Serial - the podcast *spoilers*

Well I think there is a benefit strategically to knowing the prosecutions entire gameplan too. But $$$s definitely seem to play into a lot of these CG stories.

Certainly hard to believe if she thought she could win.

I wonder what KU means by this:

KU: No, there was never a plea deal offered. It was clear that for Cristina this was about guilt or innocence. The defense had no desire for a plea. So we never offered one.

He means he never offered a plea deal because CG never asked for one--that she was going for a not guilty verdict rather than 10 years in prison or whatever.

iirc Adnan claimed that he wanted a plea deal, but CG didn't ask for one

Right, but doesn't that imply that she thought she could win it? When at other points, he seem to imply that she knew she couldn't. What's the story there? Did Adnan force CG to go to trial?

Frederik, I feel like you of all people might know the answer to this: I noticed some people cite to a line in an appeals decision which says that in one of Jay's statements to the police (April 13, 1999) he told them that the murder happened in Patapsco and that Adnan paid Jay to "help" (though it is not clear from the way the appeal words it if it means "help" kill Hae or "help" cover up after). Do you know where this came from? Is there a copy of the April 13 statement? Is it sealed? Did this come from someone's testimony? It's just a fact I haven't seen raised much yet a pretty significant one if true.

Right, but doesn't that imply that she thought she could win it? When at other points, he seem to imply that she knew she couldn't. What's the story there? Did Adnan force CG to go to trial?

― Frederik B, Wednesday, January 14, 2015 3:21 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's always ultimately up to the Defendant whether or not to plead guilty or not guilty, so he literally can force her to go to trial.

So I don't think it implies anything one way or the other about whether she thought she could win it. But seeking a mistrial generally would be a bad strategic move if you feel very confident that you'll win.

xpost It may be that after polling the jury in the first trial CG thought she could win the case. Adnan stated on Serial that he eventually wanted a plea deal, so he seems to be claiming that CG was the one who pushed his fate into the jury's hands. Seems kind of weird though

I don't know about the april 13 statement. Two Jay transcripts have been released, February 28th and March 15th, first and second interview. I'm guessing none other than that are available. But an appeals decision has been released as well, so it's probably straight from that. Why do you find it so significant? It just seems like another 'collateral' thing Jay made up.

Not significant so much as strange and hard to explain. Weird that, after two prior interviews, he would tell police that he was paid to be involved, which would expose him to greater criminal liability than just helping after the fact. And it's a fact that some of the more pro-Adnan folk around the net bring up, including the blogger you like. It was also the first "inconsistency" I found genuinely disconcerting, because the only alternative theory I find slightly plausible is that Adnan is guilty but Jay was a little more involved than he let on, then lied just enough to get himself off the hook and convict Adnan. E.g., if Adnan made an arrangement in advance with Jay and paid him to help.

There was also that statement from Jenn that Jay would only get mixed up in something like this if "Adnan paid him," but that was so speculative and off the cuff that it doesn't mean much by itself.

maybe reddit can find the receipt

he probably used the thousands of dollars he stole from the mosque coffers

Wow this whole thing has come full circle.

Man, that blogger I like is good. She has picked up, that the map of the cellphonetowers, that the police made, got the position of one of the cellphonetowers wrong, placed it two miles further to the south. And that Jay in his second statement, the first made after the police got the map, has him placing every call he makes from that tower two miles too much to the south. So either a) We're dealing with an incredible coincidence or ii) The police coached his statement, using a faulty map.

http://viewfromll2.com/2015/01/13/serial-evidence-that-jays-story-was-coached-to-fit-the-cellphone-records/

Doesn't really change a thing, really, but it's some good snooping around.

That is certainly good work, but I think she draws some very wild conclusions, even more so in the comment threads.

The thing is, I haven't re-looked at the calls, but it seems like this discovery could just as easily wind up cutting against "team Adnan" as for, i.e. if it provides an explanation for some of the inconsistencies in Jay's stories (you know, he gives one story, then finds out the cell records say otherwise [based on a false tower location] and then thinks "oh, well i must be remembering wrong, x happened after y, not before...")

One can interpret that as nefarious "coaching" but otoh, if I were trying to reconstruct a day from a few months ago and my cell phone log didn't match my memory of it, I'd assume the log was right and my memory was wrong. So I think she's overinterpreting things a little.

Weeeelll. The story of the prosecution is that the cellphonerecords support Jays testimony. So if Jays story appears to have been coached based on the cellphonerecords, then that discredits that claim. In general. But no, Jay not being at his own home doesn't mean anything. And nobody really believes anything about Jays story anyway, so, you know. It doesn't support Adnan's innocence at all. It's more indicative of Adnan being 'railroaded' (I'm not entirely sure what this means, but it's in the intercept story) and it's perhaps something that CG should have figured out.

The story of the prosecution is that the cell phone records support Jay's testimony on "key points," not on every detail.

The 'coaching' must have taken place at the second interview, on March 15th, and weirdly, the notes from the three hours before the recorder was turned on dissapeared from the case file. So, it does not look good. But it says nothing about Adnans innocence either.

Taking it back to the big picture, I just don't see how "police coached Jay to give false testimony" squares with "Jay plotted to frame Adnan for the murder he himself committed." Those seem like two difficult theories to hold in your mind at the same time.

I don't see how? Police had a witness against Adnan, nothing against Jay. So they just went with what they could prosecute - and what they believed - and started working on making the case as strong as could be.

And Jay is meanwhile trying to frame Adnan himself but completely inept at it?

What do you mean by 'meanwhile'? There are almost two months between the day of the murder and the second interview.

I mean that you're saying Jay tries to frame Adnan yet doesn't have his story straight at all, and hence is fully open to "coaching" by the police.

Oh, right. But he does have a story in the first interview, it just doesn't match the cellphoneevidence, the police later discover. It matches Jenns story, though, also again on the parts that doesn't match cellphoneevidence...

Jay's complete inability to figure out how long he was doing something or when he did it would almost be comical if the stakes weren't so high.

I can imagine that must have been driving police crazy.

Frederik, just so I understand, you are saying that Jay and Jenn conspired to kill Hae and cover it up and frame Adnan, got their story together, and then police coached Jay to give a different story?

Yes because they didn't know about the cell records. Once they see the cell records they change their stories to fit those because they are coached to do so by the police.

Well, not exactly. In my speculative theory, the whole thing develops over time. There are no conspiracies or anything.

seems like nobody's theory grapples with Jay's new story about burying Hae around midnight. Maybe those Leakin Park calls came in while Jay, or Adnan, or Adnan & Jay were scoping out a burial site earlier in the night

So Adnan's appeal based on ineffective counsel was denied. Based on what I'm reading that means last hope here for Adnan is basically that DNA evidence at the scene implicates a known criminal, right? Or is there a possible petition based on some other means?

Nobody wants to grapple with the midnight story. For the JailAdnan people, it means that there is nothing connecting Adnan to the burial, and the FreeAdnan people just wants to shout PerjuryPerjury. Also, iirc, Stephanie, Jenn and Cathy testified as to where Jay was from 11 onwards, so the story doesn't really fit.

IIRC he says something vague like "later...closer to midnight." Maybe that means 10pm filtered through his 15 year old memory. It's hard to grapple with because it's so long ago now and so much detail wasn't filled in in the intercept version.

If the 709 and 716 calls aren't the burial calls is there some location other than leakin park that that tower covers that would be plausible? Maybe it's en route between two places?

Well depending on whose explanation of cell tower technology you believe it could come from anywhere because they are incoming calls...

Right, but there's a call at 10:30 at Adnan's house. I don't know, seems more likely to me that he misremembers completely or made something up? Yeah, it's tough to tell, because the interview is so shitty, but he does say that Sarah Koenig told him about new 'evidence'. Perhaps she said that Adnan had an alibi at the time of the murder, and Jay, whether Adnan did it or not, got scared and delayed the whole thing a few hours?

Man, if Jay has actually been trying to tell the truth to he police, he must be the most confused of all. They showed him a faulty map that didn't square with what he remembered, and they for some reason really really wanted the come-get-me call to be the 2:36 one.

That said I've only seen that being posited by "non-experts" who are relying on the AT&T cover letter...

I think it's safe to say Jay has no idea "when" exactly anything happens from basically the get go.

Which to be fair is totally fair. I'm not sure if someone asked me to construct a totally accurate timeline of a day (even an obviously important one like this one) that occurred weeks (and now fifteen years) ago I'd be able to do it (esp. if I was getting pretty high for parts of that day). Weirder thing is obv totally random tangents that occur in his timeline. I don't think anyone has a good explanation for those though... unless again Jay just totally smooshes every day with Adnan in his mind together.

Those Ed Notes at Intercept are still so weird. Just checked this:

TI: Let’s talk about the mistrial. The first trial got scratched because the judge called Cristina a liar?

KU: He didn’t directly call her a liar. I don’t remember what he said. Like I said, Cristina was very quick. And she saw that, and she yelled very loudly, ‘Judge, you just called me a liar.’ So the entire courtroom heard her. She saw the opportunity to get a mistrial, and she went for it. [Ed. note: According to trial transcripts as read by Sarah Koenig on "Serial," Gutierrez said, 'It's very hard to be quiet when a court is accusing me of lying.']

I listened to the relevant part of Serial. They explicitly say that the judge says she's lying. More than once. Why would intercept rely on Serial to correct exactly what CG is saying, but not also check if KU is correct on the judge?

Why does it matter? His point is the same and Urick basically says he doesn't remember exact wording.

you guys are still going, huh

It's just such a shitty bunch of articles, poorly done interview, and then poorly edited and factchecked. The nadir was obviously the long introduction to the first part of Uricks interview, but all in all, the whole thing has been a tragicomic farce. Glad it's done.

I agree the NVC interviews are disappointing, because it just seems like she didn't know the case that well herself, hadn't spent time with the documents the way all the obsessives have, so if the point was to quiet the obsessives, she did a bad job by not really knowing when something was incorrect. In defense of Urick, this is a 15-year-old case for him and I doubt HE was about to spend dozens of hours re-reading everything from the case just for a single interview, so to the extent he gets things wrong, I'm guessing some of it is just misremembering.

Well, sure. But then the factchecking is also awful, even though they spent a week more than they planned to, so... Just bad bad bad from the intercept.

I don't know what people mean by "factchecking" -- should they be changing Urick's quotes?

Well, the problem obviously really began when they made that long stupid introduction repeating faulty things Urick said. But once you start writing notes to the interview, do it right. Most of what they write in their notes just make it all more confusing.