So, Jay has finally spoken. But, not to Serial. The Intercept managed to land an exclusive with him and, man, he's either playing a really long game himself, or Adnan is.
Big chunks of that don't nearly add up with anything he told the police in his interviews, so I'm not buying it for a second. This isn't to say that I think it can be proven completely that Adnan is innocent, but I have a really tough time believing someone who still can't get their story straight. And I don't buy his explanation as to why he lied to the police.
I am a firm believer in serendipity- all the random pieces coming together in one wonderful moment, when suddenly you see what their purpose was all along.
They're doing three parts! So mean. I liked how he described Sarah's lips twitching with nervousness when she showed up in the ambush at his home.
It definitely puts the fact that this was a real even populated by real people that was essentially made public for our entertainment. And it seems as if Sarah wanted to straddle the line between journalist, and whatever it is Truman Capote turned himself into to get an ending to In Cold Blood.
Here's hoping the next serial, already paid for by listeners before the descent of the final three episodes, isn't about a crime at all.
Now that all three parts of Jay's interview have been published, we've got a piece by Rabia Chaudry, the friend of the family who brought the case to Sarah K's attention.
Is there still a case against Serial's Adnan Syed after Jay Wilds' interview? by Rabia Chaudry, The Guardian Jay Wilds was the key eyewitness in the murder case against Adnan Syed, which Sarah Koenig explored in the course of her podcast-gone-viral Serial. I’ve known Adnan for many years, and I have long believed he was wrongfully convicted in the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee because of Wilds’ testimony.
So I was simultaneously ecstatic and enraged while reading Wilds’ interview about the case in The Intercept on Monday and Tuesday.
When I brought Adnan’s case to Sarah Koenig, I figured that she would discover in the course of her reporting what I already knew to be true: it was Wilds’ statements, which changed repeatedly between police interviews and trial testimony, that tied Adnan to the murder of Hae Min Lee on January 13, 1999. Nothing else – no forensic evidence, no history of violence, no other witnesses – led to Adnan’s conviction. Only the testimony of a man whose story continues to change led to Adnan’s imprisonment.
Nearly 15 years ago, the prosecution argued to the jury that it should ignore the “inconsistencies” in Wilds’ statements - that the “spine” of his story remained the same. But with his interview yesterday, Wilds broke that spine, and possibly the state’s case with it.....
So, a legal blogger has an interview with DEIRDRE ENRIGHT, the UVA law professor and director of UVA's Innocence Project, who was featured on Serial (and who, let's face it, really needs her own podcast): http://insidecville.com/city/enright-1-5-14/
The Intercept appears to be going for jugular on Serial and Sarah Koenig with the first part of their interview with the prosecutor from the case, Kevin Urick. Frankly, the preamble reads more like an opinion piece and while Kevin Urick was certainly very prepared for this interview, they don't seem to challenge him much, nor state when/if they verified any of his claims. The most important claim being that Koenig's criticism of the cell phone records are invalid because cell phone tower technology from the 90s did not allow calls to be bounced from overloaded nearby towers to higher capacity towers further away. In other words, if cell records show a call is coming from the park where Hae was buried, he claims that the cell phone had to have been in the park at that time. Pretty bold claim that, if true, really does call into question some of Koenig's methodology: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/01/07/prosecutor-serial-case-goes-record/
Part 2 of The Intercept's interview was supposed to be published today, but I guess it's been delayed.
These things always make me feel played. Like the websites get hits and Koenig keeps the Serial brand name in the public and everybody gets super-psyched for season 2!!!!
There's a full on meltdown happening at The Intercept. Dozens of corrections have been made to the initial interview with the prosecutor, the authors of the piece are childishly insulting their critics on Twitter and it appears that The Intercept is declining to publish part 2 of their interview. What a mess.
So, there's a new podcast out on the Syed case. It's called "Undisclosed: The State v. Adnan Syed”. It might be a stretch to expect impartiality because it's hosted by lawyer (and Syed family friend) Rabia Chaudry with two other lawyers, Susan Simpson and Colin Miller. This promises to be more of an investigative podcast than a narrative one, as Serial was.
I think one of the unintended consequences of making entertainment out of real lives a la Serial is that people might end up feeling as I do, like I'm burned out on the case and don't feel like hearing any more.