Serial: The Podcast

[JohnGalt]

Anyone else addicted to it like me? I heard it described as 'the latest hipster addiction' on NPR which was disappointing because I was OBVIOUSLY listening to it before anyone else. In all seriousness though...

Did Adnan really do it...?

[YmoBeThere]

Anyone else addicted to it like me? I heard it described as 'the latest hipster addiction' on NPR which was disappointing because I was OBVIOUSLY listening to it before anyone else. In all seriousness though...

Did Adnan really do it...?

Never heard of it, but if someone did Cereal: It's what's for lunch, I would listen to that all day long.

[Reisen]

Anyone else addicted to it like me? I heard it described as 'the latest hipster addiction' on NPR which was disappointing because I was OBVIOUSLY listening to it before anyone else. In all seriousness though...

Did Adnan really do it...?

I've counted roughly three dozen references to it on my facebook feed in the past week. I finally googled it the other day to find out what all the fuss was all about. I plan to download the podcast.

[GDT]

Did Adnan really do it...?

I have a hard time coming up with an alternate explanation, even if Jay's role was more pronounced than he confessed to. I guess where I stumble is that it seems like it was either a crime of passion where not one single friend or acquaintance noticed a hint of animosity while he and the victim sat in class together for weeks after the breakup and even interacted out of class. I have a hard time believing a 17/18 year-old could pull that off. Unless he is a Bundy-level sociopath. In which case, I thought those type of people tended to kill strangers and wouldn't harbor such emotional grudges because they lack that kind of emotion. Certainly not my area of expertise, but something just seems off about that to me.

[duke74]

Anyone else addicted to it like me? I heard it described as 'the latest hipster addiction' on NPR which was disappointing because I was OBVIOUSLY listening to it before anyone else. In all seriousness though...

Did Adnan really do it...?

Hadn't heard of it, but came across this via Twitter feed (Mashable): http://mashable.com/2014/11/23/seria...m-Tw-main-link

[DevilBen02]

Anyone else addicted to it like me? I heard it described as 'the latest hipster addiction' on NPR which was disappointing because I was OBVIOUSLY listening to it before anyone else. In all seriousness though...

Did Adnan really do it...?

I heard about the show last week and sped right through the first 9 episodes. Really intriguing.

As for whether he did it, I think what's so compelling about this story is that there really isn't enough information to be convincing either direction. It might be a bit of a let-down at the end, but I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out he did it. I'm more concerned with the fact that a jury was convinced that there was enough evidence to determine that he was the killer "beyond a reasonable doubt." Unless there's some information hasn't been presented yet, the show has raised plenty of reasonable doubts in my mind.

[jay]

a jury was convinced that there was enough evidence to determine that he was the killer "beyond a reasonable doubt." Unless there's some information hasn't been presented yet, the show has raised plenty of reasonable doubts in my mind.

Juries may be instructed to think this way, but it's not really the way they tend to operate.

[Matches]

I've just finished episode 4 and, while I'm trying to keep an open mind, I'm leaning strongly toward "he did it".

Clearly Jay is involved. He knew where the car was. So either (1) he did it himself, (2) he's telling the truth about Adnan, or (3) he knows who did it and is covering for someone else.

(1) doesn't track for me so far because he has no real motive. The only possible motive suggested so far is the idea that he was jealous of Adnan's relationship with Stephanie, but that doesn't really track as a motive to kill Adnan's ex, esp. if Adnan had indeed moved on. Not completely implausible, I guess, but seems highly unlikely.

Likewise, (3) makes little sense given the facts presented in the first 4 eps. Which leaves (2). Clearly Jay's story has all kinds of problems, but most if not all of them can be explained away by his desire to cover up the extent of his own involvement. (Even if all he did was help bury the body, he was an accessory after the fact, and his generalized paranoia toward and distrust of the cops strikes me as authentic.)

re: reasonable doubt, keep in mind that the presentation we're hearing is vastly different from the one the jury heard. One of the things that's really compelling to me about the podcast is that it's coming from an outsider, after the fact, who clearly has good but perhaps not complete access to information. She's not entirely reliable as a narrator, despite her best efforts to be objective - and that just adds another layer to the whole thing. Specifically, I think she comes off as a little naive about teenage relationships. On one level she understands their transience and the way teenagers dramatize those relationships despite their transience, but I think she underestimates the "playa" mentality - which Adnan seems to have had.

I don't know - the whole thing is like radio crack - hugely addictive.

[JohnGalt]

Likewise, (3) makes little sense given the facts presented in the first 4 eps. Which leaves (2). Clearly Jay's story has all kinds of problems, but most if not all of them can be explained away by his desire to cover up the extent of his own involvement. (Even if all he did was help bury the body, he was an accessory after the fact, and his generalized paranoia toward and distrust of the cops strikes me as authentic.)

This dovetails nicely with the original premise that teenage kids aren't actually very good at remembering things they did 6-8 weeks prior. Oddly though, that premise is meant to support Adnan's inability to recall where he was or what he was doing when Hae was killed.

One of the bigger problems I have is: if your ex- is missing and you supposedly had an amicable break-up, why wouldn't you call her at least once to try and figure out where she was or what was going on? Conversely though, don't you think at least one person would have said that Adnan showed at least some level of aggression toward Hae leading up to and after the breakup? And what about his time in prison? He's been exceptionally well-behaved.

When are we going to hear from Don? And what happened to the streaker that 'found' her body 250 yards from the road?

[alteran]

This dovetails nicely with the original premise that teenage kids aren't actually very good at remembering things they did 6-8 weeks prior. Oddly though, that premise is meant to support Adnan's inability to recall where he was or what he was doing when Hae was killed.

One of the bigger problems I have is: if your ex- is missing and you supposedly had an amicable break-up, why wouldn't you call her at least once to try and figure out where she was or what was going on? Conversely though, don't you think at least one person would have said that Adnan showed at least some level of aggression toward Hae leading up to and after the breakup? And what about his time in prison? He's been exceptionally well-behaved.

When are we going to hear from Don? And what happened to the streaker that 'found' her body 250 yards from the road?

I'm starting to go through the podcasts. I was going to wait until the whole series was done, but now I'm on episode 4.

One thing I'd note is that the body was found 127 FEET from the road, not 250 yards. The narrator initially thinks, "wow, that's a long way" and police sure acted like it undermined Mr. S's story, but when the narrator went out there, she was surprised at how close it was to a busy road. 127 feet is nothing if you don't want to be seen peeing. So it's not quite so surprising that "Mr. S" (Mr. Streaker I guess, pretty clever) went that far.*

We have absolutely no way of knowing what happened. It's clear Jay's story doesn't add up. Nor does the prosecution's theory, which goes to wit:

1) Adnan was in a humiliated and jealous rage. [But none of his friends or acquaintances noted it. Furthermore, the victim didn't note it in her diary either, despite writing in her diary daily AND being in contact with Adnan daily. Also, Adnan was involved with other women during this jealous rage, who also noted none of it.]
2) Adnan involved Jay, someone he didn't know very well, in the disposition of a body. [Alrighty, then.]
3) Adnan approached Jay about this before the murder occurred, set up plans about it with Jay, and Jay was just essentially... fine with that. [O-kaaaaaay.]

I agree, we can't really rule Adnan out. But man, oh, man, we for sure can't rule him in. How a jury found him guilty beyond reasonable doubt is beyond me.

The only way the state's case makes ANY sense, however, is if Adnan is a pretty clear psychopath. If this is the case, there should be some evidence of violent psychopathy in his childhood-- dead/mutilated animals, etc.

There's one person who for sure knows some major truth about what happened to Hae Lee-- Jay. There is a second person who PROBABLY knows something-- Mr. S. That's really all we have to go on, and these guys aren't talking.

--alteran

* except that he doesn't normally mind people seeing his unit, I guess.

[lotusland]

I've been listening since the first episode aired on This American Life. It's a fascinating case and I think that there must be more to it than the state's case. But the bottom line is that Jay knew where the body was and he and Adnon hung out all day on the day of the murder. Jay did not have a relationship of any sort with Hae so it doesn't make sense for him to be involved without Adnon.

I admit it seems very strange for Adnon to have harbored sufficient anger or jealousy against Hae to have committed the murder without venting about it to anyone prior to the murder. Or if he were that cool and calculating, it seems like he would have known better than to involve Jay. However, by Occam’s Razor I deduct that Adnon is most likely guilty.

There may not be any definitive outcome in the end but, in her interview with Mike Pesca on his The Gist podcast, Sarah Koenig said she was almost certain the show would end with some sort of resolution based on what she knew at that time (I think the interview occurred after the 4th or 5th episode). She also indicated that she has been contacted by numerous people claiming to have additional information about the case since the podcast started airing which was confirmed in episode 9 which just aired. Around 12 episodes were initially planned but I would not be surprised to see it go longer.

If you want more Serial, both Slate and The Onion have weekly podcasts about the podcast and there is a sub-Reddit that dissects the case in a way that reminds me of Pac Pride and the UNC scandal.

[Billy Dat]

It is a great podcast.

I assume at some point we're going to get the big interview with Adnon where he tries to explain exactly why Jay would have done this to him if he wasn't guilty. I assume Sarah Koenig is saving that interview for a later episode.

On the surface, it seems like Adnon could be innocent and Jay guilty, but none of that really makes sense when you start to try and add it up. Jay seems a bit like the sociopath, but Adnon also seems to be a little too friendly and accommodating with Koenig, a little to resigned/accepting of his fate.

[Matches]

One of the bigger problems I have is: if your ex- is missing and you supposedly had an amicable break-up, why wouldn't you call her at least once to try and figure out where she was or what was going on?

This one *really* stuck out to me. Cops are asking me if I've seen someone, I'm at least going to try to ring her once. He was calling her as late as the night before her murder - absolutely no reason other than the obvious one that he would stop calling her after that afternoon.

I've found that as the podcast goes on, the actual investigative aspect of it is hitting diminishing returns. People coming out of the woodwork to talk about whether Best Buy had a payphone 15 years ago strikes me as pretty unreliable. The whole thing is still gripping, though - even if it's not much of a murder mystery, it's a wonderful case study into how people behave, how we perceive and evaluate them, how our memories work, and so on. We're way too influenced by television and movies, where criminals are all either blatantly evil or devious masterminds (or both), and people's personalities are played broadly such that they can be boiled down to a catchphrase. In real life, people aren't like that. They're complicated, they aren't always consistent in how they behave, and different people perceive them differently depending on the context in which they encounter them. Also, people, even smart people, make dumb mistakes that are, in retrospect, obvious (like calling a girlfriend on a cell phone they're not supposed to possess at that time). We look at that and think, "no that's too easy and too obvious a mistake - there must be more there than is apparent" - but usually it's not. Usually it's exactly what it looks like.

As an aside, there was a reference to "reasonable doubt" above - but the jury didn't decide this case by listening to this podcast. They heard a weeks-long trial with FAR more information than we've been given (and we've heard a few things they never did). It's hugely problematic to second-guess the jury's decision without knowing exactly what evidence they heard. The podcast invites us to form our own opinions on Adnon's innocence or guilt, but I don't think it gives us much insight into whether the jury "got it right", so to speak.

[alteran]

As an aside, there was a reference to "reasonable doubt" above - but the jury didn't decide this case by listening to this podcast. They heard a weeks-long trial with FAR more information than we've been given (and we've heard a few things they never did). It's hugely problematic to second-guess the jury's decision without knowing exactly what evidence they heard. The podcast invites us to form our own opinions on Adnon's innocence or guilt, but I don't think it gives us much insight into whether the jury "got it right", so to speak.

Well, I'll tell you this, it IS easy to second guess the jury based on their own words.

We've heard one juror basically say she voted Adnan guilty because he didn't testify. Good grief. If you can't pay attention in civics class, please at least watch a few episodes of Law and Order.

The only other one we've heard from said it wasn't fair for the defense attorney to run down Jay on the stand. (You know, the guy with the story that kept changing.) This juror essentially said if Jay wasn't guilty, it had to be Adnan (actually, no, it doesn't have to be that way), so she voted against.

So, from of the two jurors we've heard from, one admittedly ignored her legal obligations, and the other decided based on something that was both irrelevant, and a fallacy.

I agree that we don't know what version of the case the jurors saw, but based on the words from two of them, I'm feeling pretty good about not respecting at least those two. And if I had to bet, I'd bet they had a lot of company.

Frankly, I've given up on having any clue who's guilty. We'll never know, or even feel like we have a solid guess. But I don't think I'll ever feel this case SHOULD HAVE crossed the reasonable doubt threshold. The defense attorney either screwed up, or the other 10 jurors were as clueless as the first two.

Maybe we'll get the answer to at least that before this is over with.

[alteran]

This one *really* stuck out to me. Cops are asking me if I've seen someone, I'm at least going to try to ring her once. He was calling her as late as the night before her murder - absolutely no reason other than the obvious one that he would stop calling her after that afternoon.

This is a great point. I found that kind of chilling.

Then the next episode, we find out that Adnan called the cops to tell them that they must be mistaken about the victim being Hae. That strikes me as almost the opposite. No way a murderer with an IQ above room temperature does anything like that.

The producer of this has been a master of artful (and manipulative) revelation of key information. She's pretty good at making me flip every week.

I also agree with you about the phone booth. Total red herring. Just because Jay thought there were booths at BestBuy and that Adnan called him from one doesn't mean much. Maybe Adnan borrowed a cell and Jay ASSUMED he called from a phone booth. Maybe that's why Jay "remembers" there being phone booths-- he made the assumption because he knew Adnan didn't have a phone, and his memory got mixed up.

I also agree that one of the fascinating things here is how people's perceptions/memories/minds change as a function of what they think happened, and how neutral or meaningless information can take on meaning depending on your filter.

[Matches]

Well, I'll tell you this, it IS easy to second guess the jury based on their own words.

We've heard one juror basically say she voted Adnan guilty because he didn't testify. Good grief. If you can't pay attention in civics class, please at least watch a few episodes of Law and Order.

I've been a litigator for sixteen years, though, and I can tell you that the reality is that juries almost always hold it against the defendant if s/he doesn't testify, regardless of the judge's instructions. It's human nature to want to hear from the accused, hear him explain himself, have him look you in the face and say he didn't do it, and then decide if he's telling the truth. It's really hard not to be influenced by that, even if you're trying your best not to be.

And attorneys know this - I guarantee you Adnon's lawyer knew this. Yet she still advised him not to testify - which means she believed the alternative was even worse, i.e. that he wouldn't survive cross-examination.

[GDT]

it's a wonderful case study into how people behave, how we perceive and evaluate them, how our memories work, and so on. We're way too influenced by television and movies, where criminals are all either blatantly evil or devious masterminds (or both), and people's personalities are played broadly such that they can be boiled down to a catchphrase. In real life, people aren't like that. They're complicated, they aren't always consistent in how they behave, and different people perceive them differently depending on the context in which they encounter them.

And you add all that to a criminal justice system with professionals looking to quickly close cases, to festoon fledgling political careers and whatever Adnan's attorney was doing (I seem to recall she was later disbarred for reasons not tied to this case plus her courtroom demeanor was unbelievably grating to my ears).

[JohnGalt]

So, from of the two jurors we've heard from, one admittedly ignored her legal obligations, and the other decided based on something that was both irrelevant, and a fallacy.

Yea. Note to self: if ever found in similar situation, request a trial by judge. Sheesh.

I also agree with you about the phone booth. Total red herring. Just because Jay thought there were booths at BestBuy and that Adnan called him from one doesn't mean much. Maybe Adnan borrowed a cell and Jay ASSUMED he called from a phone booth. Maybe that's why Jay "remembers" there being phone booths-- he made the assumption because he knew Adnan didn't have a phone, and his memory got mixed up.

I wouldn't call it a red herring though. It's just another example of Jay's story not adding up. Sure, maybe spending an entire episode on it was too much, but when you consider the fact that supposedly the crime was committed in the parking lot of the Best Buy, it's a pretty critical element. Because if there was no phone there, how could Adnan have contacted Jay in the first place? Phones are a tangible thing too so it seems to me that bit of knowledge could be recalled much more reliably than something like...'what were you doing on that day' or 'how was he/she acting'

And you add all that to a criminal justice system with professionals looking to quickly close cases, to festoon fledgling political careers and whatever Adnan's attorney was doing (I seem to recall she was later disbarred for reasons not tied to this case plus her courtroom demeanor was unbelievably grating to my ears).

I believe the journalist hypothesized at the beginning that the lawyer threw the case to get the appeals money. That's a pretty serious accusation, but could jive with her advising Adnan to not take the stand. Adnan did mention that one of the harder things about the trial was having to sit and listen to everything without getting a chance to defend himself.

[Billy Dat]

I think the "trip to Patapsco State Park" part of the Jay story is also a pretty critical unbelievable aspect. Sarah and her producer try and map that part of the trip to the cell phone timeline and it didn't make sense at all. Driving out to a park and watching the sunset seems like a pretty big detail for Jay to get wrong.

I feel like Adnon is the murderer and Jay played a bigger role than he is letting on, and Jay made the move to cut his deal first. Thus the "your pathetic" from Adnon when Jay was walking to the stand, as in, "We had a deal and you ratted me out".

[Matches]

I believe the journalist hypothesized at the beginning that the lawyer threw the case to get the appeals money. That's a pretty serious accusation, but could jive with her advising Adnan to not take the stand. Adnan did mention that one of the harder things about the trial was having to sit and listen to everything without getting a chance to defend himself.

If that was her plan it worked out poorly, given that he fired her after the trial (as a lot of defendants do when they lose). I can't even conceive of an attorney, particularly an experienced criminal defense attorney, doing something quite that awful but I suppose nothing's impossible.

I agree with the comment above, though, about her style being grating and ineffective. I actually know an attorney whose manner is very similar. I've always found that shrieking near-hysterical tone really off-putting, but it seems to work for my colleague and apparently for Gutierrez as well, this case notwithstanding. Were I a juror it would be a big turn-off for me, but I guess different people respond to different things.