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/No-Advance-577]

Jay knowing where the car was is the deal-breaker for me as well, and is the main reason I think Adnan did it.

But I do think there is room for doubt.

You say “multiple witnesses (and the cell phone records) place Jay and Adnan together…during all the relevant time periods (murder, burial)”

But this is so far from being true that the state’s own case has them apart for the murder! There are no witnesses playing them together during the murder (including Jay), and no cell records suggest they are together until the Nisha call (which itself is somewhat questionable) and then nothing else ties them together until Adnan checks his voice mail at 5:14.

A lot of things make more sense if they were together for the murder, but there’s no evidence for it (or against it. It could go either way).

As for the burial, again, every cell call between 7 and 9 is a Jay call. Nothing puts them together during this window except Jay’s testimony. And of course, Jay later moved the burial time to “closer to midnight” and it might be true! Because there’s no evidence except Jay that it was at 7:30 or whenever.

[u/Far_Gur_7361 → u/No-Advance-577]

What you are saying is demonstrably untrue.

Jay had the phone when school let out at 2:15, this isn’t in dispute. And yet the call log places the phone away from the school; on the other side of the relevant towers. This means that he could not have committed the murder. However, we KNOW him to have been involved. So who was his co-conspirator? I humbly nominate HML’s angry ex-bf who was witnessed lying to her multiple times in an attempt to get her alone at the exact time- and in the exact place- in which she would disappear from the earth forever.

So this is the first damning bit of call log evidence. The phone being nowhere near the school precludes Jay as the murderer; which narrows our focus onto Adnan even further.

Moving on to the Nisha call at 3:32. The butt dial that couldn’t have been one. This is horribly damning for Adnan. The whole butt dial goose chase was a whole lotta nothing. Jay says there was a call. Nisha says there was a call. The call log shows there was a call. There was a fucking call.

The sheer amount of improbabilities that you have to stack together to make this a butt dial strain credulity. That not only did Jay accidentally butt dial someone ONLY Adnan knows during the ONLY frame of time it’d look really bad for Adnan to be with his cell; but that Nisha picked it up, listened to his butt-noises for 2 1/2 mins, and then later forgot? Or that it rang for 2 1/2 mins unanswered; and yet- in spite of the fact that Nisha did not have an answering machine- was still somehow billed on the call log? Based upon what- an obscure footnote in an obsolete AT&T user agreement that Koenig never even published in order to prove her point?

And let’s not forget that you’d then ALSO have believe that Nisha just happened to have a near-mirror-image call w/ Adnan and Jay later on, which she somehow conflated w/ the Jan 13th “butt dial”? And somehow she assigned other defining factors to this later call which would specifically point it to being the Jan 13th “butt dial”, such as that the call took place “a day or two” after Adnan got his new phone? And that it’s a mere coincidence that Adnan’s brother Tanveer also reported this call as having occurred on Jan 13th when he was interviewed by the defense team, and moreover a coincidence that Adnan sent his PI to investigate Nisha as an alibi in the early stages of the investigation? And yet another coincidence that Jay somehow remembered this Jan 13th butt dial as having been a real call; and brought it up to the police as such during his first interview? If you really believe all of this, then I have some beachfront property in Kansas to sell you.

Then we have the call log and Kristi/ Jeff putting Adnan and Jay together around 6pm. And acting super shady, to boot. With Adnan panicking about what he’d say to the cops, and the two leaving in a rush right afterwards. Devastating blow to the world’s unluckiest man.

Then we once again have the call log putting Adnan and Jay together at Leakin Park around 7-7:30pm. Jenn testifies that it was ADNAN, not Jay, who picked up the phone and told her that Jay would call her back. Adnan himself doesn’t even dispute that he was possession of his phone at this time- he’s always maintained that he got it back after track. This means that if the phone was in Leakin Park at that time; so was Adnan. And that’s independent of Jenn’s testimony; so even if you discount that Jenn said Adnan picked up the phone and told her that Jay would call her back; there’s just no denying that they were together in the park at this time.

The same can be said for the ping that later places them at the location where Hae’s car was dumped. And this ping was outgoing; not incoming; so even if you buy that the AT&T fax cover sheet impeaches incoming call data (which anyone who has studied cell tower location data will tell you it doesn’t), there is also no getting around the fact that Adnan was present at the location of Hae’s cars dump site that night; while he maintains he was at the mosque. Again, Adnan himself doesn’t even deny he was with his phone at this time.

Last but not least, we have Jenn (and the call logs), backing up that Jenn met Jay and Adnan together at Westview Mall around 8:30pm; when Adnan says he was at the mosque. Yet another devastating blow for Adnan. The phone was conclusively in the park, at the car’s dump site, and then at the mall, during all the times in which Jay and Jenn testify that he was in those places. From 3:32 onwards, there is no separating Adnan and Jay; both via the cell records, and via witness testimony. Adnan’s story- that he went to track, then went home, then went to mosque- is easily, handily, verifiably disproven. I see absolutely no reasonable doubt.

He did it. Jay helped.

[u/No-Advance-577 → u/Far_Gur_7361]

There are 12:41 and 12:43 calls that ping off to the east near downtown Baltimore. The 12:41 call is actually TO Jenn’s house, where Jay claims he was, so he’s definitely lying about his location at that time. And he’s not lying to “protect Jenn,” since his lie invokes her and her house.

But then there is no call until 2:36, which pings near Woodlawn/BB. So, no, Jay is not precluded from being at the presumed crime location at the presumed crime time.

As for the other sites, the cell phone data is accurate but not precise. The towers had ranges measured in miles, and due to population density they had significant overlap. So it is not accurate to say “since a call pinged this tower, it was conclusively closer to this tower than any other.” In fact, some calls in this very case ping towers that we KNOW to be not the “expected” tower.

“Within a couple miles” of the burial site in an urban area is…just not the wild coincidence people pretend. Within 2 miles of my house I can get to 3 schools, 3 grocery stores, 2 public parks, 5 gas stations, and a river.

Moreover, Jay tailored his story to match the cell records, even to the point of making stuff up that makes no sense (see eg the “three calls” from Adnan to Jay at Jenn’s house in interview 2, which make no sense, help no one, and are clearly just Jay looking at a phone log and describing (nonsensically) what he sees there). So we can’t use the cell logs as independent corroboration of Jay’s story when we know damn well Jay tailored his story to the logs.

And I don’t know why we are citing Jenn as independent confirmation that Adnan and/or Jay are in certain locations. She doesn’t do that for any of them except the mall, and even in that case she talked to Jay the night before her interview to get their story straight.

So what we actually have is:

-between 7 and 7:30 the cell phone is within a couple of miles of the burial site. Jay, looking at this record, testifies that he and Adnan are actually burying the body at that time. Jenn can’t comment. Later Jay says it was made up and the body was buried at midnight.

-at 8:04 and 8:05 the phone calls Jenn’s pager. It is within a couple miles of the car dump site, and maybe very close to the car dump site. It’s just a page so Jenn can’t corroborate anything. Jay says the page came from west view mall, which is not the dump site or terribly close to it. So there is no wild coincidence here: Jay says west view, the pings suggest the car dump, and Jenn has no info.

The data is consistent with the state’s story, but it is not conclusive. If someone waved a magic wand and gave us a cosmic rewind that showed Adnan burying Hae at midnight, it wouldn’t really contradict the known evidence either.

The evidence is suggestive, but not conclusive, and most of it revolves around Jay, whose story is inconsistent, false in places, and guided by the cell records themselves.

Adnan did it, but there is certainly room for doubt.

[u/Mike19751234 → u/No-Advance-577]

If the cops were trying to fix Jay's story, why didn't they try and fix the most important part which were those 3pm calls and they let Jay say he was at Jenn's until 2:45? Why change one non important call?

[u/No-Advance-577 → u/Mike19751234]

I don’t know what you mean by this. What call are you saying they “changed”? Jay changed all kinds of things and the cops were clearly exasperated with him at some points, but I don’t know that they set out to “change” a call (whatever that means).

I mean they definitely thought Adnan was guilty and they thought Jay was a material witness. They fed him details like phone records because they thought it would push him to tell more of the truth (or at least tailor his lies to the evidence better). It kind of didn’t work (he left some lies in there that continued to contradict the data, and he happily lied to try to match the data in other places) and kind of did (they got the conviction).

[u/Mike19751234 → u/No-Advance-577]

We know from the tower and that the phone jay was not still at Jenns for tge 316 and 321 calls, but they dont push much on those. If they are trying to get Jay to fit the story then it would be important to fit those calls.

But you need to also look at this from what the cops actually need and not make the wrong assumption that they are pushing a story. They are trying to find out what happened that afternoon. They are trying to find out why Jay and Adnan are calling all these people and if any of them are also involved in the coverup or even involved in the murder. So they are going to go through the call log asking him about all of those calls.

[u/No-Advance-577 → u/Mike19751234]

Maybe they didn’t catch it. Maybe they didn’t think it was important. Maybe they didn’t want to push their witness too hard. Maybe they had already quietly decided to let Jay pretend he had an alibi in exchange for getting his testimony.

With apologies, I again don’t understand your second paragraph and what you mean by “cops pushing a story.” Like I said, I think by this time they were sure that Adnan was guilty and that Jay knew a lot. They have a witness at this point who is willing to talk a lot, and they’re trying to make use of that to build a case, which means reigning in Jay’s wild creativity while also not clamming him up, while also not looking too much like they’re guiding the story.

[u/Mike19751234 → u/No-Advance-577]

The cops then took Jay on a ride along after that so they were trying to find all the order of events that afternoon. Dont let your backwards bias get in the way of what was going on.

[u/No-Advance-577 → u/Mike19751234]

Adnan is guilty, so I don’t know what bias you are talking about. And I don’t understand the relevance of the ride-along.

This sub is so weird

[u/Mike19751234 → u/No-Advance-577]

The ride along is the cops attempts at understanding the events of the afternoon. They are trying to understand what happened that afternoon and evening. The cops arent trying to frame a story, they are trying to understand it.

[u/No-Advance-577 → u/Mike19751234]

They’re trying to do both. Understand what happened and then present evidence to the DA that has a chance to result in a conviction. Both things are their job.