Serial: The Case Of Adnan Syed

With so many different stories and countless pieces to the puzzle, it’s hard to find the truth beneath it all. As we listened to the case of Adnan Syed unfold, through the podcast Serial, by Sarah Koenig, we see just how hard it is to find the truth with so many changing stories and endless lies. Adnan Syed was convicted, and sentenced to life in prison, for the murder of Hae Min Lee. Adnan was Hae’s ex-boyfriend and they both attended Woodlawn High School in Baltimore, Maryland. Some believe he did it, while others believe he is innocent, and Sarah Koenig dove in to uncover and sort out as much about this case as possible. With everything I have learned about this case I believe that there was not enough evidence to convict Adnan Syed of murder.

Jay’s story is that he helped Adnan bury Haes body, thus Adnan killed Hae. He lays out their whole day to the cops, but his story consistently changes. He told the cops one story during the taped interviews and then drops parts of it during trial, every time he tells the story details shift. One person’s story should not be enough evidence that someone committed a murder, there needs to be hard physical proof behind it. The state uses Jays story as proof that Adnan must have killed Hae, but people lie under oath all the time and Jay could easily be framing Adnan. To convict someone of murder there should be physical evidence, not just a story, and the state couldn’t come up with the hard physical evidence that they needed so they laid out a convincing timeline connecting the cell phone records to Jay’s

The state used the cell phone records and tried to match them up with Jays story the best they could. However, there were only about four calls that actually matched up with Jay’s story. It all came down to the presentation of the information during trial. The prosecutor was able to set up and present a clear timeline, corroborated with the cell phone records and they tossed aside any information that didn’t help the outline that they set up for the jury. Disregarding information that didn’t help their case or help lead to putting someone away for the murder of Hae Min Lee is something that happened a lot throughout this case. This means that the jury wasn’t presented with all the right information, and Adnans attorney, Cristina Gutierrez, didn’t do a good job of attacking the states timeline and pointing out the faults in the cell phone records. There were many things that went wrong in Adnans case that shouldn’t have happened and the lack of evidence used in court was defiantly a big one. There were bottles and cans and rope found near Hae’s body that were never tested for DNA, as well as hair found in the trunk of Hae’s car, and most importantly underneath Hae’s fingernails. All of these could have shown something but they were never tested. This is just another thing wrong with the case of Adnan Syed. There was already a lack of hard physical evidence and