Part of what made the first season of Serial so engrossing was the sense that listeners were investigating the murder of Hae Min Lee right along with host Sarah Koenig and her inquisitive cadre of podcasters. The granular detail with which it explored the killing—which took place in early 1999—helped to ignite worldwide podcast fever in 2014. It inspired heated online conversation, amateur sleuthing, ridiculous (and maybe not so ridiculous) Reddit-based theorizing, and even a podcast about the podcast, released by this very site. Much more importantly, Serial also affected the investigation of the case, most specifically by encouraging a particular witness to come forward, but in other ways too detailed to get into here.
The four-part HBO documentary The Case Against Adnan Syed aims to pick up where Serial left off, but struggles mightily in its first two hours—three were sent to reviewers in advance—to decide what it wants to be. Instead of introducing newbies to the details of the case, it spends a good chunk of time introducing the victim, giving voice to Hae Min Lee both with words from her journal and with stylish animation. It seems like a direct response to one (of many) Serial criticisms, and really a criticism of the true-crime genre: They tend to give short shrift to murder victims, to the point of treating them more like objects than humans.
Giving more attention to the victim is a worthy thing to do, but it also means that people new to the story of Lee and her ex-boyfriend Adnan Syed might miss the forest for the trees, at least in the first hour. And when it’s not setting the emotional table by introducing its characters, the first half of Case gets almost too granular—introducing another suspect familiar to podcast listeners, then finding and maybe dismissing him, for instance.
It’s also an odd choice to spend so much time on one victim when clearly The Case Against Adnan Syed is focused mostly on what it believes to be another victim: Syed himself. Although ace director Amy Berg (Deliver Us From Evil, West Of Memphis) claims to have started the project without preconceived notions—and there’s no reason to doubt her—it’s clear that Case is inclined to believe that Syed is innocent, or at the very least that he deserves a new trial. If they were interested in truth in advertising, HBO and Berg might have called this thing The Case Against Adnan Syed (Is Pretty Flimsy When You Look At It Closely). It should also be noted that Rabia Chaudry, who has been Syed’s friend and public advocate since the beginning, is both an executive producer and important figure in the doc.
Here’s the Cliff’s Notes version of the case, for those new or in need of a refresher: Baltimore high school student Hae Min Lee went missing in January of 1999. In early February, her body was found in a park—she had been strangled. In late February, her ex-boyfriend Adnan Syed was arrested and charged with her murder, based largely on statements given to police by his friend Jay Wilds. Wilds claimed that Syed admitted to strangling Lee, and that Wilds helped Syed bury her body. Syed has steadfastly maintained that though he spent time with Wilds on the day the murder supposedly took place, that he had nothing to do with it and doesn’t know why Wilds told the story that he did. Syed was convicted in 2000 and sentenced to life in prison, plus 30 years. He has appealed the conviction in subsequent years, and the conviction was—mild spoiler alert—vacated in 2016. The State of Maryland is currently appealing that appeal, and a decision on whether Syed will get a new trial will likely come in the summer of 2019. In the meantime, he remains in prison.
If it were as simple as it sounds, neither Serial nor The Case Against would exist. The documentary goes further than the podcast in casting doubt on Wilds’ story and his credibility: Even those he considered friends tell of his propensity for lying. Berg tracked down a recent ex-girlfriend of Wilds’, who paints an ugly picture of abuse and dishonesty. And with regard to the central question of this whole case—if Jay Wilds was lying about the murder, why?—it paints a detailed and convincing (though obviously speculative) answer about overeager/dirty cops and a broken system. It’s The Case’s most compelling narrative, told via uncomfortable new interviews with Jay’s friends and corroborating witnesses, specifically Jennifer Pusateri, whose obvious agitation marks one of the doc’s most gripping moments. Along with the two chief legal reasons Syed is appealing—ineffective counsel and the admissibility of cellphone records that were central to the case—this portrait of Wilds’ journey makes a solid case for a new trial. (Half of the Serial subreddit is cheering now; the other half is angrily typing.)
Unfortunately for The Case, most of that information doesn’t show up until episode three, so the best way to watch it might be to hold off a few weeks and binge it. The fourth and final episode—again, not screened for reviewers—is scheduled to air March 31, and in an interview with Vulture, Berg all but promises some kind of bombshell. When asked whether she thinks she got closer to solving the case than Serial’s Sarah Koenig, she responds, “I don’t want to give the end away.”
Short of someone—or someones—changing their story completely, though, there will never be a tidy ending to this horrific case. It’s just too complex and twisted. Although it starts a little bit rocky and unfocused, The Case Against Adnan Syed eventually does an admirable job of focusing—doubters might say shaping—the various stories into something plausible. It seems silly to hope for a huge revelation in its final hour, but with such a fascinating case, it would be even sillier to doubt that another unexpected twist might arise.
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Victims of course should be mourned and remembered and given their due. But, for a tv show that’s supposed to keep me entertained or interested enough to keep watching, just talking about how wonderful the victim is doesn’t cut it. It’s also 99% irrelevant to whether the suspect committed the crime. This is also why the second season of Making a Murderer lost me at the get-go. We know it’s a tragic crime and a good person died, but I don’t need their life story, and more importantly I don’t want to get through it just to get to the entertaining parts. I’m a terrible person.
You are not a terrible person. It is important to mourn victims and consider their suffering, but it has little to do with solving the crime. In fact, too much sympathy can lead to simply wanting a conviction as opposed to actually solving the crime. Details about the life of a victim should be important to an investigator only to the extent that they help solve the case. Furthermore, we have an obligation to solve murders even when the victim is not ideal, when the victim is a drug addict, or prostitute, or swears a lot, or (heaven forbid) does not get good grades and love her parents. All victims deserve justice, not just the sweet, pretty ones.
The complaint that there’s insufficient attention on victims in true crime is more often focused on stuff covering the more famous serial killers. Where focusing exclusively on the killer and glossing over the victims tends to create a distorted idea about the killer. Or crimes where glossing over the victims leads to ignoring certain social circumstances that are pretty critical to understanding a crime, and potentially preventing similar crimes in the future.
The most famous example of the former is probably Ted Bundy, and there’s been a lot of excellent criticism related to the issue in response to the recent Netflix Doc and the movie that came out. We get this narrative of Ted Bundy as this incredibly intelligent, charming, but dispassionate killer. But you look at the circumstances of how he found and interacted with his victims before killing them. And precisely what he did to them. You get an entirely different image of the man, his crimes, and what it was all about. In the mass market coverage all you get is the celebrity killer idea that Bundy himself angled for. You never really hear about the necrophilia, cannibalism, and really really brutal nature of the killings.
The other end of it is probably best embodies by the concept of the less dead. The idea that pathological killers often target vulnerable and disenfranchised or oppressed populations. With the knowledge that crimes against these people are less likely to arouse suspicion, police interest, and public anger. Which nests these things pretty nicely into grooming and pathological behaviors by abusers, molesters, and other predators. And really helps to highlight some of the embedded problems in policing that let all this shit pass.
So its not so much a call for biographical coverage of the life of victims, or celebrating them. But about how the True Crime genre has a tendency to leave victims out entirely, especially when discussing solved crimes. And thus skews the overall story. Covering up serious problems, and or creating persistent myths about criminals and killers.
I’m sure the answer can be found on the interweb someplace but didn’t Hae have a boyfriend at the time of her murder? He’s is dismissed in like 30 seconds on the Serial podcast and never mentioned again. Does he have some sort of air tight alibi, because he’s never mentioned again.
The guy who worked in the Lenscrafters with his mom? He’s mentioned several times in the podcast. They break his alibi (spoiler: mom lied). But Serial didn’t suggest it could be him, just that it’s suspicious that he has no alibi.
Yes, Don. There’s much more about him in the Undisclosed podcast if you really want to dig into it.
Yeah, he was older and worked at the eyeglass place.
If I remember correctly, he was at a work meeting and can verify that.
I believe the only person who could verify him being at work was his mother who happened to be his manager at the eyeglass place the he and Hae worked at.
Yeah. I recall his mother being the manager, but he was at another store that day I think and he clocked in and out.
His alibi was being at work, which is questionable since his manager was his mother, and that day he was working at another store managed by the woman his mother eventually married. This never comes up in Serial, which is why I would not describe that podcast as “granular”. I would apply that descriptive to Undisclosed, the podcast Rabia Chaudry started in response to Serial.
It turned out that his mom was his alibi……….and may have made it up. It was never checked all that thoroughly by the cops.
When is Sarah Koenig’s erotic Adnan fanfic novel going to come out?
I’ve pointed this out before, and I’m not intentionally stanning for them but, it’s worth noting, in relation to this notion:Much more importantly, Serial also affected the investigation of the case, most specifically by encouraging a particular witness to come forward, but in other ways too detailed to get into here.the role of Undisclosed—which wouldn’t exist without Serial but is more directly responsible (or, more accurately, the three people involved in it are) for the subsequent legal developments in this case.
What I’ve always thought happened here was this. Jay was a low level drug dealer known the local cops. They told him either finger your friend or your life gets mighty difficult. Not like it never happened before.
Maryland’s top court just reinstated his conviction. 4-3 decision.
I’ve always felt that the most reasonable thing to take away from Serial and similar podcasts and shows is that the criminal justice system is not what the average person believes it to be. This wasn’t an egregious miscarriage of justice. This was pretty much business as usual.
For the most part, if you become a serious suspect in a crime, especially murder, you’re pretty fucked. You’re already under a lot of pressure before you’re indicted, but once you’re indicted, the pressure is there from the entire system to plead out. If you don’t, you’re in front of a jury that is going to assume you wouldn’t be there if you didn’t do something wrong.
What Adnan Syed’s case really highlights is that this all happened to a relatively smart, middle class dude with a supportive community around him to whom this is happening. People in his community spoke out to help him, and we wouldn’t have heard about him otherwise. When you compare that with the average poor person who ends up caught up, well it’s even worse.
Does this also end with me going ‘……………….yeah but he probably did it.’
So should we just skip the first episode entirely, then? Unchecked or performative sympathy for the victim is one of the driving factors behind railroading suspects.
A few hours after this review was published, a Maryland court ruled that Syed would not get a new trial, an announcement that wasn’t expected for several more months. His lawyer says they will continue to fight.
I get that they wanted to include Hae Min, but her diary entries, with animation, were not the way to do it. It was hard to sit through material that felt like an old After School Special. Or My So-Called Life, with much worse writing.