
Appeals Court Upholds New Trial for Subject of 'Serial' - coloneltcb
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-29/appeals-court-upholds-new-trial-for-subject-of-serial?cmpid%3D=socialflow-twitter-tictoc&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_content=tictoc&utm_source=twitter
======
rogerb
Much like the Steven Avery case, this case was poorly prosecuted and defended.
The case the State brought was unlikely that what actually happened. In the
Steve Avery case there was a healthy dose of the police 'enhancing /
fabricating' evidence and witness tampering, here it was mostly witness
tampering and prosecutorial and defense 'issues'.

If you believe Adnan is guilty - he goes free because of poor prosecution and
defense; If you believe Adnan is not guilty - he spend years in jail for a
crime he didn't commit - because of poor prosecution and defense.

:(

~~~
Kylekramer
What was poor about it? All my research into the case show that the
prosecution was fairly above board and comprehensive. Syed had motive, means,
and opportunity. There was physical evidence, a pattern of Syed lying to
police and a confessing accomplice who had information the police didn't.

Real tragedy in this case how the justice system can be so easily manipulated
by the media.

~~~
p49k
There was no physical evidence in the case.

~~~
Kylekramer
Syed's fingerprints were in the victim's car, no other suspects were.

~~~
p49k
His fingerprints were on a map in her car. He was her boyfriend, so it’s no
surprise that some of his fingerprints would be there. It has no actual
connection to anything related to the murder.

I spent some time looking into this case as well and came to the conclusion
that there is simply not enough information to definitively conclude anything,
and that people seem too eager to take several leaps of faith to assume he’s
guilty. He very well may be, but it isn’t close to being proven beyond a
reasonable doubt. Every piece of evidence used to convict him is sketchy in
some way.

~~~
Kylekramer
The mind can always come up with an innocent explanation if it wants to see
that. He had been an ex-boyfriend for nearly a month, and no other suspects
had fingerprints in the car.

Not sure how you believe people are too eager to see him as guilty when the
only reason anyone knows about him is a campaign to free him.

~~~
p49k
I don’t think he’s innocent, I think there’s not enough info, and people are
being intellectually lazy in proclaiming him guilty. It’s a common and
dangerous trend in the US and I think it’s one of the reasons why so many
innocent people are wrongly convicted.

It is absolutely ridiculous to claim the fingerprints have significance.
Fingerprints on a weapon, or her clothes, or even the trunk or door handles
are evidence. Fingerprints on a map are meaningless when he had probably been
in her car dozens of times before as her boyfriend.

~~~
Kylekramer
I think it is equally intellectually lazy to throw up your hands and claim
solipsism in a murder case, particularly when there is a lot of compelling
evidence.

The real significance of the finger prints isn't that Syed's were there, but
that they were there and no other suspects were. Someone with murderous intent
was in that car, and the evidence shows that Syed was at least recently in car
while all other suspects have no evidence that they were.

~~~
Sangermaine
What's intellectually lazy is that you're clearly approaching this from the
assumption that Syed is guilty and demanding proof that he isn't.

The American system is founded on the exact opposite principle: the State must
prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Syed is guilty. Syed doesn't even have to
show that he is innocent, just that the State can't prove his guilt.

In the case of the fingerprints, as many other posters have pointed out, he
was the victim's boyfriend and so had been in her car many times. The presence
of his fingerprints in her care is therefore neither surprising nor evidence
of guilt. It just shows that at some point he was in her car, which already
know was true many times.

It's not for Syed to explain away the fingerprints, it's for the State to
explain how it proves beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed the murder.
Despite your numerous erroneous assertions to the contrary, the evidence
presented by the State is extremely weak and circumstantial, and testimony of
their key witness demonstrated to be extremely unreliable.

Not to mention your assumption that it MUST be one of the listed suspects, and
since their fingerprints weren't there it must be Syed. It's possible the
killer was an unknown person. It's possible one of the other suspects wore
gloves or some other protection against fingerprints. It's also possible Syed
was the killer, but the fingerprints being in the car are not in any way proof
of that because, as noted above, their presence is to be expected.

Yours is precisely the kind of mindset the entire system is set up to avoid.
Thankfully people who actually know the law and have gone over the evidence
haven't approached this question with your attitude.

------
wwv25
Jay knew where the car was.

~~~
btilly
Do we know that?

One of the many eye-opening things in
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH_nP8pX4Fg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH_nP8pX4Fg)
is that during a long questioning session the police will often introduce
facts about the case to see if you recognize them, then forget that they did
so, then hours later ask a different question and your knowledge of the facts
that you were previously told BY THE POLICE is now evidence against you.

This happens frequently enough that I would want to know that an independent
third party reviewed tapes of all questioning of Jay before concluding that he
in fact had previous independent knowledge of any fact about the crime.

~~~
e40
Yeah, like the child sexual abuse trials of the 80's. The children were fed
facts that were later presented as information in the trial obtained from the
children.

I do think this is the central question the retrial should deal with.

~~~
btilly
Children in particular are very suggestible. We had to learn how to question
them without eliciting the response that we are priming them for.

------
CodeTheInternet
How do articles like this pertain to Hacker News?

~~~
pwthornton
This case involves two things that are very interesting for this audience:

1) Cell phone data was used as evidence to convict him. It later came out that
at the time it wasn't that accurate and that the prosecution misled the jury
about it (perhaps based on the prosecution not understanding the data either).
Also of interest was how much trouble the judge, prosecutors and jury had with
making sense of this data. Cell phone location data is way better today, but
when this kind of data first became available -- much like DNA evidence --
juries have trouble making sense of it.

2) This trial is also interesting from a DNA evidence perspective. A lot of
people feel that DNA evidence makes a case ope and shut, but everyone involved
with this case was purported to be friends. So, what does some small amount of
DNA evidence mean in a case like this?

I find this trial is also interesting as we look at data from home AI
speakers. I get the sense that we may have a few trials like this coming up in
the future where the quality or type of data that a home AI speaker records is
misunderstood, and it leads to bad evidence being shared.

