Why Adnan is Innocent: Wrongful Conviction in the Case Against Adnan Syed

Twenty years ago Hae Min Lee was murdered. She was strangled and left in Leakin Park. Her ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, was convicted of her murder a year later. The only thing that lead the police to Adnan was a testimony from his friend, Jay Wilds. Wilds’ testimony was full of inconsistencies and the whole case felt fabricated. This led the public to believe Syed was wrongfully convicted. Recently, in 2014, the Serial podcast was started up. It brought up all the murky parts of Syed’s case and shined a light on them to make the public aware. It inspired many more podcasts and even granted Syed another trial; which still concluded he was guilty in 2019. Serial was a revolutionary thing; It was so powerful that it made thousands of people care about this case and this man they never heard about. It brings up the reasons why Adnan is innocent without a doubt. This essay discusses the reasons such as Jay Wilds in his entirety, the condition of Hae’s body, and improper, unethical care from the police force, which prove Adnan Syed’s innocence.

The reasons to prove why Adnan Syed is innocent

Jay Wilds was the sole purpose Adnan Syed was convicted. He was the one who pointed the finger at Syed saying he was responsible for the death of Hae. In episode one of Serial, Wilds states that him and Syed went shopping and that Syed stated he was going to kill Lee. Wilds provides the police with a whole story about how Syed killed Lee, then proceeded to call him to have him pick him up from Best Buy. That is where he supposedly showed Wilds the body of the young Hae Min Lee in the trunk of her own car: dead. Wilds then says Syed told him to take him back to his track meet at school for an alibi. Soon after they buried her body together at Leakin Park. This is Wilds’ base story. However, minor details in his story seem to change with time. His story develops as the police departments story develops. With each piece of new evidence, Wilds has something to change or add to his story. Jay is the most mysterious part of this case. First off, he got practically zero repercussions for allegedly helping bury a body, but Adnan gets life in prison. Jay is an accomplice to murder, yet he isn’t treated like one in the slightest. However, if Wilds is lying, there has to be a reasoning for it. The only reason Wilds’ testimony was deemed credible was due to phone logs. Those same exact phone logs though were later found to be inaccurate, but wasn’t noted in court because of what can only be seen as lack of care. The police department also received anonymous phone calls saying the police should take note of “the ex-boyfriend.” This must be a friend of Wilds. Jay could be covering for someone else, maybe even himself. He has to know the person who really did this in order to have all these details. It seems like one elaborate frame job. Adnan Syed was the perfect suspect to pin this on, they could use his unstable alibi against him. They could use his connection with the victim against him too. Jay Wilds is a framer; Adnan Syed is innocent and he is the victim.

Liver Mortis is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as, “hypostasis of the blood following death that causes a purplish red discoloration of the skin.” It turns the body purple on whatever side of your body is closest to the ground. It takes eight or more hours to take effect. If the body is moved, the purple spots stay, but some move very slowly. This allows you to know if a body is moved. All of this is brought up in an episode of Crime Junkie: What Serial Didn’t Tell you. Lee’s body was was purple on her face and legs. This signifies that she was left face down and flat for over eight hours. You can’t put the body of an athletic teen flat in the trunk of a Nissan Sentra. She would have to have been in the trunk of her car for more than eight hours too, which is not possible if Syed was seen at school later that day. Lee’s time of death was 2:36PM. She was last seen at 2:15PM. Adnan was seen in the library after school by multiple witnesses at 2:40PM. That gives zero time for Hae’s body to develop the Liver Mortis it developed. When her body was found in Leakin Park, she was lying on her right side, but the pools of purple were still on her face and legs. She had to be somewhere else for eight hours when she initially died for that to even possibly happen. Those eight hours fit nowhere within the timeline of Adnan Syed’s.

Racial profiling has a very common association with wrongful conviction. Adnan Syed is a muslim man. The police pulled Syed’s file before Syed was even considered a suspect. This was probably due to the fact that he was muslim. The case is full of so many carelessly disregarded facts. Multiple things should have been of significance to the police department on finding the murderer of Hae Min Lee, but were neglected and tossed to the side in order to further pursue Adnan as the suspect. There was a rope found at the crime scene that was never even tested. It could have been the murder weapon and could have had vital DNA on it. Lee’s car was completely clean and showed signs of being hot wired. The police never even looked into the possibility of someone hot wiring her car thought. A year before Lee was killed, a girl from the same school was strangled and left in the woods too. The man that killed that girl years ago was the out around the time Lee was murdered.

Another suspect could have been Don. Don is a man Hae was seeing shortly before she was killed. He has very suspicious behavior including: having missing work records for the day Lee was killed, but then magically having them. The manager that provided an alibi for Don was his mother and her girlfriend. Also, the job Don said he was working never even existed. He is way more suspicious than Syed, but he is a white man, so he wasn’t given any further investigation. Adnan Syed was victimized by the Baltimore Police department. He was an innocent man with an unstable alibi so they threw everything they could into making him seem like the murderer instead of doing their actual jobs.

Is Adnan Syed guilty or innocent: conclusion

References

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