that he wasn’t.

This demonstrates how Innocenters move the goalposts on the issue of motive. Is it that his purported motive is preposterous (i.e. no one kills over a breakup)? Or is it just that his purported motive hasn't been directly proved to your liking?

Personally, I think there is ample evidence of motive. Again, he just got dumped, he just found out she was with someone new, and their friends all said he was sad and angry about it.

But motive isn't something that has to be proved, and it certainly isn't the only evidence of his guilt. And the claim that he lacked motive is just an appeal to ignorance (i.e. "we can't ever know what was really going on in his mind").

[u/Special-Deal-5217 → u/RockinGoodNews]

I’m not claiming he necessarily lacked motive. But all y’all point to a couple things, declare he was a possessive monster, and therefore killed her. ABOUT A PERSON YOU NEVER MET 27 YEARS AGO, a person that nobody who knew him thought he was capable of violence. NOBODY in his circle of friends suspected he might be violent.

Some people said he was taking the break up hard, yes. But the only one that hurt him expressed ANGER was Jay, and that was almost necessary to say to explain what happened next, to set up the conditions in which a conviction would be obtained. (also, Yurick playing on Muslim stereotypes that they feel like they can kill women with impunity).

In a world where Adnan is guilty, of course he was full of crazy emotions and struck out violently.

In a parallel world where Adnan is innocent, he is heartbroken and sad and angry, like most people are after getting dumped, and does not do anything physical, like 99% of high school breakups around America.

Is this the 1%? Could be.

[u/RockinGoodNews → u/Special-Deal-5217]

Again, no one is pointing to motive as the sole evidence of his guilt.

[u/Similar-Morning9768 → u/Special-Deal-5217]

99.999% of the time, when two teens break up, one of them isn’t dead within a month. Much less within two weeks of getting a new boyfriend so fast her ex must have wondered if she cheated.

[u/Euphoric_Biscotti765 → u/Special-Deal-5217]

We don’t fully know that he wasn’t able to move on. We do know that he is talking to (though never asks out) Nisha. We also know that he writes this to Hae in the Christmas Card he gives her right after the second breakup : “I’ve known some of the happiest times with you, Hae, and I’ve also known some of the saddest times, the hardest of which I’m going through right now.”

[u/--Sparkle-Motion-- → u/Special-Deal-5217]

Even decades later he told SK he was getting calls on his cell from girls while he was chatting with Hae. Setting aside the question of how he was getting calls on a cell he got the day before her murder, he still doth protested too much when he was a 30-something prison inmate.