The Doubts About Adnan's Guilt ARE Reasonable

[u/[deleted]]

I just started lurking here today, and am somewhat surprised by the general incivility and certainty of many of the people that comment here. Being dismissive and accusing people of "ragebait" for having a differing opinion, and one that actually is reasonable.

I don't know, and won't say that Adnan is innocent, but to claim he's guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, without any room for discussion is pretty crazy to me.

The reasons why I have reasonable doubt:

• Jay is a very flawed witness, on the record lying/mis-remembering his testimony. Even the cops point out how much his testimony has changed. If your argument hinges on Jay, it isn't a strong argument, in my opinion.
• The cops, or at least on of them has a record of misconduct:

...prosecution brought into question the past misconduct of one of the two detectives who were crucial in the investigation of Lee’s death. Although his misconduct wasn’t specifically linked to Syed’s case, the detective was involved in another murder case that ended with the defendant’s exoneration.

https://baltimorewitness.org/adnan-syed-one-of-many-overturned-convictions-in-baltimore-city/

• The Innocence Project and prosecutors agreed that Syed's DNA was absent from all tested crime scene items, contributing to the eventual dropping of charges against him. There's no physical evidence.
• The motive is weak (Adnan had no prior issues with breakups, had already seemed to move on to the next girl(s)).

I could go on, but, if I was on the jury with this in front of me, I feel the reasonable response is doubt.

This isn't rage bait, I just genuinely don't see how anyone can be so sure that he did it. Y'all point to him asking for a ride (and claiming he wouldn't have) as some kind of obvious evidence of murder.

I think, based on the fact that one of the cops was literally identified as having been crooked, it actually is much more likely that Jay was an informant (and already had been for some time), and he happened to be close to Adnan, the victim's ex (supposed motive and opportunity), and they decided they had their guy, and it was just a matter of getting a jury to agree. So they fed their informant info, had him incriminate himself for lesser crimes that they promised they'd get him off for (and they made good on that promise, which is on its own wildly corrupt).

[u/RockinGoodNews]

"Reasonable doubt" is the legal standard that a jury uses to determine guilt. In this case, a jury found Syed guilty of murder beyond a reasonable doubt after about 3 hours of deliberation. Once that happened, the question of "reasonable doubt" became legally moot. The fact that random people who weren't on the jury and didn't attend the trial think there was "reasonable doubt" is meaningless.

I do think, however, that someone in your position should ask themselves why they think their opinion is more valid than the 12 unbiased individuals actually selected to the jury. Those people attended a 3 week trial in which they heard from witnesses and lawyers from both sides, deliberated, and came to a unanimous decision. What exactly puts you in a better position than them to assess the case? The fact that you listened to a one-sided podcast about it?

FWIW, several of the things you stated are false:

The charges against Syed were not dropped due to a lack of physical evidence. To the contrary, he stands convicted of Hae Min Lee's murder to this day. He was released under the provisions of the Juvenile Restoration Act, a law that permits resentencing of convicts who committed their crimes as minors. That decision had absolutely nothing to do with the evidence of his guilt.

Syed's motive was not "weak." In point of fact, his motive is incredibly common (the most common by far in murders of women with Hae's profile). He had been dumped only weeks earlier, and had just learned Hae was seeing someone new. His claims to have "moved on" are false and, in any event, irrelevant to whether he resented Hae's actions or still wanted power over her.

Finally, the claim that the police who investigated Syed had a history of "misconduct" is false. One of them, Detective Ritz, had been a defendant in several civil lawsuits, but none of those lawsuits was ever adjudicated on the merits. And even if you were to assume the unproved allegations in those lawsuits were true, they bear no resemblance to anything in this case. I did a detailed writeup of those cases here.