So Marilyn Mosby will railroad six innocent police officers but will not retry the case of a Pakistani who strangled a teenage girl to death

[Derec]

It's not about the evidence in the case it's about Marylin Mosby.

It's about Mosby not doing her job and refusing to retry a murderer.
I mean Adnan Syed is not a police officer, so she is not interested.

 

[Derec]

Yeah, it's red meat: a dem-leaning DA who is both challenging police authority

She didn't challenge police authority, she marshalled a political prosecution of police officers with no regard to facts of the case or, you know, evidence.

and letting MuSLiMs not be punished for crimes... better spin it as hard as possible to see if her head will twist right off.

Do you think murderers should not be punished if they are Muslim? Or what is the point of that?
Speaking of points, what is the point of the weird capitalization you used?

Speaking of Mosby, she is under federal indictment herself.
Marilyn Mosby's trial rescheduled again, this time to March 2023

 

[Derec]

On what basis do you dispute the " additional DNA testing excluded Syed as a suspect in the strangulation of Lee," (from your story)

Because that statement shows lack of understanding of what DNA can and cannot prove. Some DNA found on Hae's shoes is not inconsistent with Adnan having strangled her. DNA could have been deposited on the shoes at time points other than the murder and be unrelated to it. Or maybe it's Jay's and it's consistent with him helping dispose of her body in Leakin Park.
Also, why is Mosby being so vague about this alleged evidence and about these alleged "suspects"?

and that "unreliable cellphone data had been used to convict Syed. "?

DNA cell tower data was a minor point in the trial at best. It corroborated Jay's testimony, but the case did not stand and fall based on cell tower data.

 

[Derec]

No, it’s about corrupt Marlyn Moseby.
Derec hath rendered judgment.

Well, it's not I who is under federal indictment.

 

[Derec]

but MuSLiMs are rapists even when they are acquitted.

Again with this capitalization. What's the deal?
Adnan wasn't acquitted. He was convicted, and went through many appeals, which failed until one judge overturned his conviction.
He could have been retried, but Mosby does not think it politically expedient. After all, MuSLiMs[sic] are a more important constituency to the contemporary Democratic Party than Koreans.

 

[Derec]

Sounds to me like Mosby shouldn't be the target of outrage here, but rather the prosecutors?

Did the original prosecutors make mistakes? Yes. But those are technical issues, and do not mean he did not do it.
For example, the judge thinks certain alternate suspects were not adequately excluded. That does not mean they are viable suspects. It sure as shit does not mean Adnan is not the best suspect, or that his guilt hasn't been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
At least they managed to secure a conviction at the time. 20 years is some measure of justice at least.

I wonder why blame Mosby?

Adnan's conviction was overturned on a technicality. No reason not to retry the case. Unless Adnan suddenly remembers what he did that day, he has as little ammunition to rebut Jay's testimony as he did then.
Refusal to retry Adnan Syed is on Mosby, nobody else. I wonder if she was paid to throw the case. Adnan/Rabia camp has a lot of money.

 

[Derec]

Definitely innocent after a conviction is overturned on the preponderance of evidence ruling them out as a suspect at all.

He is not being ruled out as a suspect at all. None of this new alleged evidence (to the extent we can evaluate the vague statements by Mosby) changes the facts of the case. The DNA on Hae's shoes could have come there any number of ways. It does not exclude Adnan having strangled her, or having gotten Jay to help him dispose of the body.

So, more red meat, on account of it being the prosecutor not going with the minority suspect in retrial.

To the Left him being a "minority suspect" is very important. You want it to be some kafir white guy like Don. Except there is zero evidence against Don and plethora of evidence against Adnan.

 

[Derec]

I have read a lot about this case

Sure you did.

Any reason for this quip, other than a cheap insult?
I read a lot. Get over it.

 

[Derec]

You have much more Faith in the media than I have.

It was not just from the media. After Serial, I did a deep dive and even read court transcripts and police reports on the case. You know, primary sources.
But you are right, many media outlets, including the Serial Podcast, sought to muddy the waters.

I'm not even sure what you mean when you say "I've read a lot about this case..."

I used my visual system to decipher glyphs that collectively formed words and sentences. What the hell do you think I mean when I said I read about the case?

Here in the USA we have a judicial system heavily weighted against guilty verdicts. Lots of perps get away with crimes so that innocent people don't get railroaded into punishment.

We do. And yet, Adnan was convicted. And the conviction was sustained through a series of appeals.
Until his well-heeled defense found a judge to overturn the conviction on a technicality. And fair enough, if the prosecutors screwed up, maybe the conviction should be overturned. But he still did it, there is still evidence he did it beyond a reasonable doubt, and he should be retried.

I prefer being safer from the government and less safe from criminals. That's just me. Plenty of countries in the world are safer because the government doesn't have to bother with our high standards for conviction.
Tom

I support the "innocent until proven guilty" and the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standards.
I do not support an indicted prosecutor refusing to prosecute a (very likely) murderer because of politics.

 

[Derec]

I am open-minded that he could be guilty of some kind of involvement, but it seems the judge and prosecution did what they ought to right now.

He is still very likely to have done it. I grant that maybe the judge was right because of technicalities. But Mosby was wrong to not retry the case while fixing the technical mistakes.

There was some circumstantial evidence of his involvement such as one of his friends claimed he helped him to bury the body.

That would be Jay, and it's far more than "circumstantial". Jay gave direct testimony that Adnan showed up with the body, told Jay what he did, and elicited Jay's help in disposing of the body. That is not circumstantial evidence.
Mind you, Jay gave a very detailed account of his and Adnan's movements that day.
Adnan, for his part, claims that he cannot remember what he did that day.

And I think there is another claim that he had threatened the life of the victim at some point according to either texts or a witness.

It was a handwritten note. Adnan and Hae had a very tumultuous relationship, so there is motive. As I recall, they broke up and reconnected several times, but this time was different because Hae started dating somebody else. That probably set him over the edge.

Contradicting that data, (1) he has an alibi witness who had said she saw him in a library at the time the killing was alleged to have occurred.

I think the Asia alibi has been discredited, specifically about what day she saw him at the library. It hasn't been proved she saw him on the 13th, which makes it quite useless.

(2) the expert on the cell phone tower location stuff has since recanted and apologized which is a big deal. (3)

Cell tower data could corroborate Jay's story, but lack of it does not discredit it.
How do you explain Jay's testimony if Adnan is not guilty? That Jay did all that himself? Why? What motive does he have?

DNA was apparently not able to be obtained from some of the items but the shoes had some DNA. The DNA did not belong to Syed but two other people. What does this mean exactly? How closely associated are these two other people to Syed? Could it be compatible with an hypothesis that he orchestrated the crime or are these two guys independent of him completely?

Without Mosby telling us any particulars, we can only speculate.
What I know for sure, is that Mosby is either lying or mistaken when she says that shoe DNA excludes Syed as the strangler. DNA does not work like that. DNA found on the shoe does not mean it is the strangler's. Shoe DNA could have been deposited at any time by any number of people who were not involved in her killing.

This is merely touch dna. Could one person merely be like the victim's brother or someone else who lived in her house coincidentally

Or a friend, or her new boyfriend, or a nail tech, or any number of possibilities. This alone means that Mosby is either lying or an idiot. I know, I know, "porque no los dos?"

One article also says that this information that the DNA matched to these two other people was supposed to be given to the defense but wasn't by the prosecution.

Who are these two other people anyway? I would be very interested to know. I know Don is Rabia's favorite "suspect" even though there is zero evidence to implicate him and quite a bit to exclude him. The guy who found the body? Neither would explain why Jay would implicate himself in disposal of the body.
No, no matter how much I turn this case this way or that, Adnan remains the piece that best fits in the puzzle, by a far margin.

And that adds a legal twist of misconduct and is a significant factor leading to a conclusion of lack of a fair trial.

I am all for fair trials. Syed should get one.

 

[Derec]

The DNA doesn't rule him out because it's possible for DNA from the perpetrator not to be found. However, it sounds like the prosecution now has zero evidence and likely the original case was a rush to judgment.

Unless she is holding on to some exculpatory evidence, nothing that has been offered so far discredits the evidence of Jay's testimony.
I do not know how the defense would have gotten around that one.
Jay helped Adnan bury Hae's body.

 

[Derec]

The guy may be as gulity as OJ, but DNA from an unidentified possible prep makes conviction "beyond a reasonable doubt" kind of hard.

I do not think so. Just because Hae (or at least her shoes) were in contact with somebody else, does not mean that Adnan did not do it or that a competent and dedicated prosecutor could not prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. Of course, Mosby is neither of these.
Or else we can't convict anybody of murder any more since most victims probably have touch DNA detectable by modern methods from people not involved in the murder.

 

[Derec]

It's a pointless waste of money though to retry with no new evidence and only the evidence that managed to get the case thrown out.

Most of the evidence has not been thrown out.

 

[Derec]

Who are these six unnamed police officers?

The ones either acquitted or whose charges were eventually dropped in the St. Freddie Grey case.

 

[Gospel]

I have read a lot about this case

Sure you did.

Any reason for this quip, other than a cheap insult?
I read a lot. Get over it.

And I have a mortgage on our star cluster. Get over it.

 

[Gospel]

Unless she is holding on to some exculpatory evidence, nothing that has been offered so far discredits the evidence of Jay's testimony.
I do not know how the defense would have gotten around that one.
Jay helped Adnan bury Hae's body.

Look, I believe Adnan did it but remove Jay's testimony and they have nothing. Jay (IMO) is not reliable enough for "beyond all doubt". That's just me.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Unless she is holding on to some exculpatory evidence, nothing that has been offered so far discredits the evidence of Jay's testimony.
I do not know how the defense would have gotten around that one.
Jay helped Adnan bury Hae's body.

Look, I believe Adnan did it but remove Jay's testimony and they have nothing. Jay (IMO) is not reliable enough for "beyond all doubt". That's just me.

It's not just you, believe me.

First, it is true that the crux of the case is dependent upon Jay Wilds' testimony. He's the one who claimed that Adnan said he wanted to kill the victim. He's also the one who claimed he helped bury the body. One thing that remains independent of Wilds is a plausible motive, but a lot of people have ex girlfriends and don't kill them.

Second, yes, Jay Wilds is an unreliable witness. People who lie to the police often tend to not give a lot of info in the beginning, such as saying they forgot or not cooperating. Then, over time, the story develops to fill in gaps in an ad hoc manner. Elements change in the face of new information to make the overall narrative consistent with the new information that the police recite to the witness. This pattern is present in the various stories that Jay Wilds gave to the police.

When I read an interview of Jay Wilds, it struck me in the beginning of the interview how detailed his account was and how believable, but then as he talked more, about halfway through, things were not adding up and additionally the pattern of more info over time was admitted to. The biggest red flag for me, though, was that he lied to police about where he first saw the body. It was actually next to his grandmother's house where his drug dealing operations were.

Here are some excerpts:

In “Serial” you are depicted as a petty weed dealer. Is that why you didn’t initially cooperate with the police? It doesn’t seem like enough of a reason to not talk to the police.

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.

The other thing to understand is something about the culture of Baltimore—this is where the ‘Stop Snitching’ video comes from. This is where it was produced. It went national, but it was produced in Baltimore. This is where people would have their house firebombed and still tell the police they knew nothing about it rather than to try to make some sense of what’s going on. And that’s not necessarily me—but that is my family, that is my uncles and cousins. It’s where I’m from.

Most things in life are on a continuum and multi-variate. Here, I think there is a continuum of heinousness of crimes and relevance to drug dealing culture that makes his claim more or less (un)believable. For example, if he were snitching on another drug dealer who is not a rival that would be socially unacceptable. But if he were snitching on a Nazi pedophile who was raping and murdering African American children in his neighborhood that would not be an offense. Some guy not protected by gang culture or drug dealings committing a heinous murder of his girlfriend would be much closer to the latter, not the former. Therefore, his claim is somewhat dubious.

Is this when you first saw Hae’s body in the trunk of her car?

No. I saw her body later, in front of of my grandmother’s house where I was living. I didn’t tell the cops it was in front of my house because I didn’t want to involve my grandmother. I believe I told them it was in front of ‘Cathy’s [not her real name] house, but it was in front of my grandmother’s house. I know it didn’t happen anywhere other than my grandmother’s house. I remember the highway traffic to my right, and I remember standing there on the curb. I remember Adnan standing next to me.

His justification for lying seems plausible to me. On the flip side, this provides an additional reason not to trust him because he is admitting to lying. It also is noteworthy that there is some presence of the body first near his grandmother's house as opposed to somewhere unrelated to him.

Ok. So then you and Adnan parted ways?

Yes. He left in his car and I was trying to collect myself at my [grandmother’s] house. I was pretty distraught, fucked up, feeling guilty for not saying nothing. I don’t know whether he calls me when he’s on his way back to my house, or if he calls me right outside the house. He calls me and says ‘I’m outside,’ so I come outside to talk to him and followed him to a different car, not his. He said, ‘You’ve gotta help me, or I’m gonna tell the cops about you and the weed and all that shit.’ And then he popped the trunk and I saw Hae’s body. She looked kinda purple, blue, her legs were tucked behind her, she had stockings on, none of her clothes were removed, nothing like that. She didn’t look beat up.

This again is one of those things that is hard to believe but resides on a continuum of believability. The sentence: "You've gotta help me, or I'm gonna tell the cops about you and the weed and all that shit." On the one hand, weed...and on the other, a heinous murder. A murderer wouldn't go to the police, probably. Also...he claimed Baltimore was known for not being about snitching. If true, Adnan would get killed in prison or by gangs or criminals or whatever. MAYBE.

Why is this story different from what you originally told the police? Why has your story changed over time?

Well first of all, I wasn’t openly willing to cooperate with the police. It wasn’t until they made it clear they weren’t interested in my ‘procurement’ of pot that I began to open up any. And then I would only give them information pertaining to my interaction with someone or where I was. They had to chase me around before they could corner me to talk to me, and there came a point where I was just sick of talking to them. And they wouldn’t stop interviewing me or questioning me. I wasn’t fully cooperating, so if they said, ‘Well, we have on phone records that you talked to Jenn.’ I’d say, ‘Nope, I didn’t talk to Jenn.’ Until Jenn told me that she talked with the cops and that it was ok if I did too.

I stonewalled them that way. No — until they told me they weren’t trying to prosecute me for selling weed, or trying to get any of my friends in trouble. People had lives and were trying to get into college and stuff like that. Getting them in trouble for anything that they knew or that I had told them — I couldn’t have that.

I guess I was being kind of a jury on whether or not people needed to be involved or whatever, but these people didn’t have anything to do with it, and I knew they didn’t have anything to do with it.

That’s the best way I can account for the inconsistencies. Once the police made it clear that my drug dealing wasn’t gonna affect the outcome of what was going on, I became a little bit more transparent.

At worst, this pattern of giving more detailed, changing information over time is also consistent with the alternative scenario that Wilds is culpable of something more....intending to keep it a secret and then giving more details and developing his narrative as needed in an ad hoc manner. At best, it demonstrates how unreliable of a witness he was across a wide range of information.

 

[Elixir]

I have read a lot about this case

Sure you did.

Any reason for this quip, other than a cheap insult?
I read a lot. Get over it.

And I have a mortgage on our star cluster. Get over it.

Derec reads so much that he needs to post 15+ posts in a row, presumably in the hope that someone other than you is going to read them.
One might surmise some things about WHAT he is reading so much of, given his proclivity to for fascists and right wing "values", but I think you can believe him when he says he "reads a lot". Nothing that he has read has taught him to be one bit skeptical of the word of his fellow RW extremists, so allowing that he "reads a lot" doesn't exactly confer any authority to his screeds.

 

[Gospel]

Another thing about Jay is how much he was coached with evidence so that he can formulate a story. Thus why his testimony lined up on paper while not lining up with evidence.

Edit: And all the changes in his testimony is evidence he changed his story according to evidence he was presented with. The prosecution viewed him as a tool to nail "their guy" after all.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

I used my visual system to decipher glyphs that collectively formed words and sentences.

Glyphs