re: "Serial" Podcast Discussion Thread...SPOILERS

quote:

---

Again, you are taking one piece of evidence and working to cast doubt on Adnan's guilt.

---

quote:

---

Any discussion of this case always has to be two-fold:

1.) Did Adnan kill her?

2.) Should he have been convicted based on the evidence presented.

The likely answer to #1 is that he did based on the fact that there is circumstantial evidence backed up by the inexplicable fact that Adnan was not able to easily account for his whereabouts within the small window in which the murder was supposedly committed. Add to that the fact that the guy that hung Adnan was Jay and Jay's story, as problemicatic as it has been in some aspects, is essentially backed up in general because he knew where Hae's car was located.

For Jay's story to be completely bogus, the cops would have had to actively work with him to frame Adnan including feeding Jay as to where the car was located.

Now, was the case strong enough to get a unanimous verdict based on hard evidence? Hell no.

---

quote:

---

Now, was the case strong enough to get a unanimous verdict based on hard evidence? Hell no.

---

quote:

---

Just because a jury makes a rash decision doesn't make the evidence supporting that decision any more convincing. Besides, when we consider the information the jury did not know (Jay's plea deal; the extent of the inconsistencies; Urick's lies; police possibly coaching Jay's stories; impossible events presented as facts, etc.), which we can consider, it is clear that there at least reasonable doubt.

---

quote:

---

The murder of Hae Min Lee was investigated by Detectives William Ritz and Gregory MacGillivary. To date, three defendants who were convicted of murder pursuant to investigations by either Ritz or MacGillivary have since been released from prison, after it was determined that they had been wrongfully convicted.

---

quote:

---

Those defendants are Ezra Mable, Sabein Burgess, and Rodney Addison. As the civil complaint filed last week by Burgess aptly summarizes, the convictions in all three cases were

the result of the Baltimore Police Department’s policies and practices of pursuing wrongful convictions through reliance on profoundly flawed investigations. In a race to clear murder cases, the Department cut corners and rushed to judgment.

The problems in the underlying investigations ranged from simple incompetence — such as failure to interview obvious witnesses or to properly preserve forensic evidence — to intentional distortions of the evidentiary record — such as the fabrication of witness reports. In each of these cases, the investigators’ tunnel vision led them to either ignore or avoid evidence that contradicted their chosen theory of the case, and to withhold any exculpatory evidence they accidentally stumbled upon. Moreover, in both the Mable and Burgess cases, allegations have been made of deliberate wrongdoing by police officers who prioritized clearing cases over identifying the actual perpetrators of the murders they were investigating. Improving the detectives’ numbers became a higher goal than identifying criminals and building solid cases against them.

---