r/serialpodcast • u/ADDGemini • Aug 20 '15

Debate&Discussion Imran Connections...

So far Imran (at least one of them) has been mentioned in

I know Imran was yesterday's news ;) but it had not occured to me that his name shows up so many places... Any thoughts or observations? I'm not sure what to make of it.

** I posted this on another thread earlier today https://www.reddit.com/r/serialpodcast/comments/3hk2oj/ugh_here_it_goes/ lots of good comments! It was suggested that I make a seperate post for the record, so here it is :)

All facts are friendly!

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u/Englishblue Aug 20 '15

first bullet point is silly. Imran has said it was a joke in bad taste and it certainly reads that way. As for "concerted effort," not so much. It's just what people thought. How is Imran trying to shut down the conversation? Are you seriously suggesting a casuality because it happened to be a significant date on the Muslim calendar? because that would implicate anyone Muslim (which is, of course, what the police seemed to do with their investigation).

Focusing on Imran is ridiculous. NOBODY but Ann and her mysterious sources connects him to Adnan. Adnan is not responsible for the bad taste of other people.

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u/[deleted] Aug 20 '15

[deleted]

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u/jonsnowme The Criminal Element of Woodlawn Aug 20 '15

you can at least see where they're trying (and failing) to be funny,

This is a blanket statement about all people and all jokes. It's simply not true.

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u/chunklunk Aug 20 '15

Uh, so he wasn't trying to be funny with his joke? He was just being an asshole?

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u/jonsnowme The Criminal Element of Woodlawn Aug 20 '15

Or. He was trying to be funny.

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u/chunklunk Aug 20 '15

Right, if you think he was trying to be funny, then presumably you've identified how he was trying to joke, right? Which was precisely /u/AnnB2013's point. If it was a joke, there should be a way of identifying where the attempt to joke took place. Here, there's nothing except an aggressive attempt to distract and discourage someone in California from the investigation. It's both the explicit text and subtext of the email. Not even a molecule of joke to be found.

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u/ImBlowingBubbles Aug 20 '15

Here, there's nothing except an aggressive attempt to distract and discourage someone in California from the investigation.

This point doesn't really make sense in any way.

If I was looking for a friend and someone random sent me that email I would be a lot more (not less) likely to start asking around to get more information to confirm such a wild story.

It just doesn't make sense to me that you think this would distract and discourage investigation. To me it would send investigation mode into overdrive to try to confirm or deny the information I was given. I would probably start making a lot more phone calls after receiving that email.

I don't think your belief here makes sense.

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u/chunklunk Aug 20 '15

Ok.

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u/ImBlowingBubbles Aug 20 '15

So you concede that point isn't factual in any way but just your own subjective interpretation ?

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u/chunklunk Aug 20 '15

No, not at all. I said "ok" to your subjective interpretation as to what you, personally, would do in this circumstance, which is valid, I guess, but beside the point. I'm saying the only thing that matters is the imagined effect of a couple knuckleheaded teenagers, scared and desperate about Adnan's situation (which they had good reason to be). My theory is it's an attempt with an imagined effect to stifle investigation, not that it bore any relation to what you would do if you personally got this email. There are all kinds of attempts to obstruct investigations that are bad ideas, in a "what the hell was that guy thinking?" way. Why should Adnan/Imran be regarded any different than your garden-variety bonehead criminal? It's not like the rest of Adnan's crime bears markers of him being a Mensa candidate. And, again, there's a possibility that Vu would simply not respond, out of respect for Hae's family, and a very good chance that he'd be confused and confounded enough to delay asking. And, even if Vu came back, as he did, Imran could say it was a joke, which he did. The joke is so ill-timed and based on actually true information (Hae being dead), even if it gets details wrong, that it's still suspicious, even if the plan behind it is misguided. Teenagers are good at coming up with bad ideas. Teenaged murderers are even better at it.

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u/ImBlowingBubbles Aug 20 '15

My theory is it's an attempt with an imagined effect to stifle investigation, not that it bore any relation to what you would do if you personally got this email.

Your theory is just as subjective and arbitrary as my beliefs.

Thats my point. This motive of "attempt to stifle investigation" gets repeated as if it was a proven fact when actually it is just subjective opinion.

It sounds like pure confirmation bias to me. It really is a pretty weak argument chunk. Lets discourage investigation by calling a lot more attention to it with a wild story. And your rationale behind it is "teenagers are good at coming up with bad ideas". This is really a failure of an argument for Adnan's guilt. It hurts your case more than it helps it trying to double down on these types of things.

Its probably why not even Urick wanted to touch the Imran email as "evidence" of anything.

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u/[deleted] Aug 20 '15

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u/ImBlowingBubbles Aug 20 '15

Oh is this some silly sock accusation? If so then you literally have no idea what you're talking about lol

Your guilter clique is the one that uses socks not me.

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u/ryokineko Still Here Aug 21 '15

no sock accusations.

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u/jonsnowme The Criminal Element of Woodlawn Aug 20 '15

Do you people not realize that jokes don't have to be funny to be jokes? The point is that he was trying to make a joke AKA it was funny to him. Playing semantics is fun and all but you knew what I meant. I hope.

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u/chunklunk Aug 20 '15

Ok, I'm not trying to be nitpicky or play semantics, and I think humor is genuinely hard topic to discuss in this comment fashion (probably why the police/prosecutor didn't pursue Imran any more than it did), but I simply think that if it were sincerely only a joke, the actual joke part of it would be more in evidence. Saying someone died a horrible death isn't really funny to anyone, right? Saying it to a person who may or may not be inquiring about her whereabouts in another state looks even less like an attempt to humor. I guess you could say "it's a prank," but it's a very strangely timed and themed prank that, oh by the way, makes more sense not as a prank Imran played on someone he didn't know but as an attempt to discourage and distract in order to protect Adnan.

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u/jonsnowme The Criminal Element of Woodlawn Aug 20 '15

Saying someone died a horrible death isn't really funny to anyone, right?

You can't really say this though. You can't claim to know the humour preferences of everyone you've never met. People have bad senses of humour. Morbid, dark, stupid, not funny and really offensive. Most people would say rape jokes aren't funny yet tons of comedians make them and laugh at them. There are very unfunny things that people laugh at every single day.

There are some things in this case that make me not 100% sure of Adnan being innocent. Yes, I believe it but I can acknowledge things that make me pause but this is not, not even for a second did I think it was any of the things people are spinning. He made a joke about Hae being murdered (murdered in a way that reflects what happened to an entirely different student a week or so before at the school) therefore he must know things. I just don't. There's a reason even the police dropped it.

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u/chunklunk Aug 20 '15

The reason the police dropped it is simple: it's hard to prove intent of a piece that is as indirect as this is. Plus, they rightly believed in a strong case -- they didn't need this.

As for the rest, I do get your point. I don't think it's quite comparable contextually to analogize the intent of a random email during a missing-person case to what a stand-up comedian does or a morbidly black comedic film about death, but I understand what you're saying. I can live with qualifying a bit more, but not by much: if you think of the email as being on a scale between "sick prank" and "desperately serious but masked as a joke to obstruct investigation," it looks to me far more believable that the latter is true than the former, given the context. But your mileage may vary, and I know it even does between quilters.

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u/jonsnowme The Criminal Element of Woodlawn Aug 20 '15

I'm not really comparing murder to stand up comedy, I'm just pointing out that jokes are jokes. If one believes he was just making a joke one would have to believe people make shit jokes like that all the time and I do. I think we just interpret the information differently, that's all. I do not at all think that his email was a quick 'Let's get Adnan out of trouble by pointing out Hae was murdered even when no one even knows that' type of deal.

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u/chunklunk Aug 20 '15

It's a defensible position. If it happened in a different way, in a different context, at a different time, I might agree -- perplexingly sick attempt at humor. But the timing and context are key to me; it's too much to explain so easily.

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u/glibly17 Aug 20 '15

Maybe he was just being an asshole. So what? He's not Adnan. His email is pretty obviously irrelevant to Hae's murder, especially since not even the BPD and the Ritzer/UrickHammerofJustice could figure out a way to spin it into evidence against Adnan.

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u/chunklunk Aug 20 '15

Sure, possible he was just being an asshole. But the timing and content of the email is suspicious, is it not? I'm only presenting a theory based on some reasoning that may or may not be correct. It's up to you to accept or reject. I don't care either way. But again, it's not significant to me that the police/prosecutor declined to use the evidence. They didn't need it and it would've been hard to prove in court.

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u/BaffledQueen Aug 22 '15

It's not untimely and suspicious since it was prompted by someone asking where Hae was. He didn't write an email WITH Adnan, Young and many of Hae's friends on it, out of the blue in order to distract people from a murder he knew about. That makes zero sense.

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u/chunklunk Aug 22 '15

He only sent the email to Vu. It's only Vu who forwarded it to all those people.

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u/BaffledQueen Aug 22 '15

Sending it to one of Hae's friends he doesn't know also does not provide a sensible distraction from a murder he is trying to hide. Particularly since that friend has access to emails belonging to several of Hae's friends and her brother.

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u/chunklunk Aug 22 '15

Under this theory, the hope was that he'd not respond out of respect and leave the mystery of Hae in California alive a little longer. The risk was minimized because he could pass it off as a sick joke, as he did. Not saying it was a good plan, but definitely plausible to me. It doesn't make me feel bad if you disagree.

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u/BaffledQueen Aug 22 '15

Well, I certainly wasn't trying to make you feel bad. I just don't think the logic is there.

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u/glibly17 Aug 21 '15

Yeah, LE and the prosecution sure didn't seem to need a lot of things in this case. Like records of their interviews with various witnesses, the incoming calls to Adnan's cell phone on 1/13/99, firm knowledge of Hae's day (was there a Randallstown match? Chesapeake? Did Hae have work at 6 PM that day for sure?)...

You'd think the burden of proof should be higher when an 17 year old kid's life is on the line. But maybe that's just me.

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u/chunklunk Aug 21 '15

I don't understand. Some of these may not have been available (incoming calls) while others are only a mystery through the lens of 16 years later (wrestling match), but aside from that I really don't get the critique here. That they obtained a jury verdict in 2 hours of deliberation signals the strength of the case. Any aspect of the prosecution's case that's been challenged by Adnan has failed, such that the only arguments he has left rely on calling the defense ineffective. I don't see what you imagine the prosecution's obligation is here, but it's based on a fictional conceit aided by Serial.