Serial - the Hearing

Angela Truong

Mrs. L. Smith

English 3/4C

5 January 2016

Serial – The Hearing

        From This American Life and WBEZ Chicago, it is Serial. One story told week by week. I am Angela Truong. A year later on Serial, we are proud to bring you Adnan’s new hearing. Sadly, Sarah could not join us due to family matters, but I am one of Sarah’s closes colleagues and will surely not disappoint.  I was honored when Sarah Koenig – an investigative reporter, asked me to fill in for her on this very special episode. The murder case of Hae Min Lee is full of many holes and facts that do not match up. That is what makes this whole situation such an intriguing case, because a person can take either side. On January 13th, 1999 Hae Min Lee was murdered and buried in a forest called Leakin Park. Many different suspects could have murdered Hae, but the jury for this trial settled on the killer being Hae’s ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed.  On January 1st of 2016 Adnan Syed’s case was reopened because new evidence had found that the cell tower records have not been reliable, and Jay Wilds was not a consistent witness – accomplice of Syed. Although there is plenty of evidence to prove or refute the idea that Adnan Syed is guilty, Adnan is innocent.

        Something about Jay’s story that seems to have fault is the location of the call that Adnan placed to Jay. This would be the call in which Adnan asked Jay to come pick him up from where he was with Hae’s car and body. In one of Jay’s first interviews, he said that Adnan called for Jay to come get him and he showed Jay Hae’s body at a drug spot. Later on, Jay changed his story and said that Adnan called from a payphone at Best Buy and showed him the body there. Jay even drew a map of the exterior of this Best Buy and included a payphone in the drawing. When more research was done, it turned out that there was not a payphone in the parking lot for Adnan to call Jay. There was one in the Best Buy hall, but none outside like Jay drew up (Episode 9, Serial Podcast). Something that also goes against the story of Adnan being the killer is multiple people saying that there was no way that Hae could have been dead by 2:36 PM. Hae and her friend both managed wrestling, and Hae was telling her friend that she wasn’t able to attend the meet. They talked for about ten minutes and it would have cut into the period of Hae’s murder. Therefore, there was no way she was killed by the time Jay said. It is possible that the “come get me” call from Adnan was at 3:15 PM, but that messes with Jay’s testimony (Episode 9, Serial Podcast, Serial Timeline). 

After the breakup, many people said that Adnan appeared to be taking it pretty well. In fact, Adnan had side chicks scattered all over the place. This leads to a big controversial piece of evidence in this case, the Nisha call. Nisha, one of Adnan’s side girls, was called at 3:32 PM. Jay would not know Nisha, but Nisha claims she talked to both Adnan and Jay. Asia, a classmate of Adnan’s, also said that she saw him at the library that day at that time and they talked for a little bit. She was never contacted to talk about this in court, but spoke with Sarah and told her this information (Episode 6, Serial Podcast, Serial Call Log).Not only did Asia see Adnan at the time the murder would have taken place, but the Nisha call could have been a butt dial. If this call lasted for two minutes and twenty-two seconds, of course the phone company would charge Adnan for the call if that were the cutoff. Nisha making all of these claims could make Adnan seem guilty when he is actually innocent. This is a very big and shaky piece of evidence, and the state had no problem using it against Adnan when there is also evidence that he is law-abiding (Episode 12, Serial Podcast, Serial Call Log). It is transparent that Adnan felt very sad over the breakup, not angry (Episode 2, Serial Podcast). There have also been statements from people believing that Adnan could have killed Hae, but there are also plenty of others that say he would ever do that and that he was a good person (Episode 8, Episode 11, Serial Podcast).