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Tags "Serial" podcast , "Undisclosed" podcast , adnan syed , Maryland cases , murder cases

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Old 11th March 2019, 07:16 PM   #281
angrysoba
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Ampulla, thank you for posting the police reports, by the way.
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Old 25th November 2019, 10:44 AM   #282
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New trial denied by US Supreme Court.

Quote:
The justices did not comment in leaving in place a 4-3 ruling by Maryland’s highest court that denied a new trial to Adnan Syed, who was convicted of strangling a high school classmate he had once dated.
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Old 25th November 2019, 02:54 PM   #283
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Strange that he was granted a new trial and then they're like, actually nm. I wonder how common a new trial request is granted and then immediately denied and if the publicity around this case played into that.
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Old 14th September 2022, 03:39 PM   #284
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Prosecution requests Syed’s conviction be vacated and that he be released pending a new trial.

Yes, the prosecution.

https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/...ial-adnan-syed


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Old 14th September 2022, 03:50 PM   #285
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Translation:

I won in court but lost in the court of public opinion. Can I please have a do-over? I promise to fail to secure a conviction this time!
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Old 14th September 2022, 04:57 PM   #286
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Originally Posted by Matthew Best View Post
Prosecution requests Syed’s conviction be vacated and that he be released pending a new trial.

Yes, the prosecution.

https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/...ial-adnan-syed


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Interesting...

Quote:
A statement from Mosby’s office read: “To be clear, the state is not asserting, at this time, that Mr Syed is innocent. While the investigation remains ongoing, when considering the totality of the circumstances, the state lacks confidence in the integrity of the conviction and requests that Mr Syed be afforded a new trial.”

Critical to securing Syed’s potential retrial was the passing of the Juvenile Restoration Act of 2021, “which allows persons convicted of crimes as juveniles to request a modification of sentence after they have served at least 20 years in prison.”

Syed was charged as an adult, despite being a teenager at the time of Lee’s death. He is currently serving his 20th year in prison since he was arrested.
The case will be retried?

To be honest, I cannot really see many options beyond Adnan Syed's guilt unless it is his friend Jay who was guilty. The other possibilities stretch credulity, in my humble opinion.
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Old 14th September 2022, 05:06 PM   #287
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Two alternative suspects

"Neither prosecutors nor defense attorneys will reveal the suspects' identities because the investigation is ongoing, according to the motion. One of the suspects had threatened Lee, saying "he would make her (Ms. Lee) disappear. He would kill her," according to the filing." NPR

Nothing in this comment or link should be taken as evidence that I have an opinion on Mr. Syed's innocence or guilt.
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Old 14th September 2022, 05:09 PM   #288
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Quote:
The suspects were known persons at the time of the original investigation “and were not properly ruled out nor disclosed to the defense,” according to Mosby’s statement.

The state is not disclosing the names of the suspects but said that, according to the trial file, one of them said, “He would make her [Ms. Lee] disappear. He would kill her.”

The investigation also revealed that one suspect was convicted of attacking a woman in her vehicle, according to the statement. The second suspect was convicted of engaging in serial rape and sexual assault, the statement said.

Some of the information was available at the time of the trial, the statement said, and some came to light later. It is not clear when these assaults took place.

Lee’s car was located “directly behind the house of one of the suspect’s family members,” the statement said.
Link

Is this pointing where I think it is pointing?
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Old 14th September 2022, 05:14 PM   #289
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Originally Posted by angrysoba View Post
Link

Is this pointing where I think it is pointing?
Dunno. I listened to Serial when it first dropped (I was in the auditorium where Ira Glass announced the podcast for the first time). But I don't remember enough of it now to connect the dots you're laying out.

Where do you think it's pointing?
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Old 14th September 2022, 06:05 PM   #290
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Originally Posted by theprestige View Post
Dunno. I listened to Serial when it first dropped (I was in the auditorium where Ira Glass announced the podcast for the first time). But I don't remember enough of it now to connect the dots you're laying out.

Where do you think it's pointing?
I listened to it and I remember that almost all of the supposed flaws in the case turned out to be pretty unremarkable in the end.

One of the big things that came up though was Adnan’s friend Jay said he helped dispose of the body with Adnan and he was, iirc, given a plea deal to help them. Jay took the police to the victim’s car, and basically seemed very credible. But if I remember rightly he hated the victim as well and may have said those words about wanting her dead (I don’t remember exactly). So, I think it is pointing at Jay.
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Old 14th September 2022, 06:31 PM   #291
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Originally Posted by angrysoba View Post
I listened to it and I remember that almost all of the supposed flaws in the case turned out to be pretty unremarkable in the end.

One of the big things that came up though was Adnan’s friend Jay said he helped dispose of the body with Adnan and he was, iirc, given a plea deal to help them. Jay took the police to the victim’s car, and basically seemed very credible. But if I remember rightly he hated the victim as well and may have said those words about wanting her dead (I don’t remember exactly). So, I think it is pointing at Jay.
Hmmm…. I could be wrong. There are two names that seem to be coming up in Twitter comments on this. Some people are asking if it is Jay, and others think no, it is likely Alonzo Sellars and Don. I don’t know who they are. But the claim seems to be that the police fed Jay the information they had, and he agreed to protest himself from prosecution.

I honestly have no clue now.
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Old 14th September 2022, 06:33 PM   #292
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Over the years I've come to the conclusion that the case, the trial, and the podcast were all ********.
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Old 14th September 2022, 07:22 PM   #293
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Originally Posted by angrysoba View Post
Interesting...



The case will be retried?

To be honest, I cannot really see many options beyond Adnan Syed's guilt unless it is his friend Jay who was guilty. The other possibilities stretch credulity, in my humble opinion.
Why do you have to have an alternate killer? As I said much earlier in this thread, I think there reasonable doubt about Adnan’s guilt, as now does the prosecution. His refusal to plead guilty and get released adds to the belief he is not guilty.
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Old 14th September 2022, 07:27 PM   #294
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Originally Posted by theprestige View Post
Over the years I've come to the conclusion that the case, the trial, and the podcast were all ********.
What amused me about the podcast is that it was obvious that the podcaster had a crush on the teenaged Adnan, and actually was pretty disappointed when she met the middle-aged man.
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Old 14th September 2022, 09:35 PM   #295
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Originally Posted by lionking View Post
Why do you have to have an alternate killer?
Logically there must be. It is not on Adnan Syed to track down the alternative killer, of course, but there must be one given that she was murdered.

It looks as though the prosecutors themselves are saying that there are two other suspects and that the police did not do a good enough job of ruling them out.

I guess we will have to see how it pans out.

Originally Posted by lionking View Post
As I said much earlier in this thread, I think there reasonable doubt about Adnan’s guilt, as now does the prosecution. His refusal to plead guilty and get released adds to the belief he is not guilty.
Possibly, but I never got that from the podcast. For me, it seemed as though they followed a number of leads that they hoped would be promising, and came up with nothing.

1. Adnan says it would have been impossible to make the car journey, so they tried it and were able to do it.
2. Someone says she thought that she saw Adnan on the day he supposedly committed the murder (but they began cautioning about the fallability of memory and it sounded like she herself may have got the day wrong).
3. They spoke to an advocacy group about the police interrogations, presumably expecting them to say that the investigation was flawed, but the advocacy group's rep said it was actually quite good.

Some of the other stuff I remember hearing at the time just sounded like throwing stuff against the wall and hoping something stuck, like listening to people claiming LHO was innocent because of a list of irrelavant details about his Italian rifle or Jack Ruby's behaviour etc...

But, I could be wrong. It's happened before.
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Old 14th September 2022, 09:39 PM   #296
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Apparently one of the new suspects is someone who failed a polygraph. Though apparently he passed it the second time they gave him one.

I mean, honestly, a polygraph?
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Old 14th September 2022, 10:15 PM   #297
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Well, for what it is worth, the full motion is here. It gives something of a recap of the case and why the conviction first happened. Then it goes into a few reasons why the prosecution may have been unsound or at least not followed procedures correctly including something called Brady violations which are apparently withholding evidence that may be beneficial to the defendant.

In summary, there seem to have been some issues with them not asking Asia McClain to testify as I believe she is said to have had an alibi for Adnan Syed (IIRC, this seems to be disputed), and the cellphone records apparently are not good enough to show Adnan at Leakin Park where the body was found.

I believe the person who found the body is now a suspect (from elsewhere and not in the motion). I think it may have been him who was given a polygraph test. Anyway the polygraph test is given as a reason for not having properly eliminated him as a suspect.

"One of the suspects" (not sure which or if each claim about the suspect refers to the same one) has a history of violence and sexually assaulting women.

It turns out that one of the police detectives was guilty of misconduct in another unrelated case.

Okay, here is my completely humble opinion: I still think Adnan did it and the original conviction was correct.
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Old 14th September 2022, 10:21 PM   #298
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One of the unusual things here is it seems that DNA was restested a few months ago with the expectation that this might exonerate Adnan. But it came up inconclusive.
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Old 15th September 2022, 03:03 AM   #299
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Originally Posted by theprestige View Post
Translation:

I won in court but lost in the court of public opinion. Can I please have a do-over? I promise to fail to secure a conviction this time!
It does seem an extremely bizarre course of action from the prosecution. If they think he's innocent then they should be looking to drop the charges. If they think he should face trial to be prosecuted and convicted, they shouldn't be looking for a new trial when he's already so.....

It's been a while but from what I remember of this case, to believe Adnan is innocent you have to more or less believe Jay is innocent, and to believe that you have to be crazy.

But Jay is a terrible witness and I'm sure 20 years hasn't helped that. A new trial is probably as good as an acquittal.
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Old 15th September 2022, 08:30 AM   #300
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Originally Posted by bagels View Post
It does seem an extremely bizarre course of action from the prosecution. If they think he's innocent then they should be looking to drop the charges. If they think he should face trial to be prosecuted and convicted, they shouldn't be looking for a new trial when he's already so.....

It's been a while but from what I remember of this case, to believe Adnan is innocent you have to more or less believe Jay is innocent, and to believe that you have to be crazy.
This. Jay knew where the victim's car was located. This was the key fact that can't be explained away.
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Old 16th September 2022, 01:42 AM   #301
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Originally Posted by Brainster View Post
This. Jay knew where the victim's car was located. This was the key fact that can't be explained away.
We don't know jay knew where the victim's car was.
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Old 16th September 2022, 02:43 AM   #302
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Working from memory, science and logistics preclude guilt.
As I contend, American Justice is corrective where British Empire justice fails.
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Old 19th September 2022, 01:25 PM   #303
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Seen just now on Twitter.

Quote:
BALTIMORE (AP) — Judge orders release of Adnan Syed after overturning 2000 murder conviction chronicled by popular “Serial” podcast.

https://twitter.com/davidmackau/stat...55372176576513
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Old 19th September 2022, 01:35 PM   #304
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Framing the guilty?

I don't know this case as well as I should, but I wonder whether this is an instance of framing the guilty. If I could wave a magic wand, there are others whom I would have released before Mr. Syed.
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Old 19th September 2022, 01:47 PM   #305
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You're not actually supposed to frame the guilty either though, and if someone has been framed and there isn't evidence to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt, then they should be freed.
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Old 19th September 2022, 01:52 PM   #306
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Originally Posted by Rolfe View Post
You're not actually supposed to frame the guilty either though, and if someone has been framed and there isn't evidence to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt, then they should be freed.
I wholeheartedly agree. But in a world of limited resources and limited attention, Adnan Syed wouldn't be my top priority.
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Old 19th September 2022, 02:07 PM   #307
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It's an interesting point. I've noticed for years that the vociferous activists attach themselves to cases where they are certain the convicted person is innocent. Campaigns to highlight blatant miscarriages of justice where there is still perhaps room for the person to have committed the crime are far less common.

Human nature I suppose.
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Old 19th September 2022, 04:44 PM   #308
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Wow! Quite a surprise.

So...

Quote:
Ruling that the state violated its legal obligation to share exculpatory evidence with Syed’s defense, the circuit court judge, Melissa Phinn, ordered Syed placed on home detention with GPS monitoring. Phinn also gave the state 30 days to decide whether to seek a new trial or dismiss the case.
Link

It will be interesting to see whether or not there will be another trial of Syed, though it sounds as though there will not be unless there is fresh evidence that was not brought up the first time such as improved DNA analysis. That said, I thought there had been a recent DNA analysis that turned up inconclusive.
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Old 19th September 2022, 05:11 PM   #309
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I think at some point society has to step up to the plate and say, no, better 100 guilty men go free (because there wasn't enough evidence to prove guilt BRD) than one innocent man is convicted because someone decided to railroad them.

This implies the necessity for letting a possibly or even probably guilty person free if there isn't enough evidence, and especially if someone decided to railroad them.
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Old 19th September 2022, 05:15 PM   #310
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Originally Posted by Rolfe View Post
I think at some point society has to step up to the plate and say, no, better 100 guilty men go free (because there wasn't enough evidence to prove guilt BRD) than one innocent man is convicted because someone decided to railroad them.

This implies the necessity for letting a possibly or even probably guilty person free if there isn't enough evidence, and especially if someone decided to railroad them.
Now all we need is some sort of adjudicated process for determining when the evidence is insufficient or the accused is being railroaded...
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Old 20th September 2022, 03:08 AM   #311
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Originally Posted by Rolfe View Post
I think at some point society has to step up to the plate and say, no, better 100 guilty men go free (because there wasn't enough evidence to prove guilt BRD) than one innocent man is convicted because someone decided to railroad them.

This implies the necessity for letting a possibly or even probably guilty person free if there isn't enough evidence, and especially if someone decided to railroad them.
Yes indeed.
I became convinced he is innocent from IA forum and the netflix series.
And really just one Steven Avery to scare the horses.
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Old 20th September 2022, 06:20 PM   #312
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Map with palm print

Originally Posted by Rolfe View Post
You're not actually supposed to frame the guilty either though, and if someone has been framed and there isn't evidence to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt, then they should be freed.
Obviously, I agree. With respect to Adnan Sayed there is some evidence against him. For example there is a map with his palm print. At EvidenceProfBlog, the author quoted Serial: "The defense argued, ‘well, you can’t put a timestamp on fingerprints, they could’ve been six week-old fingerprints or six month-old fingerprints, there’s no way to tell.’ And Adnan had ridden in and driven Hae’s car many times, all their friends said so. The ripped out page showed a whole lot more than just Leakin Park. In fact, it showed their whole neighborhood, the school, the malls, probably ninety percent of where they most often drove. And that page didn’t have Adnan’s prints on it. His palm print was only on the back cover of the book. Plus, thirteen other, unidentified prints turned up on and in the map book. None of them matched Adnan, or Jay. So, the prints weren’t exactly conclusive."

The author continued, "Plus, I'm not really sure of the State's theory here. Are they claiming that Adnan was wearing and not wearing gloves at different points during the crime, which explains why his palm print was on the back cover of the map book but none of his prints were on the torn out page? Overall, this piece of forensic evidence seems pretty meaningless."

I grant that this evidence is not a slam dunk, but I don't agree that it is meaningless.
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Old 20th September 2022, 10:07 PM   #313
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Originally Posted by Chris_Halkides View Post
Obviously, I agree. With respect to Adnan Sayed there is some evidence against him. For example there is a map with his palm print. At EvidenceProfBlog, the author quoted Serial: "The defense argued, ‘well, you can’t put a timestamp on fingerprints, they could’ve been six week-old fingerprints or six month-old fingerprints, there’s no way to tell.’ And Adnan had ridden in and driven Hae’s car many times, all their friends said so. The ripped out page showed a whole lot more than just Leakin Park. In fact, it showed their whole neighborhood, the school, the malls, probably ninety percent of where they most often drove. And that page didn’t have Adnan’s prints on it. His palm print was only on the back cover of the book. Plus, thirteen other, unidentified prints turned up on and in the map book. None of them matched Adnan, or Jay. So, the prints weren’t exactly conclusive."

The author continued, "Plus, I'm not really sure of the State's theory here. Are they claiming that Adnan was wearing and not wearing gloves at different points during the crime, which explains why his palm print was on the back cover of the map book but none of his prints were on the torn out page? Overall, this piece of forensic evidence seems pretty meaningless."

I grant that this evidence is not a slam dunk, but I don't agree that it is meaningless.
What gets me is that they claim to have found another person who wanted her dead. I'm assuming this is based on some actual physical evidence--a letter to her or someone else? Remember one of the pieces of evidence mentioned in Serial was a note that Sayed passed to a classmate about how he was going to kill her. The podcaster laughed it off as something from a grade-b movie, but now apparently we have another guy passing around these notes (and nobody but Adnan getting caught)? Two guys in one high school fantasizing about killing one gal? Makes little sense.
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Last edited by Brainster; 20th September 2022 at 10:11 PM.
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Old 21st September 2022, 03:59 AM   #314
Chris_Halkides
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post-conviction review processes

At CNN Jennifer Rogers (pondering prosecutorial conviction review) wrote, "Had Syed’s case been evaluated by an office that is serious about and dedicated to meaningful conviction review, the realization that his case did not hold together on closer inspection may have come years ago. Robust conviction review may not have helped Adnan Syed, but could help scores of similarly-situated defendants down the road." There are some links to other stories with a modest amount of additional information about the case, but some of the stories are behind paywalls. Regarding post-conviction review, I am skeptical that an office associated with law enforcement is likely to do a good job. Maybe conviction review should be part of the judicial branch.
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Old 21st September 2022, 09:27 AM   #315
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Our legal system baffles me.

I'm less interested in whether the trial was fair or not (I'm not equipped to say), but more interested in the probability of Adnan's guilt. I was at 95%+ prior to this news. Having not seen the actual new evidence, I guess I'm at 90% for now?

If Adnan didn't do it, he's the victim of gypsy-curse level bad luck.
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Old 21st September 2022, 03:37 PM   #316
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I should bloody well hope there was some evidence against him. I know that Luke Mitchell proves it's possible to get a conviction for murder against someone with the square root of bugger-all evidence against him, but most of the time I would imagine there's something.

Does it stack up to BRD, that's the question. Also, is there proof that evidence was fabricated against him by the police? Because if there is, that should be an acquittal right there.
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Old 23rd September 2022, 07:29 AM   #317
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Good article in City Journal about the Baltimore Chief Prosecutor who announced that they no longer had confidence in Syed's conviction. Did you know that she's under federal indictment for attempting to swindle the feds out of Covid-19 relief funds that she used to buy a vacation home in Florida?

There's pushback on the Brady violations:

Quote:
The Maryland attorney general, who had handled Syed’s appeals, flatly contradicted Mosby on the issue of whether the evidence was disclosed, known as a Brady violation. “Among the other serious problems with the motion to vacate, the allegations related to Brady violations are incorrect,” the attorney general stated. “Neither State’s Attorney Mosby nor anyone from her office bothered to consult with either the Assistant State’s Attorney who prosecuted the case or with anyone in my office regarding these alleged violations. The file in this case was made available on several occasions to the defense.”
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Old 23rd September 2022, 09:43 AM   #318
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interested party

I would take at a deep discount anything Jay Wilds said. He was almost certainly involved in some way; in addition, he may have been paid for his testimony, as I suggested well upthread. If there is a case to be made for Mr. Syed's guilt apart from his testimony, then it would emerge at a retrial, if one takes place.

On the other hand, Brady violations are a common component of wrongful convictions. Furthermore, the notion that the state might be whitewashing misconduct is not absurd. That is what happened in the first conviction of Steven Avery, at least according to Michael Griesbach.
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Old 24th September 2022, 06:16 AM   #319
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So Opening Arguments have an episode where they respond to Adnan Syed's release.

They start talking about it around 8 minutes in after talking about De Santis's stuff.

They take the line that as far as they can see it is obvious that Adnan was guilty. Apparently they had a previous episode in which they said this, and Rabia Choudary called Andrew Torrez a racist for it and blocked him on Twitter.

But they argue that they still think Adnan is guilty and almost nothing that appears in the motion to vacate the prosecution seems to be new. They also point to the fact that Mosby is herself under investigation as a good reason to take her with a pinch of salt.

That said, they also see Maryland Police as being almost hopelessly corrupt, and that they probably did cut corners. Personally they also consider 23 years long enough for a murder committed by a teen.

Here is the episode.

But of course, if your aim is to get Adnan off, the best course of action is to go with reasonable doubt. No doubt that makes sense from Adnan's point of view, but it still leaves the question of who did it. And there, it seems almost impossible to construct a plausible story that doesn't involve Jay and Adnan. There is lots of anomaly hunting around the cellphone towers. Maybe, possibly, they are not entirely accurate etc... or Jay sometimes gets the time mixed up, etc... But the big picture seems to implicate Adnan.

In fact, they even go as far as to say that the only way to get Adnan off the hook is to essentially start using conspiracy theory methodology, using various arguments that when put together are mutually incompatible. I thought the same thing when looking at the possible two other suspects that when they are condensed into a single person, things look damning, but we don't know which suspect did what and it relies on layering lots of pieces of pretty flimsy reasoning on top of another.

I looked again at the timeline that Serial put up and was struck by the fact that Adnan was calling Hae's home, as well as Jenn's home (where Jay was), as well as Jay, and that they clearly spent a lot of time together. Was there any reason Adnan was calling Hae? And what about the missing time? At one point, Adnan is just seen to be having a "free period". Okay, but what was he doing? And he was late to psychology class. Then apparently he met Asia McClain in the library, but he was also receiving calls and called Jenn's house again during this time.

It doesn't look to me as though Adnan's alibi is that strong.

Then, why would Jay be so adamant that Adnan did it? What would be the point of that?

Timeline.
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Old 3rd October 2022, 12:49 PM   #320
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Prediction: Absolutely nothing will come of the two new "suspects". This isn't the next phase of a whodunnit. The case was cracked long ago.
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