Adnan Syed: Scapegoating Case Study

Adnan Syed: Scapegoat The case of Adnan Syed is a mysterious one, it all starts with the murder of a 17 year old girl from Baltimore County, Maryland; Hae Min Lee. On the afternoon of January 13, 1999 she disappeared, her body was later found in Leakin Park (a hotspot for dead bodies) cause of death: strangulation. Her ex-boyfriend ,Adnan Syed, was arrested later for the crime and in June 6, 2000 was sentenced to life plus 30 years in prison. The case on his story was mainly based from testimony given from his friend, Jay, who testified to helping Adnan bury Hae’s body. Adnan constantly insists that he had nothing to do with her death. Is Adnan Syed really guilty?

To begin with there is not enough evidence to classify Adnan is guilty, most
The next day she goes to the cops and tells them that Jay told her Adnan killed Hae. On February 28, Jay gets interviewed by detectives, he tells them everything he knows; how Adnan showed him the body and then leads them to Hae’s car, this proves that Jay was at the scene. But Jay's story changes, the next time he is asked by the detectives he admits to assisting Adnan with burying the body, he later tells Jenn that he needs to clean up the shovels and that he needs her help. These inconsistencies make it hard to believe that he is a solid witness, he doesn't change his story once but multiple times. He tells the Cops that he is sure the murder happened at the Best Buy parking lot and that Adnan later called him from a payphone there, he draws detectives a map of the location of the payphone but when you look through the blueprints and ask the primary and recent owners, no one has ever seen a payphone outside at the parking lot. Before we go any further we need to know the time of the murder, the state's timeline is from 2:15-3:30 pm, this is when Adnan went from Woodlawn High school to Best Buy and between all this still had time to kill Hae, the problem with this is that it's nearly impossible. Investigators Sarah and Dana tested the State's timeline, they accounted for the traffic of getting out of
One thing you should know is that Adnan’s phone pinged from a cell tower by Leakin Park, the way cell towers work is that if you are in the range of a cell tower, the one you are nearest to is the one that will connect. If you remember earlier I stated that Jay had Adnan’s phone at this time, and if you are wondering what reason there would be for Jay to have a grudge on Adnan, well remember Jay's girlfriend she is also Adnan’s best friend, and on top of that during a dance they were both crowned king and queen instead of Jay and her. While this would not give most people a reason to frame someone, it might have been to Jay. To many people Jay was always a very weird and mean kid while to others he was goofy, but there was an instance when he was talking to a friend of his and they started joking around, jay told his friend he “should to know what it's like to be stabbed” and took out his knife, his friend then said “no I don't want to know, why don't you?” and then Jay pretended to try to stab him to which the guy held his hand and they both began to wrestle. This puts Jay in a very tight spot, but even with this there is one evidence that looks especially bad for Adnan and that is the Nisha call. The Nisha call happens at 3:37 pm the afternoon of Hae’s disappearance and it puts Adnan with Jay which in turn collaborates with Jay's story and makes Adnan’s alibi that Jay had his phone invalid.