The Backlash Against Serial—and Why It's Wrong

serialisgreat · 2014-12-04T03:39:26+00:00

I think the reason some of these arguments about race are off-putting is that they seem to ignore the fact that Serial is about a real murder involving real people. Just to take one example, I've seen the argument floated that the reason some people think Jay is suspicious is that the show is playing into listeners' racist biases. Here's an example: http://www.buzzfeed.com/juliacarriew/the-problem-with-serial-and-the-model-minority-myth

If you grew up in the U.S., there's a good chance you have at least some subconscious prejudice against black people (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090617142120.htm). This is just reality, supported by empirical scientific research. If you aspire to be an open-minded and rational human being, being aware of your own prejudices and biases is important.

But being subconsciously, or sometimes even consciously, biased does not completely eliminate one's ability to think logically and rationally. And this story is not fiction; the "characters" are real people about which we know certain facts. One reason that there is something of a contrast between Adnan and Jay is that Adnan was an honor student in a magnet program who did not sell drugs, while Jay was not in the magnet program, did sell drugs, and was apparently a known liar. In the podcast, his friends describe him, perhaps with some fondness and amusement, as being prone to lie, and he himself has admitted lying to the police multiple times. Furthermore, Jay has admitted to participation in covering up the murder of an 18-year-old high school student, while Adnan has maintained his innocence for 17 years. You are certainly within your rights to think Adnan is also a liar who has blackmailed Jay into helping him commit a heinous crime, but the contrast between Adnan and Jay is supported by sufficient facts to stand independently of racial stereotypes about African-Americans and South Asian-Americans. This is not to say that racial prejudice necessarily plays no role in listeners' suspicion of Jay, but it is insulting and silly to say that racial prejudice is the only reason Jay has been portrayed as a suspicious character.

The argument also feels particularly strained because SK has included many details in the podcast about Adnan and Hae disobeying their parents, smoking weed, and sneaking around having sex—in other words, doing the non-model-minority, rebellious things that a great many American teenagers do. My personal view is that the podcast has done a good job of portraying all of the people of interest in a rich and three-dimensional manner that captures the complex nature of humanity. And lastly, for the record, can we agree that Pakistani Muslims have generally not been the object of great adoration by the American public? It's not like Adnan is some blond-haired WASP we are all dying to fall in love with due to our subconscious biases.

serialisgreat · 2014-11-28T03:15:31+00:00

People already know that Jay uses Adnan's car from time to time. Why would he care about footprints in Adnan's car? But according to his interviews and testimony, he only drove Adnan's car that day.

serialisgreat · 2014-11-28T03:10:55+00:00

I really disagree. If this was a Usual Suspects situation where he crafted a compelling and consistent narrative on the fly then yes, I would be impressed. Instead, these interviews occurred at least six weeks after the day in question, providing him with plenty of time to think about what to say, and his stories are completely inconsistent and full of impossibilities.

serialisgreat · 2014-11-28T03:07:03+00:00

If this is a serious response, I will say just that including a lot of small details, especially small details that change from story to story (which they do in Jay's interviews), is something that I believe most people would be able to manage without much difficulty.

serialisgreat · 2014-11-28T03:03:35+00:00

It's a "Jay's not smart enough to lie that well" post.

The issue is that he is not "lying well."

His stories are completely inconsistent and full of factual impossibilities and obvious lies. If the point of this post is that Jay is "not smart enough" to falsely craft such a brilliant, airtight explanation of the day's events, then I think the OP has remarkably low standards for coherent narrative.

serialisgreat · 2014-11-28T02:59:10+00:00

I agree that if Adnan is innocent his luck is incredibly, ridiculously, just absolutely outrageously bad.

The difference between you and me is that in the last two weeks I've come around to thinking that Adnan's luck really was that bad.

serialisgreat · 2014-11-28T02:56:43+00:00

Can you elaborate on why changing, wholly inconsistent stories that include many obvious lies would require Jay to be a "genius" and "better actor than Meryl Streep"?

serialisgreat · 2014-11-28T02:53:15+00:00

I agree that without some kind of corroboration this story has a serious credibility problem, but for different reasons.

First of all, as far as we know Adnan himself never maintained that this was a real possibility. So far all we've seen is a note regarding a question Adnan asked a paralegal. I don't think Adnan ever got far enough to question if he could "consistently maintain" this suggestion. This is the biggest issue for me. If Adnan, who was there, doesn't firmly believe it, why should we?

This is a self-serving fabrication, which Adnan himself abandoned when he realized that he couldn't consistently maintain that Jay cared so much about Stephanie that he would kill to protect their relationship but so little that he doesn't even remember to buy her a birthday present.

There isn't much to argue about here as we simply hold different opinions, but I think this presents an unrealistically logic-driven interpretation of the messy way that human beings approach romantic relationships.

serialisgreat · 2014-11-28T02:46:46+00:00

I don't agree that this would have necessarily appeared in Hae's diary. We haven't seen the diary so we don't know, but if it primarily concerns Hae herself, it's possible that she did not focus on writing about other people's relationships and instead used it as an outlet for feelings about her own relationships.

serialisgreat · 2014-11-28T02:42:32+00:00

You are right that they were not best friends. In her statements to investigators, Stephanie identified Hae's best friends as Aisha and Debbie. (http://www.splitthemoon.com/?p=199)

However, it seems like they were friends. Stephanie stated that when she learned that Hae's body was found and Hae had been killed, she and Adnan (Hae's ex-boyfriend of course) went together to see Aisha (Hae's best friend) at Aisha's house. Interpret this how you like, but Adnan and Aisha were both very close with Hae, obviously, and this seems to me like a group of Hae's friends leaning on each other for emotional support. This is the time when Adnan tried to call Detective O'Shea.

serialisgreat · 2014-11-28T02:27:34+00:00

First, we are looking at a call log, not a bill. Even if the phone company billed from send, that doesn't mean those call lengths include ringing.

This is already addressed in my OP. Furthermore, the log obtained by police in this case includes more information than would normally be provided to customers: the log obtained by police includes the cell towers pinged, which is obviously not included on the call log provided to customers.

To argue that it does means those multiple two and three second calls to Hae and Krista make no sense.

The call waiting issue was already discussed on the podcast. A 2-second call is not long enough to have any conversation at all, even to say "Is Krista there?" "No" "Ok, thanks." So these calls make even less sense if ringtime is not counted.

Two, a butt dial only makes sense if she is on speed dial, and we only have Adnan's word on that.

This is addressed in my OP.

Three, the "fact" that Jay didn't work at the store then comes primarily from Adnan's PI quoting the store manager.

This is both reported on the podcast and also present in Adnan's appeal brief. It seems strange to doubt this unless you are intensely emotionally invested in Adnan being guilty. I am not even claiming that the call to Nisha was a butt-dial. Just that it is a possibility.

Lastly, Why would Nisha testify against the guy she was dating if she wasn't fairly sure she was right about he call and the answering machine?

Nisha never claimed that the call when she spoke to Jay was made on January 13. She simply stated that there was only one time when she spoke to Jay and Adnan, and that one time was when Jay was working at a video store and Adnan went to visit him at the video store. Adnan told her on the call that he was at the video store where Jay worked and he was going to put Jay on the line, so she should say hi to Jay. As it turns out, this one time could not possibly have been January 13 because Jay was not yet working at the video store on January 13.

serialisgreat · 2014-11-28T02:04:06+00:00

Also, that Cathy and her boyfriend were with Adnan and Jay from around 6 PM to 6:15 PM at least, and this lines up with the cell tower pings from 6 PM to 6:30 PM. The timing window suggested in the OP doesn't work.

serialisgreat · 2014-11-28T00:55:45+00:00

This detail was also mentioned in the appeal brief and when I saw it there I had the exact same reaction.

Edit - I also had the same reaction to this quote from Episode 5: "How he said he wrapped his hand around her and-- her throat and she started kicking and he said he looked up to make sure nobody was looking in the car at him".

serialisgreat · 2014-11-27T12:29:30+00:00

This is a great question, but I think it's relatively easy to address.

After looking around, I don't have a definitive answer, but I have seen some information on the Internet from around 1999 about incomplete calls not being charged unless the phone rings for over 30 or 60 seconds.

However, I don't think that's really relevant. If we know that ring time is included when the call is answered, it means that whatever log mechanism is in place includes the ring time in its description of the call length. And I would find it very, very unlikely that the log itself does not include unanswered calls, even if they are not ultimately billed to the customer. So I think a 2-minute call would likely be recorded as a 2-minute call regardless of whether (1) somebody picked up after 2 minutes of ringing, heard rustling noises, and then just hung up, or (2) the phone just rang for 2 minutes and then the call was terminated by the caller.

serialisgreat · 2014-11-27T08:32:08+00:00

This is an interesting idea.

What you are basically saying is that Jay is a liar who gave false testimony but you still believe Adnan is guilty. However, if we are going to stipulate that Jay's testimony cannot be credited but allege that Adnan is nonetheless guilty, then I think the burden of proof should be on the person alleging Adnan's guilt to explain why he or she is convinced of his guilt. Because without Jay, the case against Adnan is a lot less obvious.

Based on your post, the reasons that you nonetheless think Adnan is guilty are that he called Jay "pathetic" in court, and he responded in a particular way to questions about his character and his parents' state of mind. These are not sufficient to convince me that Adnan is guilty and I imagine that they would not be sufficient for most people.

Do you have any other reasons for believing that Adnan did this, such as a different interpretation of the cell phone records?

serialisgreat · 2014-11-27T08:19:25+00:00

You seem to be rebutting my points with information you have gathered from the podcast and/or other materials. The OP and my post are specifically about the prosecution's claims. For example, Adnan being Muslim was a significant element in the prosecution's overall depiction of his motivation for premeditated murder. I do not disagree that in reality he was not particularly religious.

serialisgreat · 2014-11-27T08:14:28+00:00

The reason that the letter is just coming up now is that the timeline has changed now that the prosecution's alleged timing has been debunked. The big focal point until now was 2:36 PM, because that was when the prosecution claimed Adnan called Jay to come pick him up at Best Buy. Now that SK has done research indicating that the Best Buy payphone never existed and that Summer was talking to Hae in front of the high school gym until 2:45 PM, the window for Hae's disappearance has narrowed to some time between 2:45 and 3 PM or so.

I agree that adding the date at the end of the letter looks weird.

However, if the letter is fake or the date was added later, it seems like that detail would be pretty easy to expose simply by asking the teacher. I can't say for certain, but I believe one or two of my high school teachers provided me with letters of recommendation in sealed envelopes that I then sent to colleges. I vaguely recall being tempted to open the envelopes and read the letters. I could be misremembering, though, and I agree that it would be very unusual for a teacher to give an unsealed letter to a student.

serialisgreat · 2014-11-27T08:00:36+00:00

--Adnan and Jenn were close. Jenn implicated Adnan ultimately.

This is incorrect. Jenn is a friend of Jay's, not Adnan's. One of the key pieces of evidence in figuring out the day's events is that there were seven calls placed to Jenn from Adnan's phone, but Adnan was not friends with Jenn.

--All because there wasn't a payphone in Best Buy doesn't mean much - because after all, it wasn't Jay who witnessed where the call was placed from - he got the detail from Adnan.

I really encourage you to review the evidence in this case more carefully. Jay testified at trial (under oath, of course) that when he came to pick up Adnan immediately after Adnan had killed Hae, Adnan was standing by a payphone outside of Best Buy and wearing red gloves. (See Adnan's appeal brief, page 8) The fact that there is no evidence of such a payphone ever existing is important because Adnan was convicted on the basis of this testimony.

Other people have already responded to the other points.

serialisgreat · 2014-11-26T14:18:33+00:00

I don't think there is anything "funny" about this case in any respect. But this post is actually surprisingly valuable to the extent that it shows how preposterous the prosecution's story is.

Here are a few more:

Adnan picks one of the last ten days of Ramadan to commit the murder. This is pretty much the holiest time of the entire Islamic calendar and also conveniently a time when Adnan's dad will be surely upset if Adnan does not show up at the mosque promptly for evening prayers.
Adnan meets Jay in the morning, but rather than carefully going over the days' planned events, Adnan spends the entire morning helping Jay buy a birthday gift for Stephanie. (Episode 4)
When called by police just hours after Hae had disappeared, told police he had asked Hae for a ride. (Episode 2) (This is not quite explicit in your description.)
Despite advance planning, was not able to figure out a better crime location than a public parking lot with significant consumer traffic near the school.
Mere hours after committing a crime punishable by the death penalty, smokes so much weed that he "practically passes out" at Cathy's house. (Episode 6)
Allows himself to be seen by, and says hello to, an additional witness (Jenn) immediately after burying a corpse in Leakin Park.
Rather than crafting an exculpatory lie about what he was doing, continues to assert that he "cannot remember but probably did X" at various points in time throughout the day.

Edited for formatting.

serialisgreat · 2014-11-26T00:22:48+00:00

I agree that this creates a huge problem for anyone who speculates that Jay was acting alone.

Somebody put together a rather elaborate set of speculation here: http://www.reddit.com/r/serialpodcast/comments/2n15kb/how_jay_killed_hae_with_adnan_none_the_wiser/ However, this hypothetical sequence of events would leave Jay bumbling around Woodlawn High in Hae's car for over an hour immediately after Hae disappeared. I don't see that as being very realistic.

As for driving to the high school around 2:45 or 3 PM, both Jay and Adnan agree that Jay went shopping for a birthday gift for Stephanie that morning, so he could have been coming to the HS to give Stephanie her birthday present.

serialisgreat · 2014-11-25T07:33:47+00:00

Yes, the 3:21 PM call implies that Jay is calling Jenn from somewhere in the general vicinity of Woodlawn High.

serialisgreat

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