Putt-Putt Quanpadung

Mrs. Hunt

AP Lang

December 12, 2017

Innocent or Guilty Essay

Is Adnan Syed Guilty or Innocent?

The murder of Hae Min Lee in 1999, has caught a lot of people’s attention. A reason for

all the attention is because of a well-produced podcast called Serial. Over the course of the

podcast, the host of the show, Sarah Koenig, unveils the story of Hae Min Lee’s murder and the

man that was charged and sentenced with her murder, her ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed. Adnan

Syed was convected of this murder in February 2000 by the state of Maryland. The main eye

witness in his trial was Jay Wilds, which the state based their case off of his believable story

involving the murder of Lee. Even though there are evidence as to why Adnan Syed is guilty, but

there are more credible evidence as to why he is innocent, like, the autopsy of Hae Min Lee’s

body, Asia McClain’s alibi witness, and the lack of physical evidence. Rabia Chaudry, an

attorney, shared Syed’s case files for renewed investigation, in which she lays out new details

that could prove the innocence of Syed.

At the trial in 2000, Jay Wilds testified that Syed showed him Lee’s body in the trunk of

Lee’s car and that he helped Syed bury Lee’s body in Leakin Park the night of January 13, 1999

at around 7pm. According to Chaudry, the autopsy report reveals that this scenario was

“impossible.” She stated that, “The autopsy says that after she was killed, she was lying

somewhere flat on her face for at least 10 to 12 hours before she was left in the park.” Because of

the autopsy it proves Wilds story untrue, and science does not lie.
 During this case, there was lack of circumstantial evidence to prove anyone guilty. There

was no physical evidence linking Lee's body to Syed or to the trunk of her car, and there was

none documenting that her body spent the first 7 hrs "pretzeled up in a trunk,” which proves

some part of Wilds testimony false. There was lack of soil evidence proving that Syed was at the

Park where Lee was buried. Wilds testified that after they buried Lee’s body, Syed drove Lee’s

car from the park to a street nearby and dumped it. But no soil from Leakin Park was ever found

in Lee’s car in tests conducted by the Baltimore Police crime lab. The police collected swabs

from Lee’s body, but never tested them for DNA, which is very suspicious, because DNA is very

important as it can reveal who the real murderer is.

The murder case of Hae Min Lee was mostly based on testimonies, more specifically Jay

Wilds testimony. Wilds’ inconsistencies and constant and compulsive lying with his stories

makes it less credible but no one questioned it. There was also lack of physical evidence to back

up Wilds’ claims. There was also no serious consideration of Wilds as a prime suspect. Wilds got

off very light for what he confessed to, but he might have been more directly involved in the

murder than he admitted during the trial. The police could have built more of a case against Jay

him, but did not. Jay let the police to Lee’s car, which was used to dispose the body, but still

claims that he was not directly involved with the murder. A lot of things seems to be going

against Wilds’ testimonies and his stories, but the court still went along with him and went

against Adnan Syed.

Asia McClain, a high school classmate of Syed, testified at his 2016 post-conviction

hearing that she was in the library with Syed after school during the time prosecutors said he

killed Lee at 2:36pm. McClain wrote Syed two letters about their time that day, reminding him

of it. Syed had given the letters to his original defense attorney, Cristina Gutierrez, but being the
bad attorney she was, she never contacted McClain, so she never got to testify at his original

trial, which was have been very helpful in proving his innocence. After Syed’s 200 convictin,

Chaudry spoke to McClain.

In conclusion, there is a lot of evidence backing up Syed’s innocence. The reasons stated

above are some of it, the autopsy of Hae Min Lee’s body, Asia McClain’s alibi witness, and the

lack of physical evidence.