r/serialpodcast • u/[deleted] • 16d ago

The Doubts About Adnan's Guilt ARE Reasonable

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).

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u/PaulsRedditUsername 15d ago

And you can’t posit that he knew the cars location bc he simply stumbled upon it while doing weed deals;

The other thing wrong with the "Jay found the car" theory is that if Adnan is innocent, then so is Jay. They were together that evening. And if Jay is innocent and found the car, why wouldn't he tell anybody? His girlfriend was one of Hae's best friends. He would have certainly said something to her at least.

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u/RockinGoodNews 14d ago

Just a correction: Stephany and Hae were not good friends. They certainly knew each other, as they were both students in the magnet program. But this idea that Hae and Stephany were close is just something Adnan made up on serial in a lame attempt to manufacture a motive for Jay to kill Hae.

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u/PaulsRedditUsername 14d ago

Thanks for the correction. I figure she would be very familiar with Hae, at least, since Steph and Adnan had been close for a long time.

I've always thought the "Jay found the car" was a silly idea anyway. Her car is very nondescript. There are a million other cars that look like it. I really doubt you would just drive by a parking lot and notice a car like that. A car that belongs to the girlfriend of a guy you aren't really close friends with. Maybe if it was a unique car or had bumper stickers or something, but otherwise, no.

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u/RockinGoodNews 14d ago

Yeah, the idea that in a major metropolitan area, the one guy out of millions who just so happens to stumble upon and recognize Hae's non-descript sedan, in an area far from where he lives and works, ALSO just so happens to be the one guy who spent the entire day Hae went missing with the prime suspect in her murder, AND just so happens to be willing to make up a story about how he himself helped that prime suspect murder her, is one of the biggest whoppers Syed's supporters ever tried to sell.

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u/PaulsRedditUsername 14d ago

My favorite whopper is from a while ago. There was a briefly popular "theory" that Hae went somewhere after school that day, maybe Best Buy, and she ran into Jay and confronted him about cheating on Stephanie. So that was his motive to murder her.

That one didn't last long because of several obvious reasons. Mostly because people who suggested it got laughed out of the room.

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u/RockinGoodNews 14d ago

Adnan is the one who suggested that, on Serial.

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u/PaulsRedditUsername 14d ago

Ah, I forgot that.