Adnan Syed Is Guilty

Christina McBarron Ms. McManus English II Honors 5 April 2023 The Unprofessional Case of Adnan Syed Adnan Syed was only seventeen years old when the police visited his home in the middle of the night and violently shook him awake and removed him from his own bed. With officers haranguing him saying, “We know what you did”, the defenseless teenager was bewildered. Adnan never saw this coming, as he had no idea what he was being arrested for. He was later tried and found guilty of the first-degree murder of Hae Min Lee.

Adnan had challenged Sarah Koenig by”[telling] her to test the state's timeline of the murder by driving from Woodlawn High School to best buy in 21 minutes. It can’t be done he said. So Sarah and Dana take up the challenge, and raise him one: They try to recreate the entire route that Jay said him and Adnan took on January 13th, 1999”(Route Talk, Sarah Koenig). Adnan was convicted with a route that Jay mapped out to the police men involved in his case. Sarah Koenig was challenged due to the delay at school and traffic than any other time of day because it was when his peers and unknown worker in the area were dismissed.

In episode 7, Sarah admits to Deirdre Enright, who works at the University Of Virginia School Of Law and runs their Innocence Project clinic, that there isn’t any “gross negligence or malfeasance or something on the part of the detectives or the State Attorney’s office, everyone seems to be doing their job, responsibly.” The people working on the case were doing their jobs correctly, and Adnan was convicted, not because the case was built for his conviction, but because the evidence and other information collected pointed to Adnan’s guilt. And Jim Trainum, the detective hired by the Serial staff, tells Sarah that “the detectives in this case were cautious and methodical. They weren’t rushing to grab suspects or to dismiss them either. The evidence collection was well documented,” and that the case is “better than average” (Ep. 8, Jim).

Adnan syed's original conviction in 2000 was based on cell phone records which purported to place

Looking at another person’s perspective of the case, Katie Clifford, in her view, “In our files, we have a lot of things, evidence they collected that got sent off and we don’t have reports for everything and we are curious about the results that we don’t have and whether or not those exist and just why they’re not in the files that we have.” Katie Clifford is one of Deirdre Enright’s students, Adnan’s former lawyer. Moreover, since we are considering possible suspects we should talk about how Adnan became the star suspect of this

Adnan Syed is speciously guilty of first degree murder of Hae Min Lee. Syed claims to have no recollection of the events that occurred on January 13, 1999 which, in some cases could be a way to further prove one’s innocence, but it also means Syed has no solid alibi to contradict Jay Wilds narrative of what exactly happened that day. If a person does not have an alibi verified with witnesses to counteract another person’s story claiming you murdered another person on a particular day, they are probably guilty of committing that crime. However, Syed was asked to account for a day that happened 6 weeks prior to questioning, it’s not irregular that he cannot remember specific details especially if it was just a regular old day for him. To start

Adnan Syed couldn’t have killed his former high school girlfriend, Hae Lee, 20 years ago: “I know it’s physically impossible for people to be in two places at one time.” Syed, the subject of Sarah Koenig’s hit podcast “Serial” and Amy Berg’s HBO docuseries “The Case Against Adnan Syed,” was convicted of killing Lee, his ex-girlfriend, in 1999. But McClain, who was never called to testify during the first trial, said she had a 20-minute conversation with Syed in their high school’s library at the same time prosecutors say Lee was murdered”. Another witness who testified to seeing Adnan was Rabia, She claims to have gone into the library and saw Adnan printing papers, they even managed to chat for a bit, As Koenig comments, “And she told me, that

The prosecution case against Adnan Syed was mainly based on the testimony of Jay wilds, who said he helped bury Hae Min Lee's body. Jay's testimony was supported by the cell phone records that placed Adnan on the site on the Day Hae Min Lee disappeared. According to the prosecution, the evidence sayed that Adnan had a motive to Kill Hae, because he was jealous and possessive of her. However, there are inconsistinces in Jay’s testimony, which has changed multiple times over the years. Some people also claimed that He was pressured into providing false testimony by the police.

In Episode 5, the podcast highlights how the cell phone records, presented as evidence by the prosecution, were subject to different interpretations. The defense argues that the cell phone tower locations do not definitively prove Adnan's presence at the crime scene. This gives evidence for the innocence of Adnan, but because it was not highly considered or used during the trial Adnan was still proven guilty. Additionally, DNA testing conducted on the crime scene failed to match Adnan's DNA, as revealed in Episode 9, weakening the prosecution's assertion of his direct involvement. The absence of concrete physical evidence connecting Adnan to the murder raises doubts about the validity of his conviction and the severity of his

The truth is that Adnan Syed did not kill her because the state's case against Adnan had many holes in it. The police did not consider didn’t consider other suspects. And Adnan had an alibi for that day. All this evidence proves that Adnan

Adnan Syed is innocent. He did not murder Hae Min Lee. The reasons Adnan was wrongly convicted is: Adnan has consistently maintained innocence, Jay’s story is in consistent, the call tracking isn’t reliable, the Asia affidavit proves otherwise, post mortem results of Hae’s body debunked the states story, and people who knew Adnan and Hae said the break up wasn’t messy. In summary, Adnan is innocent. Adnan had been in captivity for almost 15 years.

Body paragraph 1 will explain the cell records ( ep.4), body paragraph 2 will explain the Nisha call (ep.6), body paragraph 3 will explain Jay corroboration (ep.5), and the rest of the evidence will provide more on Adnan Syed being guilty. In addition the first piece of evidence will provide a witness who mentions perfectly Adnan.

The Prosecution's case was more robust than Adnan with the Prosecution using a combination of witness testimonies and cell phone records, painting Adnan as guilty. In contrast, the defense struggled to provide coherent and compelling evidence. Adnan's defense focused more on moving the blame to someone else, or they tried to discredit Jay's testimony. The only attempt to prove Adnan was innocent was by Asia McClain," Asia plus boyfriend saw him in library 2:15 to 3:15" (Serial 1.18). This evidence would have shown Adnan's innocence.

Her name's Asia McClain. He's like, right after I got arrested, she wrote me a couple of letters. And she said she also went to see my family. And she said she specifically remembers me being at the library, at the public library, right after school. " (pg. 21)

One of the biggest reigning issues in the Adnan Syed case is how most of the state storyline was confirmed by the accounts of Jay Wilds, who took a plea bargain in order to receive reduced charges for his alleged participation in the crime. When overlooking Wilds’ accounts two things can be noticed, Wilds’ recollections of what happened on January 13th, 1999 always differ depending on whom he told, and when he told them. As well, Wilds’ accounts also seem to follow exactly what the state investigation wanted in order for their story to make sense. Adnan was sentenced to life in prison on June 6th, 2000, whereas Hae’s body was found on February 9th, 1999 (Piccotti). Because of the inconsistency in evidence and inability to form a coherent timeline, the investigation was a long one.