Is Adnan Syed A Murderer?

Is Adnan Syed a murderer? Or is he innocent? A courtroom where the person's whole fate is balanced on a faulty eyewitness account and questionable police interrogation tactics. This was the scene for Adnan Syed, a former student at Woodlawn High School, and the ex-boyfriend of the victim, Hae Min Lee. On February 25, 2000, Adnan Syed was sentenced to life for the murder of Hae Min Lee. However, upon the release of the podcast “Serial” Adnan’s case gained a lot of popularity, Sarah Koeing, one of the producers of Serial stated multiple times that the trials heavily relied on witness testimonies and she further questioned the reliability of the testimonies from the people associated with the case. Adnan’s friend Jay was one of the major alibi witnesses. However, throughout multiple

According to Wikipedia, in the law witness testimony is a form of evidence in which a witness makes a “solemn declaration to establish or prove a fact”. Testimony can be written or oral and is usually made by oath or affirmation under penalty of perjury. Often, it can be the strongest evidence, making up for many shortcomings in a case, even though it could also be “unreliable” (Garrett). The use of witness testimonies has evolved over the past 250 years. The concept of introducing a witness to give opinions on the facts of other witnesses was allowed by Lord Mansfield in the case Folkes v. Chadd in 1782 (Milroy). However, we as a country have made incredible failures of eyewitness testimonies, including misidentification, that led to innocent people having to live out their lives in solitude behind bars. Recently though, with the rise of science and technology, eyewitness testimonies have become less and less reliable. As of now, almost 350 people, have been released because their DNA was discovered to be incompatible with the evidence collected from the crime scene