Adnan Syed: Guilty Or Evidence Revealed?

When a murder occurs, it usually is not clear exactly who did it. The murderer may be a normal person, and nobody has any idea they’re guilty. Or maybe they had committed crimes before. No matter who they are, it never is easy to find the criminal. But eventually, evidence will point to somebody, and then the person who did it is forced to confess. But this is not always the case. What if the person accused believes more than anything that they are innocent? What if they actually are? On January 13, 1999, in Baltimore, Maryland, an 18 year old girl named Hae Min Lee went missing. It was not until February 9th, though, that police discovered what happened. Hae had been murdered by strangulation at Best Buy at 2:36pm and buried in Leakin Park.

To illustrate, no physical evidence was used to prove Adnan’s guilt. Some may argue that the story Jay told was good evidence confirmed by Adnan’s cell phone records, but the truth is that the records barely line up at all. Furthermore, the story that Jay tells shifts each time he tells is, so it is impossible to know if he is telling the truth. Those who believe Adnan is guilty think the consistencies in his story are enough to prove he is telling the truth. At trial, though, Jay does admit to lying about his story when he tells it, and that does make him an unreliable main witness. Finally, the time that the State has said Hae was killed would not work, since Hae, Adnan, and Jay were all at different locations at that time. By way of contrast, there are still reasons and a motive that make it seem like Adnan did it, even if it was not at 2:36. But even so, the State’s case would be nonexistent if they did not have a solid timeline. Based on all of this, it is apparent that Adnan is

In order to arrest someone, there has to be some sort of proof, but the only thing that the State based its case off was the words of one teenage boy, Jay Wilds. “As for physical evidence, there was none—nothing… there was nothing linking him to the crime-- no DNA, no fibers, no hairs, no matching soil from the bottom of his boots.” (Koenig 1) There was a beer bottle and a rope within a close perimeter of Hae’s burial site. But these two objects were never tested for DNA to be useful at proving or disproving Jay’s story. Instead, the entire case rests on the shoulders of one person. Investigators should never believe someone without more proof to support their words, but of course, there was none. Physical evidence is the only believable part of a case, because it cannot be disproven and it will not lie. Without it, Adnan could not be brought to his knees. Jay Wilds was the only thing that the State had against Adnan, and that clearly was not