Episode 6 Reflection

 Episode 6 of Serial

I am in agreement with my peers in finding this episode to be one of the most compelling thus far. Finally, we learn that Koenig has been holding a lot back from us, as she reveals several fascinating and controversial aspects of the case. One such bit that piqued my interest is the story involving Laura and the "neighbor boy". 

Although none of us could ever possibly know who is telling the truth in this situation, it is interesting to approach the case hypothetically with this new information. As it stands, many people likely do not trust Jay's testimony and remain convinced in Adnan's innocence. Yet, what if the neighbor boy really did, as Laura claims, see the body of Hae in Adnan's trunk? Likely, the case would have been closed much more quickly due to the second witness and "Serial" would have never been subsequently produced. A second witness would have changed the entire case. However, we are only left with more frustration and confusion. The neighbor boy continues to deny that he ever saw the body. If he's telling the truth, why then might Laura and her father have called the police? Adnan was already going to jail, why risk their reputation by lying about something like that? And if Laura is telling the truth, why might the boy have changed his story? 

Another interesting aspect of the episode occurs at the end when Koenig reveals much about her conversations with Adnan. It is obvious that she has a bit of soft spot for the guy, repeatedly claiming how he seems so "nice"and that she knows him better than some of her friends. They also discuss philosophy and human potential for a brief moment. Does every person have within them the potential to kill another human being? Are the people who get labeled as "murderers" those who simply succumbed to their inner Freudian impulses? 

A final interesting component about the episode is that Koenig seems to open up more to her listeners. We can hear the aggravation in her voice as she constantly tries to approach the dilemma from new angles. Perhaps one reason I felt the episode to be so powerful is that I found myself empathizing with the frustrated Koenig, who has spent a year of her life obsessing over this case. In a recent USA Today article, Koenig claims that all of the "media attention and online criticism" has caused her "great stress". After reading the article, I feel less convinced about Koenig's potential motivations to produce the series for entertainment purposes. After all, she seems less than thrilled about the fact she got spoofed on SNL. What do you guys think?

Link to article: http://college.usatoday.com/2015/01/31/sarah-koenig-still-searching-for-serial-season-two-topic/

Reflections on Episode 6 of Serial

Choosing a Side
I loved this episode. In stark contrast to the previous one, it was full of testimonies and suspense and ...essentially what hooks a listener. As per usual the nature of this episode and its role in the context of the series evokes an ethical controversy. The fact that we measure our interest in the case according to the allure of the content highlights the series' assumption as entertainment. Interestingly this very captivating episode occurred just after the dry, detail-filled cell tower episode. It is possible that in order to maintain viewership the podcast managers placed the content of the next episode accordingly.
There were many specific particles of evidence subject to scrutiny in this episode. For example, the ripped page of Lincoln Park the prosecution leapt on was actually devoid of Adnaan's fingerprint. Officers differ in their accounts of Adnaan saying whether or not he asked Hae for a ride. A prominent sticking point for Adnaan however is the "normalcy of the day". Receiving a call from an officer inquiring into Hae's location theoretically should have marked the day as anything but typical. Moreover, Adnaan refrained from contacting Hae directly through his phone, and wasn't able to convincingly justify this to Sara.
Some questions to consider:
Sara mentions that she held up some details in previous episodes; why is this?
Hae wrote a frustrated letter to Adnaan...where she cited he didn't accept her decision? "I'm going to kill" in pen. Aisha didn't see this on the paper they were passing in class.
Kathy may have possessed hindsight bias when she states that Adnaan was acting definitely odd and suspicious that day.
Racism question. Is it a question?
"It insults me to my core," says Adnaan. He is very vehement, and doesn't believe that someone could stoop to doing something like this when there were no suggestive signs before.
Hearing Adnaan, I'm personally positive he did not commit the murder.

Some Unconnected Serial Ramblings

In this post I’m going to try to stay away from the “whodunit” even though it’s incredibly tempting given the discussion Koenig is having in this episode is about the prosecutor’s case. Several things both in this episode as well as what I found online intrigued me this week: the first was the random point in the episode when Koenig muses about the fact that she has these “theories” on alternate possibilities of the day but that they all get shot down when she comes back to the Nisha call… I thought that the placement of this random side reflection was exceptionally random in the episode à like it literally just seemed like a tangent and a filler of space so I was left quite confused regarding why it was important. Additionally, it sort of set up the end of the episode which focused much more on Koenig herself and her relationship with Adnan than anything material to the case. While I understand that in storytelling it is important to build a connection between the reader/listener and the narrator I found myself quite confused as to why she felt this was necessary or of interest to the listener… At this point I found myself actually quite annoyed with the lack of information and the ratio between pertinent case-related discussion and filler side-note-tangent information.

This week I also did some research into articles and interviews done with members of Adnan’s family as well as Jay and there were a couple interesting things that really stuck out to me. The first was this comment made by a Judge who was in Adnan’s second trial, she states “I listened to the podcast and saw how this very intelligent young man [Adnan] manipulated the writer [Keonig]. The evidence was overwhelming. I can see how 16 years later he has regret that he wasted his life by planning and carrying out the murder of his girlfriend. Very sad indeed” (http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/dec/07/serial-adnan-syed-family-podcast-interview) Personally, this struck a cord as the judge was essentially saying that Adnan and Rabia were taking Koenig for a trip and that there was no question in her mind, as a judge, that he was guilty. Taken in conjunction with the statement from the producer of the show that we discussed a couple of weeks ago who stated that he thought Adnan was guilty as well I’m wondering if there remains some hugely incriminating piece of evidence that Sarah has left to share with the listeners. For me, there is certainly no clear argument for Adnan being either guilty or innocent so I am extremely curious to know what it is that prompted these people to have such extreme opinions or if it is just people trying to retro-actively justify their decisions…

Serial, the 112 Files: Episode 5

https://soundcloud.com/core-112/episode-5-the-112-files

Thanks to Jack Klecan for the interview!

Who's Guilty: Adnan, Jay, or the Legal System?

The first four episodes of Serial for me had me convinced that Adnan was innocent, that Jay was a jerk for locking someone up in jail, and that Jay had something to hide and was using Adnan to further his own agenda. But after Episode 5, I am a lot less sure of that fact.

It is not as if I'm clearing Jay of all his inconsistencies, but at the same time I think it is very powerful that Jay's story, albeit inconsistent, has remained the same at the core. His details of the incident, 6 weeks later, are understandably mixed up. And if I put myself in his shoes, I think I too would waver back and forth on minor details like who I called, which house I went to, what time I went to smoke, etc. The crucial parts of his testimony however; things like burying Hae in Leakin Park, dropping off Hae's car, etc. continue to line up and are proven to have been true. The fact that Jay knew these parts of the case I believe is a strong indicator that although he may be hiding things from the police or changing his story, he overall may actually be telling the truth.

I think the question is not so much who is telling the truth and who isn't, but whether or not it was fair that the prosecution claimed that the cell phone tower records and Jay's testimony backed up one another and was proof that Adnan did it. For me this brings up questions like, What sort of fact checking is done in court/if any? How is it that the prosecution as able to claim the cell phone records as proof, when Koenig was able to herself debunk those claims? Ultimately, I think we should be questioning the reliability of the legal system more than we should be questioning the reliability of the witnesses

34 Calls, Yet They Aren't Friends...

After listening to Episode 5 of the Serial podcast, I felt so confused about all the times and locations that were mentioned about who was where calling whom, etc…I decided to read more into the additional posts that Koenig attached to the episode, detailing more about the science of cell tower technology and how reliable the findings were to the case. 

In an attempt to gain more concrete answers about the case at this point in time, I looked up the public’s response to this episode, and came across this interesting reddit feed about people’s thoughts (http://www.reddit.com/r/serialpodcast/comments/2k2s28/official_discussion_serial_episode_5_route_talk/)

 Probably one of the most interesting aspects about this is about the number of calls that Adnan received on his phone. On the 13th of January, 1999, Adnan received and made 34 total calls on his cell phone (assuming he had control over his phone calls the entirety of the day). We know that Adnan says he left his phone with Jay for a certain amount of time, so some of these calls could have been made by Jay, and some were apparently made by Adnan to his own phone, alerting Jay to come pick him up. This many phone calls seems rather astonishing, or irregular. Thinking about my call history nowadays, I probably call on average 1 or 2 people a day, not anywhere near the 34 in Adnan’s phone record. 

But what one Reddit person brought up was interesting: Back in 1999, texting wasn’t even a thing? So of the few people who even had cell phones, making random trivial phone calls numerous times throughout the day, even to call someone across the hallway from you at school wasn’t so uncommon. This would make sense considering how now with texting, people seem to text other people who are even in the same building or same room as them, on a frequent basis. The irregular number of calls doesn’t become so suspicious anymore to me after hearing this information. What is weird though is how we can never really compare Adnan's history of calls to his prior calling history because he (Adnan) got his phone two days prior to the disappearance of Hae…so though we can assume that this number of calls could be normal, we can never really compare against anything Adnan had previously done.

What is really frustrating, especially for Adnan, is how it seems that almost none of what Jay has told matches up with the cell records talked about at trial. Also, since cell phones were so limited in 1999, how is it that someone could “forget” whether or not there was a phone booth in a certain location, if that would have been the main means of them communicating others without possessing a cell phone?

Finally, I think it is really interesting how one of the previous episodes sets us up to believe that Adnan and Jay weren’t even that good of friends, but from this episode, we get the idea that even though they may not have been the best of friends, they were definitely heavily involved with each other / trustworthy of each other / somehow criminally linked to even be talking about this now. Maybe they were extremely affiliated with each other, especially concerning Hae’s murder, and Jay doesn’t want that affiliation anymore so by setting up this idea of distance between he and Adnan, he can set up a alibi and potentially cover up any actions he may have played in her murder. 

A lot of this episode looks bad for Adnan, especially where the cell phone pings lead to Leakin Park, so I wonder how this story progresses from here...

The Fallibility of Memory

This week, we were asked to look for some answers, to shed some light on some of the questions we have had in the past.  This episode seemed to focus once again on the inconsistencies of Jay’s testimony.  Koenig ends the podcast with Jay’s conclusion in trial that he “told some lies,” but “he told the truth.” From an outsider’s perspective this seems wrong.  You can’t tell lies and tell the truth, but as time passes and we grow further away from events, can’t the lies and the truth get jumbled? 

We discussed this last class and ended the discussion with “but how are we to judge? How many of us have really been in a high pressure situation where we have been questioned by police like Jay was?”  Only in an attempt to “answer some of the questions of the past” as we were asked to do in these future posts, I’ve decided to share that, in fact, I have been in this situation.  Back in middle school, I was the lead witness in a sexual harassment case against a teacher at the school.  I wasn’t a victim, but I was called into the precinct at age 13 to be questioned about what I knew, what I noticed, and what I could remember.  Though there were many victims, the one that ultimately came forward was a teacher’s assistant with me for this teacher during the same period.  I won’t go into too much detail on this post, but that was 5 years ago.  I tried to retell that story that I told to police now, and I know for a fact my stories would be different.  I’m not lying if I tell the story now, but I also have a sinking feeling I’m not telling the whole truth.  It’s not on purpose, it’s just the weakness of the human memory.  I also have a sinking feeling that as hard as I tried to be honest and tell the whole truth to the police back at age 13, that I’m not sure I was able to do that either.  Something about being young and afraid and in an interrogation room seems to make you very paranoid about if you’re telling the truth.  And I wasn’t a person of interest, so I can only imagine it was worse for Jay. 

My point is, though I guess I wasn’t able to “answer any questions” absolutely, I am trying to show that speaking from personal experience, the truth and lies have a way to intertwine with one another and create doubt, suspicion, and uncertainty.  Another thing that I feel could have contributed to Jay’s uncertainty that isn’t mentioned in the podcast is that Koenig mentions him smoking marijuana multiple times during the day Adnan allegedly killed Hae.  Wouldn’t the drugs impair his judgment? What about his memory of events? Would he really be able to sharply and keenly remember dates, times, and places if he had been smoking periodically throughout that entire afternoon?  It seems like an interesting point that was never mentioned or asked about.

So I guess I will try to end this post about answers by asking a question: can we really scrutinize Jay about the small details when he was subject to both the fallible human memory and was under the influence?

Meedeha Michael + Lindsay Podcast Week 4

Our podcast: https://soundcloud.com/core-112/medeehamichaellindsayweek4

We could not embed our podcast for some reason...

Here is the link to the article we are discussing: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/29/exclusive-interview-jay-wilds-star-witness-adnan-syed-serial-case-pt-1/

Where's the Motive?

Something that has bothered me since listening to the first episode of Serial is that the case rests largely on Jay's testimony against Adnan. As the only witness in this trial, it seemed rather suspicious to me that it was a case of Jay's word against Adnan's, and that Jay was believed over Adnan. Granted, Adnan does have large gaps in his memory but Jay's detailed account has its own inconsistencies, which we hear in this episode focused on the inconsistencies in the case at large. 

Since the first episode I have been on Adnan's side. I can't say if this may be due to the way Sarah Koenig has framed the show, or just my own gut instinct that Adnan is innocent, but I have been racking my brain trying to figure out how in fact Jay is actually the killer, and why he would kill Hae in the first place. He has so many specific details about her death, like the location of her car and the fact that she was strangled, and once I learned that his shovels were the ones that were used to bury Hae's body, it immediately raised a red flag in my mind. Plus, he wanted to wipe the shovels of fingerprints AND he ditched his clothes in a dumpster. Is this raising multiple red flags for anyone else? These are not the actions of an innocent party. Sure, you can argue that he is worried about being charged for being an accomplice to the murder, but he seems to be awfully concerned with covering his tracks for someone who claims to not have been there when Hae was killed or when her body was buried. 

Now with all of these red flags, it was just a question of figuring out Jay’s motive. I thought that since this was a story of heartbreak that perhaps Jay was somehow secretly involved with Hae and decided to murder her because she didn’t want him, or because she chose Adnan over him. But that seemed too far-fetched a theory, even for this bizarre case. 

Then, we learn that Adnan is quite close with Jay’s girlfriend Stephanie, and that her parents don’t approve of Jay, but they DO approve of Adnan. Although this may not be substantial enough reason for Jay to murder Hae, it’s always possible that Jay assumed there was something going on between Adnan and Stephanie and decided to enact revenge on him by killing his ex. Still a little far-fetched, but so are most of the conclusions reached in this case. 

Although Jay points to Adnan’s motive as a case of severe heartbreak, I don’t buy it. I keep coming back to the point that Adnan was truly over her by the time she was murdered, and that they were just friends at that point. His multiple relationships with various girls at the time seem to point towards him clearly moving on from his relationship with Hae. 

Through all of his confusing and changing stories, Jay just seems to further implicate himself in my mind. But unfortunately there seems to be no concrete motive for him at this time. Adnan’s motive seems to be pretty clear in comparison, but I still don’t trust Jay. Here's to hoping more evidence is presented in the following episodes to help confirm my belief that Jay is actually the guilty party here.

Structure and Barthes

Overall this episode brought about a lot of questions for me like, "Is Serial plot driven or character driven or clue driven?" If it's character driven, who is driving each episode and how are they being portrayed? Are there any doubts to Sarah's narrative? For example when in class we were speculating whether or not the streaker who found Hae's dead body was smoking a joint is that merely speculation or something that was omitted on purpose? If so, and the streaker lied about the pot to protect himself who's to say the other people who gave testimonies weren't also?
When listening to this week's Serial episode what stuck out to me among all of these questions the most was the organization of the podcast in general. How does she structure each episode for maximum dramatic effect? When does she insert the music and why?
Throughout these four episodes we have now listened to I have become increasingly intrigued by this case because of its mysteries and crime solving elements. However as purely just an information based case there are so many topics and subtopics that a structure must be found if one where to tell this story in an episode order. Serial's topics for each episode make sense, and the topics stream from one to another but since this isn't a cause and effect story that builds on itself it is a bit harder to track all the facts on the case.
Since we in the class are listening to the podcast on a weekly basis we are not at privilege to listen ahead and 'binge' listen so things don't stay as fresh in our minds. Does this method of listening to the podcast enhance or hinder our understanding of the case? I think it does both. Like Barthes describes the Text is never fully realized so even if we read it all at once in one go, keeping the details of the case in tact we would get one view while listening to Serial in increments gives us a different meaning to the work. By listening to Serial with discussion and podcasts intermixed throughout the weeks we are exploring and playing with a work which allows us to find new meaning to it. Barthes' idea of play trumping consumption is an idea that we are exploring in the class.

Serial’s One Consistency: Nothing is Consistent

It is one thing to confuse the events of an average day. If nothing significant happens, commonplace events tend to run together. So, if Adnan is in fact innocent, it is totally conceivable that he would not remember the details of January 13, 1999 when Detectives Ritz and McGillivray start asking questions a little over a month after Hae’s disappearance. But, to Jay, January 13, 1999 wasn’t a run-of-the-mill day. According to him, it is a day in which he was roped into aiding and abetting a murder. You would think that Jay’s memory of the day, then, would be pretty keen. So why does his story keep changing? Did he really forget where he claims Adnan showed him Hae’s body? As hard as it is to believe that Jay would have such a lapse in memory, he does have one thing going for his account of the afternoon: he knows where Hae’s car is. However inconsistent his stories may be, Jay knows something about the crime.

One thing that Koenig touched on was the minimal force with Detectives Ritz and McGillivray press Jay on his conflicting stories. I found this interesting. Here, the detectives have a supposedly key player a murder case who is willing to “come clean” and give the details of the murder after what seems like a fairly short period of reluctance. Yet, this person is not giving consistent recounts of the day of the crime. What do the detectives do? Do they let the inconsistencies slide because they don’t want to lose the relative trust they have established with Jay? After all, he does seem to have some pertinent information on the crime. And while the detectives could always threaten Jay with potential charges for his involvement in the crime, those threats could make him less willing to divulge details of the crime. Or do they notice the inconsistencies, and just move on, for the sake of maintaining Jay’s apparent trust, and gleaning the most information from his that they can? Ritz and McGillivray seem to choose the latter option.

But this raises a tricky question about ethics. Is it ethical that the detectives are so lenient with Jay’s inconsistencies just because he is a potential source of information? Or should they be more concerned with getting to the consistent truth? Because Jay’s inconsistencies (and this is just my opinion here) seem a little like lies. That is not to say I think his whole testimony is a lie. I don’t. I think there are some elements of truth woven in there, but the holes in the narrative, the inconsistencies seem too big to ignore. Yet, the detectives and the State use Jay’s testimony as the primary component of their case against Adnan. This whole episode got me thinking about what is more important thing to investigators and prosecutors, that they get a person behind bars for a given crime, or that they get the right person behind bars. It all seems a little sketchy. 

Episode 4: I'm Confused, But Is That the Point?

I'm gonna be honest with you guys - I listened to Episode 4 twice because I was convinced that I spaced out while listening the first time, and that's why nearly everything Sarah Koenig was saying just made the case even more confusing.

Then, I realized that...that was just the way it actually went.

I suppose the most confusing part really came through with Jay. It just blew my mind that Jay was able to change his story as many times as he did, and Adnan's case still came out the way it did. The prosecution used Jay in the trial, right? How did that work out? How could no one have noticed that Jay changed his story so many times, and so significantly?

The easy conclusion to come to when it comes to Jay's changing story is that he was an unprepared teenager who felt a need to fabricate Adnan's guilt. That Adnan didn't do it, or at least he didn't do it the way Jay described. The first thing that really got me dubious was the fact that Jay changed where he met Adnan with the body. Because, as much one can believe that a teenager, nervous in an interrogation room, would forget some details, could one really forget where they saw a dead body? Then, though, I thought back to the alibi experiments that my group did for the podcast and yeah, you know what, it isn't that hard to forget which store one was at. Especially if the mind was focused on a friend/acquaintance being a murderer, and seeing a dead body, perhaps the store did slip past Jay's memory. That's just one of the weird parts to Jay's story.

Now, what really gets me about this is that, well, if Jay's story was so all over the place, why was it used in Adnan's trial? I'm no expert here, but how can the prosecution trust Jay's testimony if he's given so many different versions of his story? Is the idea that the last time they interviewed Jay that it's assumed that Jay had gone through his confession of sorts, finally putting all the lies out on the table? How did the jury not become skeptical? How did the defense not take advantage of the fact that, like, Jay doesn't even seem like a logical guy for Adnan to bury a body with?

And then that Stephanie stuff...another layer to Jay. Did he frame Adnan? Ugh, none of this makes sense. Thanks, Serial.

P.S. Facebook is spoiling Serial. Not Cool.