Adnan Syed - Serial / Undisclosed

charges dropped

"In a statement released late Tuesday morning by the Maryland Office of the Public Defender, the Baltimore City State's Attorney's Office announced it would not further prosecute the case based on DNA test results that excluded Syed from the DNA recovered from evidence." link

I am not sure what item was tested.
 
Items related to this case have been tested for DNA before, with the results being inconclusive. Meaning it didn't implicate Syed, but it also didn't identify any other likely suspect. I'm assuming this latest round is more of the same. It doesn't exonerate Syed, it just means that if he did commit the crime, he did it in a way to not leave traceable DNA on whatever item was tested.

I stand by my prediction that nobody else is getting charged for this crime. Would love to be wrong though. As it stands, we have someone who, with >95% certainty, murdered somebody and now gets to proclaim his innocence and re-open wounds for the Lee family. It's quite depressing.
 
boooeee said:
Items related to this case have been tested for DNA before, with the results being inconclusive. Meaning it didn't implicate Syed, but it also didn't identify any other likely suspect. I'm assuming this latest round is more of the same. It doesn't exonerate Syed, it just means that if he did commit the crime, he did it in a way to not leave traceable DNA on whatever item was tested.

I stand by my prediction that nobody else is getting charged for this crime. Would love to be wrong though. As it stands, we have someone who, with >95% certainty, murdered somebody and now gets to proclaim his innocence and re-open wounds for the Lee family. It's quite depressing.
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No.
 
angrysoba said:
Hmmm…. I could be wrong. There are two names that seem to be coming up in Twitter comments on this. Some people are asking if it is Jay, and others think no, it is likely Alonzo Sellars and Don. I don’t know who they are. But the claim seems to be that the police fed Jay the information they had, and he agreed to protest himself from prosecution.

I honestly have no clue now.
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Alonzo Sellers (Mr. S in the Serial podcast) is the man who found Hae's body in Leakin' Park, a maintenance worker for the city. His story is that he pulled off to the side of the road in the park to take a leak and discovered her buried there. He has a criminal record for indecent exposure. Much has been made of the fact that, in order to discover her body, he would have had to walk some 120 feet into the woods. But other than that, there's no real evidence tying him to the crime.

Don is Don Clinedinst who was Hae's boyfriend at the time of her murder. They worked together at Lenscrafters where Don's mother was the manager. There has been speculation that Don's alibi is weak (he was working at the time) because his mother might have been covering for him. In HBO's "The Case Against Adnan Syed" documentary, a former fellow employee stated that it would have been out of the ordinary for Don to be working on a Wednesday. But there is no evidence that has come out that in any way links him to the crime.

It could just be that the police ruled these guys out too early and didn't pursue any evidence that might have tied them to the crime. I don't think Don was ever seriously considered a suspect and they didn't collect DNA from them. Sellers was questioned and given a polygraph.

I am not sure if either one of them is the alternate suspects . . . another strong possibility being bandied about is a guy named Bilal Ahmed who was a prominent dentist and the youth leader at Adnan's mosque. He was also Adnan's mentor who bought Adnan his cell phone and also arranged hotel rooms for Adnan and Hae to have sex. Bilal is now in jail for grooming, sexually assaulting/raping young boys and patients at his dental practice, which fits in with the description of one of alternative suspects in the State's brief. It's almost certainly Bilal.

The brief mentions that this suspect -I'll just call him Bilal because I think it's obvious at this point- had motive to kill Hae. That's very interesting to me. Did Hae know about Bilal assaulting boys? Was Adnan actually a victim of Bilal and Adnan confide in Hae? Adnan has never indicated this even though it would likely help his case, so I don't know if all that holds water. There's also some stuff out there that Bilal was involved in the drug trade somehow . . . if Hae knew this (maybe because Jay was also involved and maybe even Adnan to some extent?), that could be a motive to get rid of her.

That's all speculation of course, but it's very interesting. I don't know how all the pieces fit, but hopefully we will find out relatively soon.
 
boooeee said:
Items related to this case have been tested for DNA before, with the results being inconclusive. Meaning it didn't implicate Syed, but it also didn't identify any other likely suspect. I'm assuming this latest round is more of the same. It doesn't exonerate Syed, it just means that if he did commit the crime, he did it in a way to not leave traceable DNA on whatever item was tested.

I stand by my prediction that nobody else is getting charged for this crime. Would love to be wrong though. As it stands, we have someone who, with >95% certainty, murdered somebody and now gets to proclaim his innocence and re-open wounds for the Lee family. It's quite depressing.
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Given that the prosecutors have said that the latest DNA testing excludes Adnan, I don't see how you can assign such high certainty. The investigation was botched and alternative suspects were improperly ruled out. The phone records are junk. There is really no direct evidence at all that points to Adnan's guilt. There is good evidence (the new DNA found on her shoes, a mixture of unknown or undisclosed contributors) that other people did it. The only evidence against Adnan, essentially, is Jay's testimony. Jay's testimony is highly questionable.

I think it's impossible to assign any probability at all in regards to Adnan's guilt. There's just no good evidence with which to do so. I think Bilal Ahmed could be a suspect. Some random, unknown person could be a suspect.
 
The obsessives on the Serial subreddit are pretty sure they have narrowed down the two alternative suspects to Alonzo Sellers and Bilal Ahmed. I've explained the Ahmed ID already. Sellers, apparently is Facebook friends with (and likely related to) people who have owned a house on the 300 block of Edgewood Road since 1998, which is where Hae's car was found. Another interesting tidbit I had forgotten: It was mentioned in the Serial podcast that Sellers' half-brother lived next door to Adnan when they were kids and used to throw the football around. Not sure it means anything but it is interesting.
 
xjx388 said:
Alonzo Sellers (Mr. S in the Serial podcast) is the man who found Hae's body in Leakin' Park, a maintenance worker for the city.
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CORRECTION: Sellers was a maintenance worker for Coppin University.
 
theprestige said:
I don't see how DNA testing can logically exclude anyone. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, after all.
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DNA testing can certainly exclude Adnan as the donor of the DNA. Which means they don't have enough evidence to convict him.

As you point out, it can't exclude him as the murderer. But given the complete lack of evidence in general and the prosecution's stated lack of confidence in the evidence presented at trial, they have nothing to prosecute him with at a new trial.

SPECULATION: The DNA found matches one or both of their alternate suspects. The DA did mention that a homicide prosecutor has been assigned.
 
Finally a good result for Adnan. Let’s hope he gets a good lawyer and achieves a multi million settlement.
 
xjx388 said:
Alonzo Sellers (Mr. S in the Serial podcast) is the man who found Hae's body in Leakin' Park, a maintenance worker for the city. His story is that he pulled off to the side of the road in the park to take a leak and discovered her buried there. He has a criminal record for indecent exposure. Much has been made of the fact that, in order to discover her body, he would have had to walk some 120 feet into the woods. But other than that, there's no real evidence tying him to the crime.

Don is Don Clinedinst who was Hae's boyfriend at the time of her murder. They worked together at Lenscrafters where Don's mother was the manager. There has been speculation that Don's alibi is weak (he was working at the time) because his mother might have been covering for him. In HBO's "The Case Against Adnan Syed" documentary, a former fellow employee stated that it would have been out of the ordinary for Don to be working on a Wednesday. But there is no evidence that has come out that in any way links him to the crime.

It could just be that the police ruled these guys out too early and didn't pursue any evidence that might have tied them to the crime. I don't think Don was ever seriously considered a suspect and they didn't collect DNA from them. Sellers was questioned and given a polygraph.

I am not sure if either one of them is the alternate suspects . . . another strong possibility being bandied about is a guy named Bilal Ahmed who was a prominent dentist and the youth leader at Adnan's mosque. He was also Adnan's mentor who bought Adnan his cell phone and also arranged hotel rooms for Adnan and Hae to have sex. Bilal is now in jail for grooming, sexually assaulting/raping young boys and patients at his dental practice, which fits in with the description of one of alternative suspects in the State's brief. It's almost certainly Bilal.

The brief mentions that this suspect -I'll just call him Bilal because I think it's obvious at this point- had motive to kill Hae. That's very interesting to me. Did Hae know about Bilal assaulting boys? Was Adnan actually a victim of Bilal and Adnan confide in Hae? Adnan has never indicated this even though it would likely help his case, so I don't know if all that holds water. There's also some stuff out there that Bilal was involved in the drug trade somehow . . . if Hae knew this (maybe because Jay was also involved and maybe even Adnan to some extent?), that could be a motive to get rid of her.

That's all speculation of course, but it's very interesting. I don't know how all the pieces fit, but hopefully we will find out relatively soon.
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Thanks for that. Yeah, I noticed later that Bilal is a name that keeps coming up as a suspect. I don’t remember him from Serial. Maybe he features more in the later podcast, Undisclosed, and TV show.

xjx388 said:
Given that the prosecutors have said that the latest DNA testing excludes Adnan, I don't see how you can assign such high certainty. The investigation was botched and alternative suspects were improperly ruled out. The phone records are junk. There is really no direct evidence at all that points to Adnan's guilt. There is good evidence (the new DNA found on her shoes, a mixture of unknown or undisclosed contributors) that other people did it. The only evidence against Adnan, essentially, is Jay's testimony. Jay's testimony is highly questionable.

I think it's impossible to assign any probability at all in regards to Adnan's guilt. There's just no good evidence with which to do so. I think Bilal Ahmed could be a suspect. Some random, unknown person could be a suspect.
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For me it pretty much all rests on Jay’s testimony. What are the main discrepancies that people find with his testimony? It seems strange that he knew where the car was (I know people say it is because the cops fed him that information, but do we have good evidence for that?)
 
It's interesting to catch up with this thread, then see what I wrote in it 6 years ago was pretty much exactly what I am still thinking about this case.

cow_cat said:
My personal view is that you can't convince me of his innocence, but you can't convince me of his guilt either. And only one of those is needed by law.
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There was a lot of junk and mud thrown on the Serial podcast, some stuff that doesn't mean anything either way, but there were three bits that stuck with me.

1) Jay's testimony shows clear signs of coaching by the police, to fit what they knew about the evidence they had. I am going on memory but I think that this kind of police witness coaching used to be legal (at the time of the original conviction) but now is not.

2) Adnan's defence counsel was inadequate.

3) What the hell was going on with the mobile phones? In 1996, mobile phones for teenagers were the latest expensive fashion accessory and a very personal item*. There are numerous parts of this case where phones are loaned to people for days at a time, and borrowed seemingly on a whim. This probably has nothing material to add to any of the trial data, but it always struck me as odd. Or is this a cultural thing that I am missing?

It's interesting to see the information and speculation that might implicate other actors and their reasons for killing and concealing Hae's body. But there are two discussions that might be in danger of crossing over each other - that of Adnan's guilty or not guilty state, and that of a 3rd party's guilty or not guilty state. And proving one is not necessary for disproving the other.

*How do I know this? Well, in 1996, I was a teenager with a mobile phone and there was no way I would let it out of my sight.
 
Yes, I agree of course that the law requires (or should require) a higher burden of proof than was probably met in this case.

So there are two separate issues. Did Adnan do it? Was the prosecution sound?

It is perfectly possible that the prosecution was unsound, but that Adnan was also guilty (in the vernacular rather than the strict legal sense).

So it comes back to whether or not Jay was coached. If, as cow_cat says, it was legal to coach the witness despite the terrible potential for abuse, it surely means that maybe the police had no problem coaching the witness.

Can anyone explain what, specifically, he was coached on? I heard that Jay changed his story, but are these changes particularly important overall? For example, did Jay appear to be coached when it came to finding the car? I seem to recall that there were a lot of police documents (posted by Ampulla?) showing the police searching high and low for the car, with notes written about how there were still no signs of it until they interviewed Jay, then suddenly they find the car. Is the suggestion that they were playing the long game and writing up these notes fraudulently? Were these records expected to be revealed or were they only after Serial came out, in which case it seems odd that the police covered their tracks to such a high degree when (IIRC) bent cops routinely get caught out for crude and sloppy abuses of the law.

Also, about phone calls. While the main issue seems to be about whether he was or was not in Leakin Park, the phone records do show phone calls to Hae's house in the morning of the day she disappeared. Apparently his story is Adnan wanted her to give him a ride, but clearly it also makes sense to wonder if he was calling her to arrange her murder.

Do we have much evidence of him previously calling Hae? In previous days? Was it a regular thing for him to request a lift from her? Did Adnan show much worry about her being missing? Did he help out with the search for her? Of course, those things might not be anything more than circumstantial, but they would lead people to wonder...
 
d4m10n said:
An atheist podcaster acquaintance (who is generally pretty woke) has been posting some surprisingly pro-guilty takes on this case:

https://www.facebook.com/thomaspodc...AYsKSUAsQeEp5FcycV9b5rbBJfz1jm5swHvMCGvyfRjDl
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Yes, Thomas Smith and Andrew Torrez have gone over this on Opening Arguments. I have to say, I pretty much agree with them that some of the arguments for Adnan's innocence seem merely to be picking holes at the prosecution which no doubt has holes, but there is almost no positive argument explaining who actually did it.

They say that the arguments against Adnan's guilt take on the appearance of conspiracy theorizing. Trying to find various inconsistencies, and using competing theories to argue for Adnan's guilt. The recently released motion seems a good example of this. By bringing up two suspects and raising all kinds of suspicions about them, while not naming them and while not giving any indication they worked together, or even if they are guilty, the whole exercise looks like there is no interest in finding out who actually killed Hae.

Does anyone have any actual theory about who did it? I mean, despite people saying Mr S, Bilal, Dan etc... it would make more sense to say Jay did it and framed Adnan with the help of the cops. Makes more sense except for the fact that why the hell would the cops do this if Jay owned up to it? I mean he owned up to being an accomplice. Why? Does this make any sense whatsoever?
 
catsmate said:
:rolleyes:
You made the claim, let's see your evidence for that assertion.
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Sure thing. And note that the below are not to establish legal guilt. And I know that any of these in isolation do not prove Adnan is guilty, but when you put all of this together, you're left with a very small probability that Adnan is innocent. Just catastrophic bad luck if he is innocent.

Adnan's cell - Over several weeks cell phone records, Adnan's cell pings the tower closest to the burial site exactly twice:
1. The day of the murder
2. The day after Jay was first arrested by the cops
Yes, late nineties cell phones are not GPS devices, but they don't work by magic either. If you believe Adnan is innocent, that is astounding bad luck for those to be the only two pings

His cell phone also pings the tower closest to where Hae's car was found on the night of her disappearance. More bad luck.

Adnan asked for a ride from Hae the day she disappeared. Adnan admitted this the day of the disappearance, and there is at least 1 witness to this as well. Once again, of all the days for Adnan to ask for a ride from Hae, one of those times is the day she goes missing.

Adnan later denies asking Hae for a ride, despite admitting to it when the cops contacted him the day of the disappearance. Not a good look for Adnan.

Jenn, with a lawyer present, confirms that Jay told her the night of the disappearance that Adnan killed Hae. This is a really tough one for Adnan, as you need to start weaving some pretty complicated "frame up" stories to make this consistent with an innocent Adnan.

Jay knew the location of the car, so he was involved. Adnan spent most the day with Jay. How did Jay get entangled in the murder of Hae while simultaneously hanging out with totally innocent Adnan?

Jay, who knew the location of the car, implicates Adnan in the murder (and himself as an accessory after the fact). Yes, Jay's story shifts, and yes he's probably lying about the details to protect himself and others.

Adnan has no solid alibi for Hae's disappearance and can't remember what he was doing, despite the police calling him that evening to tell him that Hae was missing.

Adnan called Hae 3 times, after midnight, the night before her disappearance. He does not call her pager any time after that.

Adnan wrote "i'm going to kill" on Hae's breakup note to him.

Adnan's fingerprint was found on the map book found in Hae's car.

Adnan was the ex-boyfriend, making him the most likely suspect.

An anonymous tip to the Crimestoppers hotline pointed the finger at Adnan.
 
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d4m10n said:
An atheist podcaster acquaintance (who is generally pretty woke) has been posting some surprisingly pro-guilty takes on this case:

https://www.facebook.com/thomaspodc...AYsKSUAsQeEp5FcycV9b5rbBJfz1jm5swHvMCGvyfRjDl
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I share that frustration. People are being deliberately slippery in their language about this and framing it as a "DNA exonerates wrongfully convicted man" story.

This isn 't a case where a rape kit, or material underneath the victim's fingernails, was tested and found to exclude Adnan. It's touch DNA on a pair of shoes that apparently matches 4 different people and Hae isn't even one of them.
 
angrysoba said:
Thanks for that. Yeah, I noticed later that Bilal is a name that keeps coming up as a suspect. I don’t remember him from Serial. Maybe he features more in the later podcast, Undisclosed, and TV show.



For me it pretty much all rests on Jay’s testimony. What are the main discrepancies that people find with his testimony? It seems strange that he knew where the car was (I know people say it is because the cops fed him that information, but do we have good evidence for that?)
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Jay's story, as developed through 3 or 4 police interviews, changed many details, some of which were impossible if you buy into the prosecution's timeline and/or put any credence into the cell phone records. Serial laid it all out pretty well here: https://serialpodcast.org/posts/2014/11/timelines-january-13-1999.

Then, when he was interviewed for The Intercept in 2014 and then for "The Case Against Adnan Syed" documentary in 2019, he changed his story even more significantly,
From "The Case Against Adnan Syed,"
Jay maintained to the filmmakers that on the day of the murder, he borrowed Adnan’s car to buy his girlfriend a birthday present. In the phone conversation, he contradicted past statements by suggesting he tried to return Adnan’s car at school, but couldn’t find him and left. Jay told the filmmakers that Adnan showed up at his house and that’s where he saw Hae’s body, not Best Buy as he had previously stated. He said that the idea of Best Buy came from the police. Jay told the filmmakers that Adnan asked him to procure 10 pounds of marijuana. Jay claims that once he acquired the marijuana, Adnan threatened to turn him in if he didn’t help bury Hae’s body. Jay said that he and Adnan left Hae’s car in a grassy lot on January 13th, where it remained until Jay took the police there on February 28th.
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The Intercept story and the documentary story are pretty consistent, the main difference being that in the documentary Jay says Adnan asked him to get 10 pounds (?!) of marijuana and in the Intercept story, he doesn't mention this detail but does admit to being a bit more than a petty drug dealer -

It wasn’t just like I was selling a nickel bag here and there. At the time, this was Maryland in the ’90s, the drug laws were extremely serious. I saw the ATF and DEA take down guys in my neighborhood for selling much less than I was at the time. And they were getting sentenced to three and five years. I also ran the operation out of my grandmother’s house and that also put my family at risk. I had a lot more on the line than just a few bags of weed.
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But as far as I can see, he has never backed down from the basic story that Adnan showed him Hae's body in her trunk -what has changed is the whole timeline and locations of everything. I just don't think any conclusions or certainty can be drawn from his story because fundamentally, he was scared of getting busted for drugs and scared of involving his grandmother in the drug operation he was running. I can see him feeding the cops what they want to hear as long as they didn't pursue any drug charges.

And yeah, the car . . . The only thing I haven't seen fully explained with proven facts is how he knew where Hae's car was. There are several possibilities:

1)Adnan killed Hae and Jay helped dispose of the body, as he maintains.
2)The police had already found the car and fed that information to Jay.
3)Jay killed Hae himself (she knew about his drug operations and threatened to tell?).
4)Someone else killed Hae; Jay knows/was involved and is protecting that person out of fear. There's speculation that Bilal was also involved in the drug operation and that this was motive for him to kill Hae -it makes sense if Adnan and Hae had information about both the drug operation and Bilal's grooming/assaults . . . but again, total speculation based on threads of information.
5)Jay happened to see Hae's car parked while driving in the neighborhood; it was very close to the school. Then again, the car was found in a grassy parking lot surrounded by row houses . . . doesn't seem very likely. Then again, it's a good place to do drug deals.

There's lots of speculation on this fact but no solid info that explains it other than what Jay himself says . . .if you believe him.
 
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