Serial - the podcast *spoilers*

this thread is rly awesome guys great job

random hatepiece Serial Sucked And Wasted Everyone's Time

I remember back when it wasn't mandatory to listen to a podcast

i think serial was probably conceived without any clearly defined intentions or ambitions, which suits a podcast which no one could have predicted would blow up like it did.

i liked the random hatepiece especially the last sentence which felt otm for me for a second because i work in a courthouse but several of my coworkers loved serial so i guess that's not it. and many people who don't work in crime/law feel the same. i would have really loved a true crime podcast that had a point that was not curious wandering.

That piece is the standard I was into this first when it was "real journalism" and so I'm going to be shrill about you unwashed dickheads being so into it.

well it was good for 6 episodes then it was only good for unwashed dickheads

lol at expecting a This American Life spin-off to not include curious meandering.

I totally dug Serial and feel a little bad that I ended up thinking too much about whether or not Adnan did it--for the first six episodes I really didn't care and was just enjoying SK act like a semi-stoned private eye.

I do think the last few could have been more artful tho--like I'm sure the reddit mob was demanding updates about the Best Buy blueprints and the contractual details of Maryland butt dials in 1999 but doesn't this show have a website where they could dump that stuff?

i didn't "expect" it not to. it just would have not been so bad. TAL is only an hour show so the meandering is fine.

won't they think of the unwashed dickheads

reading this thread has brought up a lot of thoughts about dickheads for me

fuck washing a dickhead

lol

FWIW I am bored and started reading the decision from his 2002 appeal:
https://archive.org/stream/pdfy-sCEhpvo5xTiB4e40/2002_WL_32510996_djvu.txt

This says that the plea agreement Jay got WAS NOT a complete get-out-of-jail, it was an agreement to recommend a five year sentence with all but two suspended. So I'm not sure how he wound up with no jail time, but it's not clear to me that he knew he wasn't going to get jail time when he was testifying.

Well, given that the police and prosecution kept the lawyer deal secret from the defence and jury, that does not seem good to me.

Where are you getting that it was kept secret? He testified and was cross examined about it.

Oh sorry misread your post, but I'm not sure what you mean

The "lawyer deal" (and it wasn't necessarily a "deal") came out in the trial, so the judge and jury knew about it. This issue was also raised on appeal and the appellate court didn't find it significant enough to overturn anything. My point about he plea is that Sarah Koenig makes it sound like Jay testified thinking he wasn't going to get jail time, which could give him a stronger motive to lie, and that the jury found him more credible because they didn't know this. In fact it sounds like Jay thought he faced jail time and testified as such.

Well, I'm not sure what it sounds like. Reading the plea, the story at trial was that Mr Urich would recommend how much time Jay was going to get, but no less than five with three suspended. That was what the jury was told. Turned out to be zero (but probation?) That seems fishy to me. And it was only digging by defence which brought out the lawyer deal as well, which is what makes me more suspicious about other deals by the prosecution.

Did the prosecutor recommend no jail time or is that just what the judge gave?

Well, dunno, but the court thought it was odd as well:

She has a witness on the stand, there's been a hearing involving
this witaess that may or may not reflect on the credibility of this
witness, we don't know if the proceeding was under oath, we
don't know what he said during the proceeding, we don't know
what he was asked during the proceeding, but he is your star
witness in your case. She's reviewed a statement, it's the guilty
plea, but there was another hearing held involving this very
same witness for which she has no clue what it's about and to
ask or inquire bHndly means she doesn't know what she's
dealing with. Perhaps we could bring him in and ask him.
Perhaps he knows. But you [THE PROSECUTOR] can
understand why she might want that information as a lawyer.

Xps the jury didn't know about the lawyer deal - they weren't present when that whole argument was going on.

The thing is I also can't work out any reason the prosecutor would want to push to frame Adnan. Prosecutors like to get wins. You have a star student and a self described criminal element who happens to be black. Why does the prosecutor go after adnan if there's anything pointing to Jay being the real killer? This was pre 9/11 btw so while its clear that there was antimuslim bias at play, it was not some kind of post 9/11 revenge or panic prosecution.

If Adnan was framed, he was framed by Jay and Jenn and whoever made those phonecalls to the police, I guess. The police then just helped them because they thought that was the stronger case.

Also, I'm not really arguing anything untoward went on in that second plea-meeting the defence didn't know about - from the testimony it sounds really fucking boring... - or that Jay getting off without prison instead of what his deal said was a con made by the prosecution. I'm just surprised that it could happen, because it's obviously open to abuse. Like the practice of waiting to turn on the tape-recorder until halfway into the interview. In the majority of cases, nothing untoward happens. But it can be abused, and there's no way to say when that happens. It's just bad practice, it seems to me. Right?

Xp Adnan wasn't talking and Jay was, so that's how they pursued it.

The state has no idea that Jay even exists until they follow up Adnan's cell records. Jay then hands them the entire case. They're obviously suspicious of Adnan prior (probably prior to even getting "the tip") but there is nothing to connect Jay to the crime other than his own testimony and statements to other people.

How many "tips" were there? I thought just one to look at the cell records? Were there more?

Two calls. 1) 'look at boyfriend' 2) few minutes later, mentions 'basser ali' But, well, the police were prob suspecting adnan - and don - from the start. Call-log led to jenn, who led to jay.

Oh ok so I guess the deal was officially that cooperation = rec of five years with all but two suspended, but then at Jay's sentencing the prosecutor made an *additional* rec of suspending the other two years as well because of remorse:
http://www.reddit.com/r/serialpodcast/comments/2ldjx7/where_is_jay_now_did_adnan_kill_jay_in_jail_when/

So it is possible that the prosecutor had in fact verbally promised Jay no jail time, but it wasn't in the actual plea agreement. Ulrich might have said something like "Oh and by the way, if this goes well we might even be able to give you a better recommendation than is in the plea agreement." Even if so, I wouldn't say that taints things to the point of calling the trial a "travesty" -- all we know is that one juror was influenced by the fact that she thought Jay was serving time. We also know that's not the only thing that made her credible to him.

*him credible to her

If Adnan was framed, he was framed by Jay and Jenn and whoever made those phonecalls to the police, I guess. The police then just helped them because they thought that was the stronger case.

I'm not saying this is impossible, but it seems odd that nothing had previously pointed to Jay and/or Jenn. No seemed to know of any reason Jay or Jenn would have to hurt Hae. Neither Jay nor Jenn have any known ties to Hae IIRC.

Imagine a parallel universe Serial where Jay is the one in jail/being interviewed. Imagine how much MORE bizarre the case seems now.

From that hate piece by Diana Moscovitz:

All this show did was make a bunch of sheltered, oblivious, middle-class Americans feel very smart about themselves. Out here, stuck in real life with the rest of us, it was just another day in the courthouse.

What an elitist, condescending piece of shit. There's a reason why Sarah Koenig has a massively successful and groundbreaking podcast and Ms. Moscovitz is writing worthless stories on mediocre websites. Fuck you, Diana Moscovitz.

I thought Moscovitz went overboard, for sure, and I didn't agree with a lot of her "well the rest of us ALREADY KNOW THAT" griping. But I did agree that it was frustrating to listen to Sarah Koenig's Inspector Clouseau routine when someone with a little more training and experience in crime reporting etc. could have probably cut through a lot of the bullshit more easily (but then probably not had enough material for 12 episodes).

And ultimately I was left with the same feeling of "why are you digging all this up again?" Like a whole new generation of people now wonder if some dude who put this to rest over ten years ago might actually be a murderer. If there's a basis to think so, and it might mean someone innocent gets out of jail, then by all means investigate, but broadcasting your investigation to the world before you know if there's even an answer seems morally questionable to me. I feel like people so concerned with the possibility that there might be an innocent matter in jail are forgetting that there's another potentially innocent man at stake.

^ yes. it would be ok to have fewer episodes though. like she really needed to have a lawyer or crime reporter with her on the whole thing, not just do a couple episodes interviewing those people. the professional might have told her to choose another case though. xp

not to say she is not any kind of professional

She is a professional in the sense that she verifies her facts and generally reports only things that can be backed up. She's a good reporter in the wider sense. She however had little knowledge, apparently, of police work, the legal system, and the huge body of literature on what kinds of evidence are or are not reliable. I told a friend that it reminded me at times of a person with no English lit background reading a 16th century poem and feeling around for what it might mean based on modern understandings of word definitions, then throwing his hands up and saying "Well, we'll never know what the poet meant by these words, he's dead," meanwhile being totally unaware of all the scholarship on the poem, the availability of tools like the OED, etc. Not a perfect analogy, but same problem of trying to reinvent the wheel.

plus a lot of times she got advice from a professional and then ignored it!

I also felt she was just not that great at weighing facts against each other, or perhaps just unwilling to

The weirdest moment in the entire series was when she dismissed that "I'm going to kill..." note with a crack about it sounding like something out of a dime store mystery. Ok

i kinda changed my mind abt her when she dropped a "that was the money shot" about a piece of evidence in an early episode

ha, i'd forgotten that. did she not know what it means? or was she trying to be edgy? either way it's a clunker.

the impressions were pretty spot-on on the SNL sketch. Especially the Adnan voice.

Santa didn't say "right" enough. Otherwise it was great.

"Christmas magic"

Oh ok so I guess the deal was officially that cooperation = rec of five years with all but two suspended, but then at Jay's sentencing the prosecutor made an *additional* rec of suspending the other two years as well because of remorse:
http://www.reddit.com/r/serialpodcast/comments/2ldjx7/where_is_jay_now_did_adnan_kill_jay_in_jail_when/

So it is possible that the prosecutor had in fact verbally promised Jay no jail time, but it wasn't in the actual plea agreement. Ulrich might have said something like "Oh and by the way, if this goes well we might even be able to give you a better recommendation than is in the plea agreement." Even if so, I wouldn't say that taints things to the point of calling the trial a "travesty" -- all we know is that one juror was influenced by the fact that she thought Jay was serving time. We also know that's not the only thing that made her credible to him.

― man alive, 21. december 2014 19:28 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That is again crazy to me, that that is ok. I mean, it's very possible that Mr Urich might simply have been deeply moved by Jay's remorse, and thought he'd suffered enough or something, but it's impossible to know. It would always be impossible to know. Does anyone know if this happens often?

I think the state is generally favorably disposed towards it's witnesses. I have no idea how frequently someone who was charged with something like being an accessory to first degree murder serves no time due to their cooperation. I'd imagine it's not completely uncommon.

Well, that is not really what I asked. How often does it happen with a plea deal, that after the trial, the prosecution will then argue for even less punishment? Because that seems like a practice that would be very easy to abuse.

I'm willing to bet that if Adnan had not been convicted Jay would have served those two years