Justin Brown calls his “last best chance at freedom,” the problems with case would be so exhaustively dissected for hundreds of thousands of listeners? Even Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, which was serialized to great national attention in The New Yorker in 1965, never had this sense of real-time journalism. Kilkenny: Adnan definitely has luck on his side: What are the odds that on the eve of his second appeal, what his lawyer C.
We can speculate and theorize all we want, but nothing erases the fact that one cold January afternoon, a girl with dreams was murdered.
Her death has become sensationalized by the media, and in the end, we remember that regardless of whether Jay or Adnan or Ronald Lee Moore or someone else entirely did it, a life was lost, a family was thrown into grief, and a community was broken. Don's account of her as charming, beautiful, and headstrong is consistent with what we've learned before, adding up to a portrait of a girl stolen in her prime. Something we can't forget: The unluckiest is, without a doubt, Hae-the victim. So Adnan is quite lucky compared to his fellow inmates, those who may or may not be innocent, whose stories will never reach the popular discussion the way Adnan's has, who may have better cases that prove their innocence. Today, he's fueling debate and speculation and getting renewed attention to a long-forgotten case. He has a portion of the nation considering his innocence, even though the legal system pronounced him guilty long ago.Īdnan was, 12 weeks ago, just another cellmate in a Baltimore prison, a blip in the city's crime-ridden past. He has motions for a retrial in place, an attorney working on his behalf with the University of Virginia's Innocence Project who is trying to pinpoint whether untested DNA from Hae Min Lee’s body can be traced back to a potential serial rapist/murderer. However, regardless of Adnan's innocence or guilt, he's lucky for the amount of attention-and now, at a national level-redirected to his situation. Yes, he's spent the better part of his adult life behind bars, and I don't mean to minimize that as a "lucky" experience in any sense. Identical Twins Who Look Nothing Alike Emily Buderīut if we're talking about luck, then it must be said that Adnan has some too. He has a potential butt-dial to a girl only he knows, an absence of a couple hours that can't be explained, and a mess of phone records. Dana Chivvis, the "logical" straight-shooter of Koenig's producers, tells it how it is: If Adnan didn't do it, he's supremely unlucky. Throughout the series, we've heard Koenig go back and forth on her feelings about the case, whether so-and-so is being honest, whether Adnan is just an insanely skilled liar or a guy whose fate has screwed him over. It's been a riveting ride, even if we're still wondering about the main question as much as we were in Episode One. That's terrifying, given that the people behind this podcast seem to have tried longer and much harder than the police. Perhaps one lesson of Serial is that the truth is sometimes beyond our grasp, no matter how long and hard we try to gather all the facts. Like Koenig, I can't say I think he's definitely innocent, just that I wouldn't have voted to convict. Most notably, there's an alibi that blows the state's timeline, a lack of persuasive motive, a prosecutor who apparently harassed at least one witness to misrepresent the truth, and DNA evidence that the state never even tested. The Innocence Project is working to make that happen after getting involved as a result of Serial.īut what if Adnan is never definitively cleared? Does he belong in prison?Īfter reflecting on 12 episodes that sum up 15 months of reporting, I definitely have reasonable doubt about Adnan's guilt. There's a faint chance that DNA evidence in Hae's murder will be tested and match a killer who was released from jail shortly before her death, effectively clearing Adnan Syed. Conor Friedersdorf, Tanya Basu, and Katie Kilkenny discuss the latest episode of WBEZ Chicago's popular non-fiction podcast Serial.įriedersdorf: The final episode of Serial's first season, "What We Know," was strong: Over the course of 55 minutes, we heard some new information, including interviews with sources who only recently agreed to speak with Sarah Koenig, and got a review of the most important evidence aired to date.