Serial - the podcast *spoilers*

But he would still have to walk or get picked up from the Park & Ride

― man alive, Thursday, January 8, 2015 6:24 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And there's time enough for that, when you're no longer dealing with track practice.

― Frederik B, Thursday, January 8, 2015 6:30 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Alright, sincerely apologize for going back into this, but I just want to correct what I said, I mean the site where Hae's car was found, not the Park & Ride, which I think is a little further from stuff than the Park & Ride, though not hugely so. Probably at least an hour walk from anything significant. Remember he also presumably has to ditch the shovels and Hae's things somewhere, which means he'd be carrying those on his walk. Again, truly sorry for continuing to discuss these points at all but I can't seem to let go.

I mean, IDK, I guess he could drive from Leakin Park, stop somewhere on the way to ditch the shovels, ditch the car, then walk an hour to wherever he went next (don't remember what the accounts point to). Not impossible.

He, it's ok with me, it's everyone else who is weirded out. Just, nobody compare me to anything or anything for answering when asked. There are a few calls to Jenn at the time, from around where Hae's car is parked, and Jay and Jenn agrees that he picked her up at a mall (sorta, Jay once says he paged her from a mall, but then Adnan drove him home, and she picked him up from there). So he walked to a mall, and threw stuff out, then got picked up. Now, they then both say that they drove to Stephanies, but Stephanie denies that, so they are lying about something there.

On the missing second part from the Intercept: Serial responded to the allegations. They also allege that Urick claims he wasn't authorized to speak on this case by he Baltimore City State's Attorney office, since he no longer works there. If that is true, if he isn't authorized to speak - which should be quite easy to check independently - then we'll probably never get the second part.

You'll still get the second part. He already gave the interview. Glenn Greenwald is partly responsible for disseminating the Snowden nsa data they're not going to bat an eye at violating some stupid Baltimore municipal guideline.

Well, sure, but the point of the Snowden data wasn't attacking someone else for not following journalistic guidelines.

i need a podcast to walk me through this thread

It sounded like Greenwald was an Adnan-innocenter a couple weeks ago. Now NVC's piece is under extra editorial scrutiny. It's almost like First Look isn't the rock steady media operation we've come to know it as.

I could see the piece being delayed as they return to Urich for further comment but they aren't going to let Urich's "authority" to speak based on whatever guideline determine if it gets published.

Esp. since pt 1 is already out there.

Pretty interesting that the state city need the Lee family's permission to talk publicly about the case? Is that normally true? Feels like a lot of prosecutors are pretty vocal about their trials....

Sounds like they meant "out of respect for the Lee family" rather than that they were barredegaly from comment

Hard to tell. "Had not received permission... to speak on the record" sounds like it could be policy or courtesy.

If latter hard to figure how after already having case completely dredged up anyone speaking to anyone could really make it worse for Lee's family.

But I do understand impulse to try to be respectful.

Looks like they've added a clarification re: the defense disclosure and Serial's attempt to contact Urick.

A mess. The introduction about the disclosure now reads: Early on in the case, Urick said, the defense sent a disclosure to the state saying it had more than 80 witnesses who would testify about Adnan’s whereabouts on the day he allegedly killed Hae and buried her body. But when the defense found out that the cellphone records showed that Adnan was nowhere near the mosque, it killed that alibi and those witnesses were never called to testify at the trial, according to Urick. That is not what Urick says - they haven't 'corrected' his interview. And it doesn't fix the problem. Now they just misrepresent how Urick is misprepresenting the disclosure. Honestly, I fail to see how that makes it better.

FWIW, if you actually read the disclosure, it just sounds like the witnesses were going to testify that they would likely have noticed if he were missing, not that they definitely saw him. So it's not very strong evidence, regardless of whether it's "fabricated" or not.

And that's a pretty good explanation in itself for why the evidence was never presented -- just not that strong.

They added a note to the interview itself. How would they correct his interview?

I also completely understand why it was withdrawn (though didn't Adnans track-coach testify that he would have noticed if Adnan wasn't there?) The problem is, they are presenting it as fabricated to show that the case was strong and the defence was weak. And the disclosure still doesn't back that up.

It's not about 'correcting' the interview. They should remove the part from the top, because it doesn't hold up, still doesn't. And then, you know, they could add a note in the interview about his claim being blatantly untrue, but they would never do that.

I think the claim is pretty factual, but I've pretty much learned to agree to disagree with you on this subject.

But it's just weird. Like, the note says: [Ed. note: We have corrected this in the introduction] Why have they corrected it? Have they spoken to him, and he explained what he meant? Did they mistranscribe? He said something that wasn't true, they presented it, and they repeated it. Now they still present his untrue claim, but then they change it into something else when they repeat it.

And Alex, you're not just disagreeing with me, you're also disagreeing with TheIntercept on this. And 'pretty factual' isn't enough here. It's either factual, or it's not. Sure, Urick might misremember. But when you're repeating something in an introduction, 'pretty factual' isn't enough.

Urick says a lot of 'pretty factual' things in this interview, as did Jay in his. As does Adnan and Rubia Chaudry constantly. The problem is, the journalists repeated it without commenting on it's innacurracy.

isn't the correction that not all 80 witnesses were going to testify to exactly the same thing--seeing Adnan at the mosque--but some were?

it's more of an exaggeration in that case, or just blurring the lines between 80 scuttled witnesses and some witnesses prepared to lie

but I haven't been sifting through the reddit bile pits

Just to be clear the alibi in disclosure is clearly fabricated because Adnan by his own account did not actually do the things it says he did in the disclosure (he did not attend school the entire day, he did not go straight home, etc). So to have witness either testify to him doing those things OR must have done those things because they would have noticed otherwise is a fabrication.

The original intro to the Intercept was an overstatement (as is Urick's in the interview) which is why they felt the need to issue a frankly pretty tepid correction. I don't find the "error"/"lie" whatever you are calling it terribly compelling.

Well we're really splitting hairs either way imo, but testifying that you "would have noticed otherwise" is a belief, so it's not necessarily a "fabrication" just because it's provably false.

But that's also why it's not very probative evidence in most situations. "Yeah I would have noticed if he wasn't there." Ok maybe if it was your husband, your son, your teacher, but not one of a big crowd of people you regularly see at a mosque.

Good points.

The alibi is clearly untrue (of course it's 'fabricated', in that Adnan says he can't remember what he did, so it's reconstructed), but Urick talks about 'fabricated evidence'. And none of the witnesses were going to testify to any of the untrue things, just what his 'regular attendence' was. None of the untrue things conflict with his 'regular attendence'.

It's really such an irrelevant point that the prosecutor might be mischaracterizing a hypothetical bit of evidence 15 years later

Deciding not to put on a bunch of witnesses who can't say that they remember seeing Adnan at the mosque for sure is proof that CG was maybe not that bad of a lawyer

As I've stated right above, I'm arguing that the problem is TheIntercept uses this mischaracterizing to puff up their own argument that the case wasn't weak at all. And now, on finding out the argument doesn't hold, they've 'corrected' the argument for Urick, instead of removing it.

Why should they remove it? They link to the doc and it's not irrelevant. It still supports his assertion (perhaps only slightly less strongly).

The fact remains that allibi witnesses did not materialize. This is the point that bears on weather the case was strong or weak not whether they were "fabricating"

No. They use the point to prop up the cellphone evidence - Urick speaks about Leakin Park especially - and it clearly no longer shows that.

Shows what? Huh?

That the cellphonerecords convinced Guiterrez to drop the 'fabricated evidence'.

The cellphone records probably convinced her in part not to try to respond with an alibi defense. Which again was probably a wise move since the alibi defense stunk.

I'm going to quote an awful lot of text, but this is what the introduction says about the case:

Urick didn’t have new facts to tell us—just as “Serial” didn’t uncover any new evidence. But his concise recounting of the main points in the case, without the podcast’s diversions and distractions, explains why the jury convicted Adnan after such brief deliberations.

The key evidence in the case were cellphone records that showed Syed’s movements on the night that Lee disappeared, and the testimony of Jay Wilds, a former classmate who confessed to police that he helped Syed dispose of Lee’s body. Wilds cooperated with police and prosecutors and after pleading guilty to being an accessory to murder after the fact, received two years probation.

Urick acknowledged that Jay had told conflicting versions of events. But he pointed out that even after five days on the stand, the defense was only able to challenge “collateral facts,” and not “material facts” directly related to the question of Syed’s guilt or innocence.

The focus on Jay’s changing story misses a larger point, Urick says, which is that criminal accomplices, by their nature, change their stories, and it is the job of the state to peel back the layers–and use corroborating evidence–to get to the truth. “We did not pick Jay to be Adnan’s accomplice,” Urick said. “Adnan picked Jay.”

Early on in the case, Urick said, the defense sent a disclosure to the state saying it had more than 80 witnesses who would testify about Adnan’s whereabouts on the day he allegedly killed Hae and buried her body. But when the defense found out that the cellphone records showed that Adnan was nowhere near the mosque, it killed that alibi and those witnesses were never called to testify at the trial, according to Urick.

Those same cellphone records also corroborated Jay’s testimony about Adnan’s movements on the night of the crime.

“Jay’s testimony by itself, would that have been proof beyond a reasonable doubt?” Urick asked rhetorically. “Probably not. Cellphone evidence by itself? Probably not.”

But, he said, when you put together cellphone records and Jay’s testimony, “they corroborate and feed off each other–it’s a very strong evidentiary case.”

Syed did not testify at the trial, but had he done so, Urick said, he would have run through his cellphone records: “And my very last question would be, what is your explanation for why you either received or made a call from Leakin Park the evening that Hae Min Lee disappeared, the very park that her body was found in five weeks later?”

The justice system in America frequently doesn’t work. This is not one of those cases.

It's all about the cellphone-records - which are disputed, to say the least - and then in the middle: Guitierrez knew those cellphonerecords were strong. The disclosure is the only 'proof' they present as to why his argument holds true. And it doesn't prove that.

everyone in this thread needs an intervention

He. And if they actually release part 2 of that interview tomorrow, we'll probably start all over again...

I admit I have a problem

What the hey, here's a lil more fuel for the crazy fire
http://mashable.com/2015/01/01/jay-serial-stories/

I find it clarifying, although I don't find lining up the intercept version of events with the other three since the interview is a pretty cursory, incomplete, off-the-cuff thing (not to mention 15 years after the fact) whereas the others are police interviews or trial testimony with many more details filled in.

Another thing I still don't understand in your theory, Frederick, or in any theory where Adnan was actually at the mosque, is why Adnan wouldn't have his phone with him by then. Apologies if this was discussed upthread. Like we know that some time in that 6-6:30 timeframe, probably 6:24, Adnan talked to the cops, on his own phone. From then on, why doesn't Adnan have the phone? Why would he give it back to Jay? He doesn't claim to have given the car back to Jay, iirc. I thought he said he drove himself back home, got food for his father, and went to mosque. So why would Jay have the phone in Adnan's version?

I'm happy to answer this question, and followups, but... does it actually help you at this point, or does it just make you obsess more? Like, if you're trying to get some calm from your questions, it might be better to find answers to the weird things in the prosecutions theory, rather than in my story - which I'm pretty happy and calm with, at this point.

But if Jay buried Hae, he had to have both Adnan's phone and car. The question isn't really why Adnan would lend his car and phone to Jay, since he has done so twice already on the same day. And not just because of the murder, Jay had car and phone while Adnan was at track as well. And why should Adnan need to have his phone on him at Mosque, on final day of Ramadan? It would be like phoning people while at Christmas mass.

No, the weird question is more: Why does Adnan say that he probably had his phone with him? But that is a weird question for every theory there is. Either Adnan was at Mosque but without his phone, or he was with his phone but at Leakin Park. Why does Adnan claim that he was at Mosque with his phone?

Technically he did call a bunch of people during that night during prayer or at least the social gathering post-prayer (was it really the last day btw... I tried finding the Ramadan calendar for 1998-9 and I think it started on 12/20 which should have it end after 1/13, right?)

When I've been at a Mosque for Ramadan (twice) it was usually prayer (which was not that long) followed by social/eating. It's not really comparable to X-mas mass, so it's not really as strange as it sounds that someone would think I'll slip away and make a few phone calls (which presumably he did).

Well, there are no calls to anyone Adnan knows between 7 and 9.