Tag Archives: serial

Serial: Evidence that Jay’s Story was Coached to Fit the Cellphone Records

Posted on by
336

There is one part of Jay’s story that has been bugging me for a while now. Jay claimed in his first police interview that, after dropping Adnan off at track, he went home to wait for Adnan to call to pick him up once practice was over. In Jay’s second police interview, however, and in his testimony at the first trial, his story changes. Jay claims that after dropping Adnan off at track practice, he went to Cathy’s house, where he hung out with Cathy and Jeff for half an hour or so, until Adnan called him to ask to be picked up.

But this story is obviously a lie. Moreover, it is an incredibly dumb lie, because it is easily (and thoroughly) contradicted by Cathy, who is a reliable and credible-seeming witness. According to Cathy, she got home around 5pm that day, and a little while later, Jay and Adnan showed up together. There is no mention whatsoever of Jay making a previous trip to visit her, while Adnan was at track, and in fact, according to Cathy’s timeline, it would have been impossible for Jay’s “first” trip to her apartment to ever have occurred. Even worse, it does not match the cellphone records. There is no way that Jay could have made a trip to Cathy’s after dropping Adnan off at track, not if the cellphone records (or the laws of space-time continuum) have even a shred of meaning.

So this bugged me. A lot. It was a lie that had no apparent explanation, and that made Jay’s story even more impossible and absurd than it already was. Most of Jay’s weird timeline-based lies have obvious explanations for how they evolved, but this one didn’t.

For background purposes, here is what Jay said during his first interview:

Ritz: What happens after you drop him off at school, is there come a point in time when you go back to school and pick him up?
Jay: Yeah, uh huh.
Ritz: How do you know what time to go back to school?
Jay: He called me on the cell phone.
Ritz: Do you recall what time he called you?
Jay: Um maybe like six forty-five, something like that.
Ritz: When he calls you at six forty-five, where exactly are you?
Jay: Ah I think I was at my house.
Ritz: You’re at home?
Jay: Yes.
Ritz: You leave home, you go back over to school to pick him up?
Jay: Uh-huh. (Int.1 at 11-12.)

And here is what Jay said in the second:

Ritz: Were did you drop him off at school?
Jay: In the front.
Ritz: Were do you go?
Jay: I go, I was on my way home, but then I stopped off at G[i]lston Park and ah, ah, I smoked another blunt before I went home. And then, I, I think I may have, may have gone yeah, I went to Cathy and Jeff’s. And [Adnan] called me from the cell phone there and then I left Cathy’s and Jeff’s to hang out. (Int.2 at 20-21.)

And here is why the lie about Cathy’s apartment makes no sense: Jay’s statement in the first interview matches the location data from the cellphone records, while Jay’s statement in the second interview does not. It is generally accepted that Adnan’s call for a pickup from track practice occurred at 4:58 p.m., and this call pings L654C — which would be completely consistent with Jay being at his house (well, one of his houses, anyway) at the time of that call:

Call pings L654C.

4:27 and 4:58 calls ping L654C.

As you can see, Jay’s house is easily in range of L654C. Cathy’s apartment, on the other hand, is absolutely not.

Yet in between the first interview and the second, Jay changed his story — despite the fact that Jay’s claim from his first interview, in which he said that he was at his house when Adnan called him to be picked up from track, is one of the only times that he actually managed to tell a story that matched the location data (even if his timing was about two hours off). So why, then, did Jay change his story in the second interview, to tell a version of events that was even more demonstrably false than his first story, and even more in conflict with the location data from the cellphone records?

Because the police told him to, that’s why. The police falsely believed that L654 was located three farther miles south than it really was, and so they made Jay change his story to match their incorrect location data.

Continue reading →

Serial: The Failure of the Prosecution’s Cellphone Theory, In One Simple Chart

Posted on by
134

The prosecution’s case against Adnan can be summed up in three words: Leakin Park Pings. Again and again, the prosecution argued (and is still arguing) that Adnan’s guilt can be shown simply from the fact that his cellphone pinged a cell tower in Leakin Park at the same time that Jay, eventually, told police that Hae had been buried. Based on this claim, the prosecution invited the jury to stack speculative inference upon speculative inference: that the phone pinging L689B meant the phone is in L689B, that the phone being in L689B meant that the phone was at Hae’s burial site, that the phone being at Hae’s burial site meant Adnan has the phone. Because, the prosecution asks, what are the odds that the cellphone would ping the Leakin Park tower at the same time that its witness would say that the phone had been in Leakin Park, with someone who was burying Hae’s body?

Well, I have no idea what the odds of that are, and neither did the jury. Because the prosecution never presented any evidence whatsoever concerning the possible locations from which a phone call could ping the Leakin Park tower. The jury was only informed that the burial site was a location from which the cellphone might ping that tower — but there was no mention made whatsoever to the thousands of other locations from which a call could ping that tower, too.

But the tenuousness of the prosecution’s argument is not due merely to its claim about the precise location of the phone within L689B. It is also due to its claim that the cellphone was even in L689B’s territory at all. Because if the tower pings were capable of demonstrating the tower range in which the cellphone was located at the time of a call, as the prosecution claimed, how come the tower pings gave the wrong location for 16 of the 22 calls for which the prosecution’s evidence showed the location of the phone at the time of the call? And if the tower pings are only accurate 27% of the time, according to the prosecution’s own theory of the case, then how can we possibly assume that the tower pings just happened to be accurate for the Leakin Park tower pings, even when they are inaccurate in the overwhelming majority of all other calls?

Below is a table showing the tower pings for each call in comparison to the prosecution’s claims about the location of the phone at the time of each call. As you go through the table below, it may help to refer to this rough map of tower ranges:

Edit Map 2-page1

Tower ranges show the territories for which the labeled tower is the closest tower/antenna. Note: This map does NOT correspond with the territory that a given cell tower’s signal may cover. It shows only the geographically closest tower for a given location.

Call

Tower

Alleged Location of Cellphone

Distance from Pinged Tower

10:45

(Jay)

L651A

Woodlawn High School (L651A)

Jay claims cellphone is in range of pinged tower.

12:07

(Jenn)

L688A

Jenn’s House (L654A)

Jay claims cellphone is five ranges east of pinged tower.

12:41

(Jenn)

L652A

Jenn’s House (L654A)

Jay claims cellphone is four ranges west of pinged tower.

12:43

(Incoming)

L652A

Jenn’s House (L654A)

Cellphone is four ranges west of pinged tower.

2:36

(Incoming)

L651B

Jenn’s House (L654A)

Jay claims cellphone is one range south of pinged tower.

3:15

(Incoming)

L651C

Jenn’s house (L654A), according to Jay’s testimony. Prosecution does not address this call in its statements.

Jay claims cellphone is two ranges south of pinged tower.

3:21

(Jenn Home)

L651C

I-70 Park’n’Ride (L689C/L689B)

Jay claims cellphone is two to three ranges east of pinged tower

3:32

(Nisha)

L651C

Forrest Park (L689A), according to Jay’s police statements. The prosecution avoids introducing testimony about location of Nisha Call at trial.

Jay claims cellphone is three ranges east of pinged tower.

3:48

(Phil)

L651A

Jay has no statements concerning the location of this call. However, under the prosecution’s timeline, the phone
is necessarily (at least) three ranges east of the pinged tower at time of call.

Jay claims cellphone is three ranges east of pinged tower.

3:59

(Patrick)

L651A

Jay’s police statements place phone at I-70 Park’n’Ride (L689C/L689B) or Forrest Park (L689A)

Jay claims cellphone  is two to three ranges east of pinged tower.

4:12

(Jenn)

L689A

Jay testifies that he does not
remember this phone call.

 

N/A

4:27

(Incoming)

L654C

Cathy’s house (L655A), where Jay goes to after dropping Adnan at track

Jay claims cellphone is two ranges east of pinged tower.

4:58

(Incoming)

L654C

Cathy’s house (L655A), where Jay goes to after dropping Adnan at track

Jay claims cellphone  is two ranges east of pinged tower.

5:14

(Incoming Call to Voicemail)

–

Incoming calls to voicemail do not
provide location data

N/A

5:38

(Krista)

L653C

No testimony as to location of phone at time of call

N/A

6:07

(Incoming)

L655A

Cathy’s house (L655A)

Jay claims cellphone is in range of pinged tower.

6:09

(Incoming)

L608C

Cathy’s house (L655A)

Jay claims cellphone is one range east of pinged tower.

6:24

(Incoming)

L608C

Cathy’s house (L655A)

Jay claims cellphone is one range east of pinged tower.

6:59

(Yaser)

L651A

No testimony as to location of phone at time of call, but based on 7:00 pm call, phone must necessarily be in Leakin Park (L689B)

Jay claims cellphone is two ranges east of pinged tower.

7:00

(Jenn Pager)

L651A

Leakin Park (L689B)

Jay claims cellphone is two ranges east of pinged tower.

7:09

(Incoming)

L689B

Leakin Park (L689B)

Jay claims cellphone is in range of pinged tower.

7:16

(Incoming)

L689B

Leakin Park (L689B)

Jay claims cellphone is in range of pinged tower.

8:04

(Jenn Pager)

L653A

Edmondson Avenue (L653A, L653C, L654A)

Jay claims cellphone is in possible range of pinged tower.

8:05

(Jenn Pager)

L653C

Edmondson Avenue (L653A, L653C, L654A)

Jay claims cellphone is in possible range of pinged tower.

9:01

(Nisha)

L651C

No testimony as to location of phone at time of call.

N/A

9:03

(Krista)

L651C

No testimony as to location of phone at time of call.

N/A

9:10

(Krista)

L651C

No testimony as to location of phone at time of call.

N/A

9:57

(Nisha)

L651C

No testimony as to location of phone at time of call.

N/A

10:02

(Yaser)

L698B

No testimony as to location of phone at time of call.

N/A

10:29

(Saad)

L651C

No testimony as to location of phone at time of call.

N/A

10:30

(Ann)

L651C

No testimony as to location of phone at time of call.

N/A

The result? Out of the 30 calls that were made or received on the day of Hae’s murder, there were 22 calls for which the prosecution’s evidence identified the location of the cellphone at the time of the call. Of those 22 calls, only six pinged the tower that covers the range where, according to the prosecution, the cellphone was located. Of those six calls, one occurred while the cellphone was indisputably, according to the testimony of several witnesses, at Woodlawn High School (10:45 am), one occurred while the cellphone was indisputably, according to the testimony of several witnesses, at Cathy’s apartment (6:07 pm), and four occurred while the phone was allegedly in Leakin Park and when Hae’s car was being ditched (7:09, 7:16, 8:04, 8:05).

But isn’t that rather odd? Why is it that the location data for the cellphone is only accurate when we either have multiple non-Jay eyewitnesses who could testify as to the phone’s location at the time of the call, or when the phone was at a location where it absolutely must have been in order for the prosecution’s case against Adnan to hold up?

Could it possibly be that, for the 7:09, 7:16, 8:04, and 8:05 calls, the investigators refused to accept Jay’s story until he gave them an answer that fit their theory of the case? And that for every other call that was not directly incriminating, the investigation did not bother with making sure that Jay’s story actually fit the narrative they were pushing? Because based on the prosecution’s theory of the case, the only apparent explanation for the cellphone records is that the towers pings magically became more accurate from 7:09 to 8:05 p.m., even though they were overwhelmingly unreliable for the rest of that day. Well, either that, or else the prosecution selected a narrative that happened to fit the cellphone records in a way that made Adnan look guilty.

The prosecution’s entire case has gone into a fatal loop. Why are the cellphone records accurate? Because Jay says so. Why is Jay’s testimony accurate? Because the cellphone records say so. Why are the cellphone records accurate? Because… and so on, and so on. Except for one teeny little flaw in that premise: the cellphone records do not actually match Jay’s testimony, and Jay’s testimony does not actually match the cellphone records. So how can two things that do not match one another verify the accuracy of each other?

In other words: instead of asking, “What are the odds that the cellphone would ping Leakin Park if the phone was not there?”, the question we should really be asking is, “What are the odds that the incriminating portions of the prosecution’s theory of the case conveniently match the cellphone records, when everything else does not?”

-Susan

Edit: I should note that the maps I am using present the prosecution’s case in the strongest light possible — I am giving them every possible benefit of the doubt with the idealized territory of L689B.

But that is not how real life works. I am no graphic designer, so you’ll have to forgive the MS Paint rendition, but below is a representation of the signal range for L689 (in red), based on a signal range of two miles. Also included is a representation of the signal range for L653 (in blue). There was no evidence presented at Adnan’s trial concerning the possible range of any of the towers, so I adopted the two-mile figure based on the conservative estimate often used by law enforcement. The radial lines in the southern half of L689 show the direction of the B antenna (“L689B”). Note that the majority of L689B’s signal range, based on the two-mile assumption (which would appear to be consistent with the closest-territory range of L689A and L689C), is not in Leakin Park at all, but in the neighboring territory.

L653 and L689 ranges - 2 mile radiusAnd here is a map showing an actual coverage map (h/t /u/gentrfam). Note that this map does not even show the extent of the overlap of these ranges, although it is a good illustration of the random nature (and noncontiguous blobs of coverage) that real life cell towers provide:

Serial: The Maryland Court of Special Appeal’s Unpublished Decision Denying Adnan’s Appeal in 2003

Posted on by
121

One of the legal aspects of Adnan’s case that Serial gave little attention to (no attention to?) was the outcome of Adnan’s initial appeal, which was rejected by an unpublished opinion in 2003. The parties’ briefs in that appeal have been available online (see here for copies of appellant’s brief and appellee’s brief), but the actual decision handed down by the court was not. As a result, although we knew that the Maryland Court of Special Appeals (CoSA) had rejected Adnan’s arguments (several of which appeared to have a strong legal basis, although might not have necessarily warranted reversing his connection), we had no way of knowing the court’s reasoning for its decision.

After jumping through a few bureaucratic hurdles, I requested a copy of the opinion from the Maryland archives, and it finally arrived last week. Unfortunately, I was also out of town for all of last week, so the opinion got a little waterlogged while it was hanging out in my mailbox. It’s still legible, albeit slightly worse for the wear:

Syed v State - MD CoSA Opinion - No. 923-00 - cover

Continue reading →

Serial: Why the Nisha Call Shows That Hae Was Murdered at 3:32 p.m.

Posted on by
348

In my previous posts on Serial, I’ve avoided writing about whether Adnan was responsible for Hae’s murder, and have focused instead on whether the state’s evidence showed that Adnan was responsible for Hae’s murder. (Spoiler: It doesn’t.) From a legal perspective, that’s the more interesting question. Moreover, for the most part, I don’t believe we can figure out what “really happened” — the state’s evidence was just too incomplete. The number of unknowns is so high that the existing record can easily support a dozen possible theories of how Hae was murdered, with no reliable way to distinguish which among them is most accurate.

At least for this post, however, I’m going to stray a bit from the legal theme, and make a proposal for what I believe “really happened.” I think that the best interpretation of the currently available evidence is that Hae was murdered at approximately 3:30 p.m., and that the Nisha Call was a pocket dial that occurred during the killer’s assault.

While there is (obviously) insufficient evidence to show this conclusively, I am reasonably comfortable in assuming that this is what happened, unless and until further evidence is made available to contradict it. Note, however, that this is only an explanation for how Hae was killed. I am not making any sort of claim as to who was responsible for Hae’s death, and there is no way to prove that with the evidence available. All I am arguing is that Hae was murdered at approximately 3:30 p.m., and whoever killed her was in possession of Adnan’s cell phone.

Continue reading →

Serial: An Examination of the Prosecution’s Evidence Against Adnan Syed

Posted on by
291

In previous posts, I’ve dissected both Adnan’s cell phone records and also Jay’s statements to the police and his testimony at trial. This post, rather than focusing on any single piece of the state’s case, is an attempt to assemble and review all available evidence that supports the state’s case against Adnan. If any readers think there is evidence that I’ve left off, please let me know — all reasonable evidence will be added. My goal is to have as complete a record as possible, with links to the available primary documents. Even for those of you who don’t agree with my analysis, hopefully it will be still be helpful to have a collection of the known evidence collected in one place.

Where relevant, I have also noted which of the three categories the state’s evidence falls into: (1) evidence that the prosecution could and did use against Adnan at trial; (2) evidence that the prosecution could not use against Adnan at trial, but somehow was able to get admitted at trial anyway; and (3) evidence that the prosecution could not use or did not have at the time of Adnan’s trial, but which we have now because it has been made available on Serial. That way, people can evaluate the case against Adnan in light of both the evidence that the prosecution should have been able to use at Adnan’s trial, and also in light of all evidence that is currently availability, regardless of its admissibility for trial purposes.

Summary of the State’s Case

There was no physical evidence linking Adnan to Hae’s murder. It should be noted that this was not because of any lack of effort on the state’s part; in developing a case against Adnan, investigators compared soil found on Adnan’s boots to soil samples where Hae’s body was found, looked for Adnan’s fingerprints in Hae’s car and at the crime scene, tried to match fibers and hairs found at the crime scene with Adnan’s hair and clothes. But all of that came up empty.

And by itself, that might not mean anything. Sometimes criminals are really careful about not leaving trace evidence behind, or just get really lucky. But that does mean that the state’s evidence against Adnan did not consist of any evidence that could show a physical link between Adnan and any of the crime scenes. Instead, the state built its case out of three main pillars: Jay’s testimony, Adnan’s cell phone records, and evidence suggesting that Adnan is the kind of person who could have killed his ex-girlfriend in a vengeful rage.

The first two points I have already addressed in detail (in posts outlining the lack of any objective basis for concluding that Jay’s testimony was credible; the contradictory and dreamlike nature of Jay’s statements concerning Hae’s burial; the indications from the transcripts of Jay’s police interviews that hist statement was coached by detectives; and a comparison of the data from Adnan’s cell phone records and the witness statements). While I have also provided a brief (well, sorta brief…) summary of those topics below, please check the prior posts for the complete discussion on those issues.

That leaves us with the third type of evidence in the state’s case against Adnan: evidence suggesting that Adnan is the kind of person who could have killed Hae. This category include evidence based on witness’s perceptions of an individual’s behavior or character, when that perception had been informed by the perceiver’s knowledge of that individual’s possible involvement in a crime. It includes, for example, evidence that is introduced to show that someone’s reactions to an event were not what his or her reaction “should have been,” or that the way someone had been acting was odd or shady, or that someone was “the kind of person” who might commit a crime.

And I’ll go ahead fully disclose my biases now: as far as I’m concerned, this sort of post hoc, perception-based evidence is the modern day successor to phrenology and tarot card readings. Because I don’t care what kind of person Adnan is or was; I don’t care if he stole candy from babies, or smoked a bowl of weed every morning, or if he bullied kids for their lunch money. I also don’t care if he pauses too long (or not long enough) when answering questions, or if he shows insufficient anger about being imprisoned, or if he was born a Pisces with Jupiter rising. None of that has even the slightest relevance to the question of whether he killed Hae. If Adnan had previously tried to kill someone he was in an intimate relationship with, or even used physical violence against them — well, I would care about that, that would have some relevance, but as far I know there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest anything along those lines. And by the same token, I don’t care what kind of person Jay is or was, either. I don’t care if he has a criminal record, I don’t care if he dealt drugs, and I don’t care if he tried to stab a friend because the friend needed to know what being stabbed felt like. (And I definitely do not care if he owned a rat-eating toad.)

So while I have tried to list all of the state’s evidence against Adnan in this post, I make no promises about giving any serious consideration to “evidence” consisting of things such as “I can tell that Adnan is a sociopath because he once described his facial expression to someone he was speaking to on the phone” is not going to make the cut. You are, of course, free to disagree with me on the significance of that kind of evidence. However, any time the state’s case is based upon a suggestion that Adnan was a “bad person,” and therefore could have been capable of killing Hae, I would encourage you to consider whether or not that sort of amateur psychoanalysis can truly serve as a replacement for evidence demonstrating that Adnan actually killed Hae.

Continue reading →

Serial: More Details About Jay’s Transcripts Than You Could Possibly Need

Posted on by
209

Full disclosure: this post is something of a cop-out, since I probably will not have time to write another substantive post until this weekend. But while I already addressed a lot of the oddities in Jay’s police interviews, in my previous post about Jay’s descriptions of how Hae was buried, people have been asking about  the rest of Jay’s transcripts. So even though, at this point, I am beating a horse that is extremely deceased, I have cleaned up some of my notes on the rest of Jay’s transcripts. But you’ve been warned — unless you happen to have an interest in the smallest details of Jay’s police statements, this post is not for you.

Also, I want to preface this by noting that, from the comments I have received on my previous posts about Jay’s questionable trial testimony, it would appear there is a large segment of Serial listeners who find all of this irrelevant and pointless. A common response seems to be, “Well of course Jay lied about everything — we already know that. But the fact Jay was never able to tell the truth about what happened does not mean that Adnan is innocent, it just means Jay helped Adnan kill Hae.” And I promise that I am getting to that; there is definitely an important discussion to be had about everything in the prosecution’s case that was not based on Jay’s testimony.

But the fact that Jay lied throughout all of the statements he gave cannot be dismissed as blithely as some people would seem to like. First, although Jay’s lies are often excused on the basis that they were only told  either to minimize his role in the crime, or to protect Jenn, that simply cannot explain the bulk of Jay’s lies. Yes, some of his lies do appear to have been directed at protecting Jenn, and that is an important piece of the puzzle. (And I would fully agree that all of Jay’s lies are designed to protect himself from being charged with a more serious crime.) But most of Jay’s lies are not about things that could alter his culpability for any crimes — in fact, Jay’s statements grow steadily more inculpating as his interviews go on. (Alhough, if anyone would like to theorize about why lying about Patapsco State Park was so crucial to Jay’s defense, please be my guest.)

Second, while it is true, like I mentioned earlier, that one witness’s fabricated testimony cannot be used to prove Adnan’s innocence, by the same token that fabricated testimony cannot be used to prove Adnan’s guilt, either. Because once you agree that Jay’s story is unreliable, inconsistent, and manufactured, then the only way to conclude that Adnan is guilty is to discard everything in Jay’s statements that is inconsistent with the theory that Adnan and Jay worked together to kill Hae (which is a lot of things to discard), and to also assume the existence of a whole host of additional facts that were not contained in Jay’s testimony, or anywhere else.

But once your theory of the case is based on accepting only those parts of Jay’s testimony that are consistent with Adnan’s guilt, and by speculating about the existence of additional sets of facts to which Jay has never testified — well, how is that any different from simply writing a piece of fiction? By using that approach to Jay’s testimony, it is possible to invent a narrative that supports the guilt of just about any individual connected to Woodlawn.

Continue reading →

Serial: Plotting the Coordinates of Jay’s Dreams

Posted on by
88

A few days ago, the transcripts were released from Jenn’s recorded police interview (from 3:45 p.m. on February 27, 199), Jay’s first recorded police interview (from 12:30 a.m. on February 28, 1999), and Jay’s second recorded police interview (from March 15, 1999). I’ve been trying to update my earlier post on how the witness statements compare to the cell phone records, based on the new information.

But it’s slow work. Because good god, Jenn and Jay’s statements are a complete train wreck. Trying to create a timeline out of their statements made me truly understand what Sarah Koenig and Dana Chivvis were talking about, in Episode 5, while trying to track Jay’s movements on the day of Hae’s murder:

Koenig: I’m trying to think of an analogy of what the uselessness of what we’re trying to do by recreating something that doesn’t fit, it’s like a– like trying to plot the coordinates of someone’s dream or something . . .

Chivvis: I think they call that a fool’s errand.

Because here are a couple of quick examples of what we’re dealing with from these transcripts:

Jay: [Adnan] wanted me to revisit the body.

Detective: And when did that conversation take place?

Jay: Um prior to Hae Lee’s death. (Int.1 at 27.)

And:

Detective: What happened after the conversation with the officer?

Jay: Um ah he ah he got kind of frantic and we had to go back and get the car, we went back and got the car and ah then we went back to my house. I gave him a shovel, gave him a pick. He ah.

Detective: When you go back to your house , who drives, drives Hae Lee’s car?

Jay: We didn’t have Hae’s car then.

Seriously now. What am I supposed to do with that? Adnan and Jay discuss revisiting Hae’s body, and this conversation occurs prior to Hae’s death? Jay and Adnan “went back and got the car” and went to Jay’s house, but then they didn’t have Hae’s car when they were at Jay’s house?

There are dozens of these chronological paradoxes in Jay’s police statements. (And just to make things even more fun, Jenn’s statements during her interview are equally incomprehensible.) As a result, I’m not even sure a meaningful comparison of the various police statements can be done at all — it’s completely impossible to set down a definitive narrative of “this is Jay’s story in the first interview” or “this is Jay’s story in the second interview,” and then look at the differences between them. Because the stories Jay tells in his police interviews have more continuity errors than a bad 90’s sitcom.

And all of these bizarre claims aren’t just misstatements or slips of the tongue that we’re talking about here. Or, if they are, then that alone is grounds for tossing out the entirety of what he told the police — because if that’s the case, Jay is so hopelessly confused that we cannot assume he actually meant any of what he said. If every chronology he gives might have been nothing more than another misstatement, how can we know that anything Jay says is “the truth”?

But of all the things that didn’t happen the way Jay says they happened, there is one thing that didn’t happen the most: his stories about how Hae was buried in Leakin Park. To get an idea of how irreconcilable Jay’s statements are, that is a good place to start.

Continue reading →

Serial: Why Jay’s Testimony Is Not Credible Evidence of Adnan’s Guilt

Posted on by
131

In a later post, I plan on expanding further on Adnan’s cell phone records and the related witness testimony, and discussing what we can reconstruct about Hae’s murder from the existing evidence. This post, however, is not about the evidence that we have. It’s about the evidence that we don’t have — and that’s evidence that Jay is telling the truth about Adnan’s involvement in Hae’s death.

Now, it’s possible that Adnan is still guilty of Hae’s murder, and that the state managed to get the right guy, even if they didn’t have much to go on. Possible. The fact that Jay is a completely incredible witness is not evidence that Adnan is innocent. But that doesn’t change the fact that the state’s evidence was based entirely on the uncorroborated testimony of a self-acknowledged liar with a motive to falsely incriminate Adnan.

The state has itself acknowledged that Jay was the alpha and the omega of its case against Adnan. At trial, the prosecutor told the jury, “Let’s talk about Jay [ ] because, clearly, this case hinges on his testimony” (Brief of Appellant at 40). But while the prosecution then went on to continually assert, at every opportunity, that Jay was a “credible” witness, there was simply no objective basis for believing that Jay was likely to tell the truth when he testified at Adnan’s trial.

I’m not trying to be hyperbolic here, or to exaggerate for effect. I know that’s a pretty expansive claim to make. But it also happens to be accurate. We know that Jay had every motivation to lie and no motivation to the tell the truth; had a demonstrated history of lying when it was to his own advantage; and lacked corroborating evidence in support of his claims. Even assuming that Adnan is guilty of Hae’s murder, there was still no objective reason to find Jay’s testimony on that point to be credible.

How can a thing like that be evaluated? Well, the credibility of a witness’s testimony — that is, roughly speaking, the testimony’s evidentiary value — is judged in reference to four basic factors. Those factors are sometimes formulated in different ways, or split into additional categories, but they  can be summarized as the following:

  1. Inherent Credibility. A witness’s general character for truthfulness and honesty.
  2. Bias or Interest. A witness’s motive to lie in a particular circumstance.
  3. Inconsistent Statements. Whether a witness’s statements have been internally consistent.
  4. Corroboration by Other Evidence. A witness’s credibility is enhanced when his testimony matches known evidence.

With those factors in mind, how does Jay’s testimony stack up?

Continue reading →

Serial: A Comparison of Adnan’s Cell Phone Records and the Witness Statements Provided by Adnan, Jay, Jenn, and Cathy

Posted on by
315

[Edit, 1/17/2015: In the two months since this post was written, substantially more evidence concerning the events of January 13, 1999, has been released. As a result, I have completely revised my opinion on numerous matters discussed herein.

This post has therefore been updated to add new and more accurate maps. However, I have not yet updated much of the accompanying text, and much of my current interpretation of the cellphone data is substantially different from what it was when this post was first written.]

Like everyone else in the world, I’ve been listening to Serial. For those who haven’t listened in yet, Serial is a weekly podcast covering the murder of 18-year-old Hae Min Lee, who was killed on January 13, 1999. Her ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, was subsequently convicted of first-degree murder and kidnapping, and is currently serving a life sentence. (And if you haven’t listened to the podcast yet, turn back now and come back when you have. Otherwise, the minutiae of these cell phone records won’t be interesting in the slightest.)

The evidence against Adnan was complicated and deeply ambiguous. That’s unsurprising — after all, there’s a reason his case was chosen to be the subject Serial’s first season. But while there’s much we do not know about the the investigation into Hae’s murder and the state’s case against Adnan, based on what the show has covered so far, and what has been made publicly available about Adnan’s two trials, there are many reasons to be unsettled by his conviction. Even for those who think Adnan probably did plot and carry out the murder of his ex-girlfriend — and there are plenty who do — it is hard to say that there wasn’t room for some very reasonable doubts about his guilt.

Legally, there was sufficient evidence to support Adnan’s conviction; he’s not going to win any appeals there. An eye witness — Jay, Adnan’s weed dealer and casual friend — testified to his guilt. But while the jury always has the right to determine whether a witness is telling the truth, it does not appear that, in this case, there was any objective basis for crediting Jay’s testimony against Adnan (as discussed in further detail at Serial: Why Jay’s Testimony Is Not Credible Evidence of Adnan’s Guilt).

Other than Jay’s testimony, the only evidence that Adnan had any connection with Hae’s murder came from his cell phone records. As a result, understanding what those cell records show, and do not show, is a highly significant part of the case. Provided below is a summary of the data from each of the 31 calls made to or from Adnan’s cell phone that day — including the time, who the call was to, the duration, and the cell phone tower that the call was routed through — and a summary of how that data compares to the testimony and statements given by key witnesses in the case.

A note on the significance of the location data: It should be stressed that the tower data — that is, the record of the tower and antenna that a call was routed through — provides us with a probabilistic (and not determinative) location for where each call was made or received from. Moreover, the maps below use an oversimplified division of likely cell tower territories based purely on distances between towers, and does not take other factors into account. The fact that any particular call may have been routed through any particular tower and antenna does not mean that the call was actually made or received from within the territory immediately adjacent to that tower/antenna; calls can be routed through towers other than the one they are closest to for any number of reasons, and two calls made from the exact same location, within minutes of one another, could end up being routed through different towers. As a result, it should be assumed that some of the 31 calls made from Adnan’s phone that day were made or received from a tower other than the one the phone was closest to at the time of the call.

Taken in the aggregate, however, the tower data is very useful for assessing the likely path followed by whoever had the cell phone that day. Additionally, by comparing the tower data against both the witnesses’ known events of the day, and with the movement of the cell phone as shown from the calls that occurred before and after, we can make a good prediction as to the accuracy of the tower data for each call individually.

As there was no testimony at trial concerning the actual ranges of these towers, the below maps assume a conservative tower range of approximately two miles.

Call 1.
Time: 10:45 a.m., January 13, 1999
To: Jay
Duration: 0:28

L651A

Call pings L651A.

Adnan Calls Jay to Ask if Jay Has Gotten a Present for Stephanie

Prosecution’s Story:

On the morning of January 13th, Adnan calls Jay from school, and then during his free period drives over to Jay’s house to pick him up. Adnan plans to kill Hae that afternoon, so he leave his car and cell phone with Jay, so that Jay can pick him up after the murder has been committed.

Adnan’s Story:

According to Adnan, he called Jay from school to make sure Jay remembered to get a birthday present for his girlfriend, Stephanie. Adnan and Stephanie are also close friends, and he did not want her to be upset if Jay forgot to get her something:

I kind of had a feeling that maybe he didn’t get her a gift. And I had free periods during school. So it was not abnormal for me to leave school to go do something and then come back. So I went to his house. And I asked him, did you happen to get a present for Stephanie? He said no. So I said, if you want to, you can drop me back off to school. You can borrow my car. And you can go to the mall and get her a gift or whatever. Then just come pick me up after track practice that day. (Episode 1.)

Jay’s Stories:

Jay says that, on the morning of January 13th, Adnan called him from school and then drove over to pick him up, and they go shopping together. In some of Jay’s statements, he claims that this was the first time he learned of the murder plan. In other statements, he claims he had learned of the plan the previous day. Although he sometimes also claims that parts of the murder were planned over the phone, Jay’s stories generally claim Adnan enlisted his help in carrying out Hae’s murder while the two of them were on a shopping trip together. However, he is inconsistent as to which shopping trip this was.

The Shopping Trip on January 12th: One of Jay’s stories involves Adnan and Jay discussing Hae’s murder during a shopping trip that occurred on January 12, 1999 — the day before Hae’s murder. Jay informs Jenn of Adnan’s plan to murder Hae, but she does not react to this news:

[I] went shopping with a friend of mine, an ex-friend of mine and ah, we ah, went to ah, ah, I just believe we went to Wal-Mart. . . . We had had a conversation. . . During the conversation he stated, um, that he was going to kill that bitch, referring to Hae Lee. . . .  Ah, I didn’t, I took it with contexts and stand out my inaudible. We went, he dropped, he returned me to my house ah, I paged [Jenn] um no I’m sorry. Yes I paged [Jenn], um, we went to the [ ] park. . . There I told her the conversation me and Adnan had had earlier that day. And her reaction was just about the same and then . . . Returned home about 10 o’clock, received
another call from Adnan. This time he had told me ah, that we’re gonna hook up tomorrow. And that was it for the 12th. (Jay’s Second Interview on March 15, 1999) (herein “Int.2”).

The Shopping Trip on January 13th: Jay’s other story involves a shopping trip that instead takes place on January 13th, before Hae’s murder. Adnan calls Jay from school (the 10:45 a.m. call), and then goes to pick Jay up at his house:

I believe [Adnan] called me first. Um, he probably showed up at about 11, a little after 11 , 11:30, 11, 11:30 (Int.2 at 5).

 

That morning [on January 13th] [Adnan] called me and we took …. we were going to the Mall. He asked me if I could do him a favor. . . [Adnan called my house] a little after ten, about ten forty-five, quarter to eleven. I woke …. that is when I woke up. I showered so it was about an hour before I left. Ah we left the house, on the way to the Mall he asked me if I could do him a favor. . . (Int.1 at 2.)

 

Jay also confirms, in response to a detective’s question, that Adnan “came to [Jay’s] house about quarter of twelve, [ ] about an hour [ ] after he called” (id.).

In his statements concerning the shopping trip on January 13, Jay’s stories about what mall he and Adnan went to are not consistent. He names two different locations:

[W]e headed toward Westview mall. Um, we did a little shopping together. (Jay’s First Interview on February 28, 1999) (herein “Int.1”).

 

We went to Security Square Mall. (Int.2.)

Continue reading →