Ella Roberge

1/4/18
AP Language and Composition
Legal System Essay

The Guilt of Innocence

January 13th, 1999 started out as any other normal day might, but ended in such a way that

changed the lives of many forever. On that date, Hae Min Lee, a highschool student at Woodlawn High

School was murdered around the time of 3:30 by strangling and her body was found later, buried miles

away in a park named Leakin Park and her murder has provoked many undetermined questions since; the

strongest being, who did murder Hae? The court ruled that her ex-boyfriend at the time, a man named

Adnan Syed, was responsible for the murder of Hae and has been locked up in jail since. One thing that

should be known about this case is its complexity due to very minimal strong evidence to support either

side due to poor investigation since the “murderer” was already rightfully convicted and sentenced to

spend the rest of his life in jail. Through a podcast titled “SERIAL”, a reporter named Sarah Koenig dug

deep into loads of materials and interviewed almost every person involved in the case to give her audience

more clear information to allow the ability to come up with more accurate opinions on the subject of Hae

Min Lee’s death. After sorting through all the information presented from “SERIAL” about the case, it

can be concluded that Adnan Syed was wrongfully convicted and he was not the person that murder Hae

Min Lee. Adnan is innocent due to his own habits and memory recollection, racial and religious tensions

in court, and overall weak evidence against him or anyone for that matter to decide if someone is guilty or

not.

In “SERIAL” Adnan’s poor memory about the day and recollection of his whereabouts help

support his innocence due to his understanding that it was just a normal day. Sarah Koenig explained in

her podcast that there have been many studies on simple memories that people can obtain with simple

questions such as “What did you have for breakfast 2 weeks ago?”. This was the case for Adnan. January
13th was just like any other day for Adnan, so how was he supposed to pinpoint his exact whereabouts

several days after when he was brought in for interrogation from the police? Previously to listening to

“SERIAL”, it is understandable to obtain the opinion that he knew where he was but since he was guilty,

he simply just wanted to keep his mouth shut. Yet that opinion can be shut down due to Adnan’s behavior

staying consistent and non worrisome before and after Hae’s death. Throughout “SERIAL” Koenig spoke

to people who believed that Adnan was a very good kid and was just like your ordinary high school

teenager. After Hae and Adnan broke off their relationship, it is expected for anyone going through

heartbreak to be distressed, which is seen in both of them through Hae’s journaling about interactions

with Adnan and her emotions. And like any other break up, both Adnan and Hae learned to move on to

other people, Adnan even sooner than Hae as he had multiple girlfriends who took up his time. Due to

Adnan’s inability to remember his normal day on January 13th and his normal habits and relationships

after Hae work as factors to prove Adnan’s innocence.

Adnan did not get a fair trial in court due to strong racial and religious tensions. Sarah Koenig

was curious as to how the atmosphere was during Adnan’s trial so she brought it upon herself to interview

one of the jury members and report her findings to the “SERIAL” podcast. The jury member that was

interviewed shared their strong beliefs against Adnan portraying their ideals against his race and religion

that he presented. The person interviewed explained how they had a personal negative encounter with a

Muslim man who cheated on their very close friend, which made them have a dislike against the entire

Muslim race. This person then brought their own beliefs into the case with Adnan and assumed that since

his a Muslim that he is guilty. Additionally, Koenig explains in “SERIAL” that as soon as the trial begun

and the prosecutor began to explain the suspect (Adnan), the first words that came out of their mouth was

that Adnan was a Muslim. This was not used from the prosecutor in a positive manner, yet in a way to

bring his race and religion into play for the jury and allow them to obtain their own stereotypes about him

even before they get to know anything at all. For people unlike the already decided racist jury member
who Koenig interviewed, the primary usage of the word Muslim to describe Adnan had strong potential to

tip other jury members over into thinking that Adnan was dangerous. Interestingly enough, this goes

against the 14th Amendment which protects everyone under “equal protection under the law” due to his

Muslim background being used against him right at the start of the trial. Curiosity strikes the mind of

many people when thinking that maybe if Adnan had different jury members who were able to overlook

his race and religion that he apparently is now “defined by”, maybe he could’ve had a fair trial and gained

his innocence for an act of murder he did not convict.

The most crucial point to understand about the trial against Adnan Syed and why it was

wrongfully convicted is that the weak evidence collected is not enough to prove Adnan, or anyone for that

matter, guilty of a murder. In court, the prosecutor believed that they had strong evidence of the call

records from both him and another man named Jay Wilds, a man who plays a significant role in giving a

testimony for Adnan’s case. Interestingly enough, with a deeper look into the locations and the times of

the calls, Sarah Koenig is about to report on “SERIAL” that only 4 of the multiple calls on the log support

Jay’s testimony of Adnan’s murder timeline. The “big hit” that the opposing side believed that they had

against Adnan proved to not be as supportive of their case as they sold it to be. In addition, unlike many

other crime or murder cases, many aspects of the scene were not tested for DNA. “SERIAL” reports this

as a big issue in the conviction of Adnan being guilty for murder due to lack of test results to even prove

that he touched her body or any of the surrounding materials laying next to her buried body. Had the

materials been brought into testing and Hae’s body received a proper autopsy, then the issue would be no

longer up for debate due to strong clarification of somebody’s DNA being seen pulled up from various

points in the crime scene. Also, another large factor that can be used to support Adnan’s innocence is an

alibi witness, Asia McClain who saw him and had a conversation with him in the library during the time

Hae was suspected to be murdered. In “SERIAL” it was explained that there were complications with

Asia due to Adnan’s first lawyer’s unwillingness to bring Asia into court as well as Asia feeling the need
to take away her accounts, yet there is still a letter written to Adnan from Asia during the time when

Adnan was being questioned. The letter overall concludes that Asia believes he is innocent and questions

why he never used her name in the first place as an alibi, which is more solid information for Adnan than

was ever used against him. Finally, one piece of information that should be taken into consideration by

anyone who decides to formulate an opinion on Adnan and his conviction, is the timing of the murder and

how clean it all was. Sarah Koenig and a friend were interested in the timeline that Jay presented to the

police so they decided to follow it and see how well it matched up. From destination to destination giving

the alotted time, Koenig and her friend found that the murder had to happen within 21 minutes exactly

with everything going at the fastest pace possible for the murder to happen as it was recorded and testified

against Adnan as. For a highschool student who has not shown violent behaviors, it is very difficult to

believe that he would be able to murder somebody in 21 minutes having to travel miles away from his

school to do so and make it so clean that there is lack of evidence and DNA to support he is guilty. Many

things in the case against Adnan were not even tested and the information collected to be used against him

is not enough to decide if anyone is innocent or guilty.

“SERIAL” does a very good job in explaining that one day can change everything for anyone and

it’s difficult to think that maybe that one day was yesterday, today, or maybe tomorrow and due to the

lack of sufficient memory a person is able to remember, it would not be long until you forget the little

details of your whereabouts and habits. For Adnan, he forgot the details of one of the most important days

in his entire life but at the time, since he was uninformed that on that day, his ex-girlfriend was going to

be strangled, he treated January 13th as any normal day and forgot about it in weeks after like any other

normal person would. Adnan was faced with more adversity when he was brought to trial and was

presented to a racist jury who strongly opposed his religion and race as a Muslim man. The opinions from

the jury gave Adnan a very unfair trial. Yet neither of these factors can make up the issue that the

information used against Adnan in court was very weak and most were not fully correct and just to begin
with, which would’ve made it hard to prove anyone guilty for murder. Since the colonial times, the legal

systems made leaps and bounds in their improvements upon the ruling and the structure, yet cases such as

Adnan Syed’s help to show there are many more issues to overcome before we can find the true meaning

of justice.