Stephanie English 200 on February 28Th, 1999 Adnan Syed Was
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Stephanie English 200 th On February 28 , 1999 Adnan Syed was arrested for the murder of Hae Min Lee. He was charged with her kidnapping and first degree murder. He was sentenced to life, plus thirty years. Over the course of a year, police have gathered evidence for the case. Phone records were obtained, along with testimonies from various people. This wasn’t much to convict someone with first degree murder but the jury thought differently. Adnan Syed has been in prison for the past seven-teenears due to miscarriages of justices and an unfair trial. Adnan Syed went from having a good life to imprisonment in the blink of an eye. Syed st was born May 21 1980 in Baltimore, Maryland into a Muslim family. His mother, Shamim Syed, and Father Rahman Syed. They were religious and established a strong ground of religion in their home. They had three sons Tanveer, Adnan and Yusuf. Adnan was a good son. He got straight A’s. In high school Adnan was playing on the varsity football team, had good grades, worked for a paramedic service, and was also crowned prince at his homecoming dance. But, on the other side of things, Adnan’s mother did not want him indulging in such things as homecoming dances. She did not want him talking to girls and hanging out with shady people. She feared Adnan would drink, smoke illegal substances and have sex with girls. This goes th against the muslim religion. But on February 28 1999, Adnan Syed’s life had made a big turn that would impact his life. When Hae Min Lee goes missing, Adnan Syed becomes the main suspect in the police th investigation. Hae Min Lee’s family had reported her missing on January 13 after she had failed to pick up her cousin from school between 3:15- 3:30pm. Police had contacted family and th friends of Hae. On February 9 1999, Lee’s body was found in Leakin Park, in Baltimore, Maryland. Police say she had died of strangulation. A man who people called Mr. S was driving when he stopped to urinate in Leakin Park. There he found Lee’s dead body and calls the police. The police call Phillip Buddemeyer, a surveyor, to get measurements of the body. He found Hae’s body buried under a log and is very hard to see for Buddemeyer. He recalled saying” I get down really close and I’m looking and I say that doesn’t look like an ankle to me” (Buddemeyer) 3 days after Hae’s body was found the police receive an anonymous phone call which said “look at the ex-boyfriend”. Adnan and Hae had broken up a few weeks before she had gone missing. She started dating a new guy she worked with named Don Cliendinst. To some people, this meant that Adnan had motive to kill Hae out of jealousy. Later that February Jay Wild, one of Adnan’s friends is interviewed. He told the police that Adnan had killed Hae and that he had helped him and the location of Hae’s car. During the second interview with the police he says that “Adnan told me, he said, almost jokingly, I think I’m gonna to kill her, yeah, I think I’m gonna kill her” (Wilds). The police charge him with the murder of Hae Min Lee, with jay’s testimony stating he was a witness to the aftermath of the murder. Jay told the police. The police get a print out of phone records from AT&T, listing all outgoing and incoming phone calls from th Adnan’s phone. They link Adnan to the murder of Lee. Around 5am on February 28 the police arrive at Adnan’s house to take him into custody. Syed’s court case was not successful in claiming his innocence. During Adnan’s second trial in January 2000, Jay’s testimony stood stood in the courtroom. Jay wild told the jury that Adnan had admitted to killing Lee and showed him her dead body as well as asking him to help th him bury her. Jay had told the timeline of events for January 13 1999 in grave detail. During that day, Adnan had borrowed Jay his car to get his girlfriend Stephanie, a birthday gift and Adnan gave jay his phone as well so he could call him later. Jay says Adnan called him at 2:36pm from a payphone in the Best Buy parking lot saying” that bitch is dead, come get me” according to Jay, he picks up Adnan at the best buy parking lot. Later in the evening jay says that the two of them went to Leakin park to bury Hae’s body. There are two calls on the call long that match jay's story. The calls 7:09pm and 7:16 place Adnan in the park at those times. Adnan Syed was found guilty by the jury and was sentenced to life to 30 plus years in prison. Nearly eighteen years later, the evidence in Syed’s case is overlooked. As of June, 30th 2016, Adnan Syed was granted a new trial. It was believed by the judge that Adnan did not have a fair trial when he was convicted. The cellular tower expert had not been cross examined at the time so the information that would link Adnan to the cellular phone towers is not proven to be true. A few other documents of evidence were not presented in court when Adnan was convicted in 2000. But he had an alibi during the time that Hae went missing. Asia Mccain, a classmate of Adnan, says in a letter she wrote to Adnan, “I’m not sure if you remember talking to me in the th library on January 13 , but I remember chatting with you’(Mccain). Adnan has spent nearly half his life in jail. He is currently being denied bail and awaits his new trial. The police investigation and court case for Adnan was not done properly; because, there were miscarriages of justice. The first miscarriage of justice was when Adnan was arrested based on the testimony of Jay Wilds. The cell phone records pinpointing Adnan to the locations that supported Jay’s story. He stood for a bail hearing on the day after his arrest, and the court system had his date of birth wrong. Adnan was 17 years old when he was arrested, although the court system had him listed as an 18-year-old. He was a juvenile at the time, but charged as an adult. There was no factual evidence that was held against Adnan throughout the whole case. Hae Min Lee had died of strangulation and her body was found in Leakin park, Baltimore Maryland. At that hearing Adnan wasn’t seen as a clean straight A student but as a foreign Pakistan. Adnan was from Pakistan, so that was counted against him at his bail hearing: “the state argued that there was a pattern in the United States of America where young Pakistani males have been jilted, have committed murder and fled to Pakistan and we have been unable to extradite them back” (United States Circuit Court). The state feared that if Adnan was released on bail then he would escape to Pakistan. The police proceeded with their investigation, with no evidence of Adnan committing the crime. They believed he was the suspect because of motive. Hae was dating someone else, was Adnan jealous? Or if he couldn’t have Hae than neither could anyone else? In the podcast call ed “Serial” produced by journalist Sarah Koeing she states that prosecutor Kevin Urick said to the jury during trial, “He became enraged. He felt betrayed that his honor had been besmirched, and he became very angry, and he set out to kill Hae Min Lee” (Koeing). This aspect was brought to the table when the police were looking at suspects. The three factors that direct Adnan to the murder of Hae was the motive, phone records, and Jay’s testimony. Jay Wilds story didn’t match up correctly. The second miscarriage of justice was when th Jay had changed his story of the events on January 13 1999. He had a total of four police interviews where the story has transitioned differently from the last one. During first interview Jay says Adnan had called him to pick him up after track, Jay recalls him being at his own house. In the second police interview, Jay says he was at his friend Cathy’s house when Adnan had called him. The cell phone tower by Cathi’s house does not correlate with Jay’s story because the tower is nowhere near Cathi’s house, making this part of Jay’s interview incorrect. The police never questioned whether Jay is telling the truth or not. This was another example of injustice in Adnan’s investigation. Adnan’s first trial was not successfull. The third miscarriage of justice was during Adnan’s second trial. The first trial ending in a mistrial due to the judge believing that Adnan’s lawyer was lying about seeing the phone records. Jay Wilds told the jury the events for January th 13 . He describes that Adnan had killed Hae at 2:36pm and called him from a pay phone in the best buy parking lot. However, there was never a pay phone that existed in the Best Buy parking lot. When Koeing did her investigation, she pointed out that: “the Best Buy employees I talk to did not remember a payphone back then [...] They dug up a photo of the store, from 2001, no phone booth or payphone, though lots of public phones did come down between ‘99 and 2001.