‘Serial’ case: Adnan Syed released, conviction tossed
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Re: ‘Serial’ case: Adnan Syed released, conviction tossed
#2Just goes to show what can happen when you get featured in a viral hit podcast. That’s a great outcome for him but I shudder to think about what it tells us about our judicial system.
Re: ‘Serial’ case: Adnan Syed released, conviction tossed
#3Just goes to show what can happen when you get featured in a viral hit podcast. That’s a great outcome for him but I shudder to think about what it tells us about our judicial system.
There was a similar case in Italy regarding its own version of the 90s satanic panic, which led to dozens of kids separated from their parents, parents committing suicide from shame and grief, an overall travesty of justice. Until Pablo Trincia made a podcast out of it and conducted an investigation the case was considered closed. The podcast entirely overturned it two decades later, reuniting many of the kids (now adults) with their legally estranged parents and sending a bunch of people to jail for intentional malpractice: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/polis/2021/08/04/investigative-podca...
Re: ‘Serial’ case: Adnan Syed released, conviction tossed
#4Just goes to show what can happen when you get featured in a viral hit podcast. That’s a great outcome for him but I shudder to think about what it tells us about our judicial system.
Serial is still one of the best true crime podcasts, because the case has so much more underneath the surface.
One example is this podcast going over a cleared suspects apparently falsified alibi records (his mom who was a manager at his store chain and may have doctored his work record to prevent police going after him): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l6dApX2rIY
The main summary points are here, taken from this reddit page (which links to the primary sources) https://www.reddit.com/r/serialpodcast/comments/xea7pu/here_...:
1. Two new suspects that were not properly ruled out.
2. One of the suspects had a) threatened to kill the victim and b) provided motives for the threat.
3. The victim's car was located directly behind one of those suspects relative's house.
4. One of the suspects attacked a woman in her vehicle, engaged in serial rape and assault, engaged in violence against women he knew, and was improperly ruled out.
5. Incoming call data was determined to be completely unreliable, as the network sends the signal through multiple towers and the billing records can show the last tower a phone connected to instead of the one it is currently on.
6. Kristina Vinson said she would not have missed a class at the same time she said Jay and Adnan were at her house, which showed that her recollection of what day Jay and Adnan had visited was wrong.
7. Because Jay had told numerous lies and versions of events to detectives, his testimony was only relied upon because the cell records and Vinson's testimony corroborated it. Without those, his testimony does not stand on its own. Thus, they could not have secured a conviction.
8. One of the lead detectives on the case engaged in egregious misconduct in another case, resulting in a wrongful conviction and 17 years of incarceration.
Re: ‘Serial’ case: Adnan Syed released, conviction tossed
#5Just goes to show what can happen when you get featured in a viral hit podcast. That’s a great outcome for him but I shudder to think about what it tells us about our judicial system.
Even "great outcome for him" seems like a stretch. That podcast was six years ago. He has been in jail for 22 years, more than half of his life. It's hard to imagine where he goes with his life from here; I wish him the best of luck.
That's the "great" outcome of a one-in-a-million burst of publicity. Everybody else has it much, much worse.
Re: ‘Serial’ case: Adnan Syed released, conviction tossed
#6Just goes to show what can happen when you get featured in a viral hit podcast. That’s a great outcome for him but I shudder to think about what it tells us about our judicial system.
Our justice system is pretty busted, to be honest. And it's end to end busted - we trust police too much and with too much power, we don't have enough public defenders to protect everyone, we have long backlogs of cases, court fees and fines can be unending even if you are innocent (to say nothing about civil asset forfeiture), people are goaded into plea deals for crimes they don't commit, our jury selection process leaves a lot to be desired, our judges have done things like make deals to get a financial kickback for everyone they send to jail, our sentences are too long for minor crimes, our prisons are dangerously overcrowded making prison basically psychological and physical torture, we invest almost nothing on reducing recidivism, we fail to support inmates post incarceration and make it hard for them to find work, and we generally stigmatize anyone who has had a brush with the system.
All of the above plus the racial and income inequality, nonsense war on drugs, etc.
Yeah, I'd say we should all shudder quite a bit more about our judicial system.
Re: ‘Serial’ case: Adnan Syed released, conviction tossed
#7Just goes to show what can happen when you get featured in a viral hit podcast. That’s a great outcome for him but I shudder to think about what it tells us about our judicial system.
His conviction is vacated but they can put him on trial again.
Re: ‘Serial’ case: Adnan Syed released, conviction tossed
#8Just goes to show what can happen when you get featured in a viral hit podcast. That’s a great outcome for him but I shudder to think about what it tells us about our judicial system.
His conviction is vacated but they can put him on trial again.
I doubt that will happen unless something else is revealed as the prosecutors are the ones that asked for the conviction to be vacated.
Re: ‘Serial’ case: Adnan Syed released, conviction tossed
#9Just goes to show what can happen when you get featured in a viral hit podcast. That’s a great outcome for him but I shudder to think about what it tells us about our judicial system.
Periodically I go back and check on Mumia Abu Jamal. Yep, still in jail [previously, I had said "on death row"]. He had far more coverage but I guess it happened before things went viral.
Re: ‘Serial’ case: Adnan Syed released, conviction tossed
#10Just goes to show what can happen when you get featured in a viral hit podcast. That’s a great outcome for him but I shudder to think about what it tells us about our judicial system.
His conviction is vacated but they can put him on trial again.
I thought there were no exceptions to double jeopardy? Is that a popular misconception? What makes it possible in this case?