My Deep Dive into "Serial" and the Adnan Syed Case

I went far down the rabbit hole and emerged muddy, but clutching two big pieces on Adnan Syed.

Things have been a bit quiet here lately for a few reasons. First, Jens Söring hasn’t come up with anything new lately. His strategy has changed: Instead of trying to reach the maximum number of audience members (which would inevitably mean confronting skeptics), he now seems intent on reaching the most naive audience members. He’s done question-and-answer sessions on TikTok and the German site “GuteFrage”, and most of the questions come from people who know absolutely nothing about the case and, frankly, often don’t seem to be the sharpest knives in the drawer. Speaking to these fresh-faced newbies, Söring can say whatever he pleases without fear of contradiction, and does just that. This means he doesn’t have to do anything more than wheel out the same old 30-year-old arguments, which I and others have already refuted over and over.

These old chestnuts seem, however, to be more than enough for the newbies, who reward Söring with the standard heart emojis and, er, veiled offers of matrimony. As I like to say, at some point, bogus innocence claims devolve into tests of a person’s logical reasoning capacity.

The other reason things have been quiet is because I have spent almost a year researching the case of Adnan Syed, the subject of Season One of the “Serial Podcast”. That podcast became one of the most popular podcasts in history, with 300 million downloads and counting. The deeper I dove, the more fascinating angles I found to this case. I must have read at least half-a-million words, got into dozens of lively arguments on the r/serialpodcast subreddit, and revised over and over to try to get the tone just right.

The result is now online! Quillette gave me all the time and room I needed to paint a thorough picture of the case in two parts. Part One sets out the history of the case, focussing on the compelling evidence of Adnan’s guilt, most of which is ignored Part Two goes into the complex — but dramatic! — treatment of the case in the courts and in the media. My main focus, as always, is on whether journalists presented the facts in a responsible, even-handed manner. Surprise, surprise, they didn’t.

Here are a few paragraphs from the conclusion:

These documentaries do real harm. By pretending to be objective, they falsify history. They promote a jaundiced, convict’s-eye view of the justice system, fostering unjustified doubts about its effectiveness. They subject the survivors of terrible crimes to additional anguish, and often concerted online attacks, and in their search for alternate suspects, they defame innocent people. They distract attention from real, but less dramatic, problems with the justice system. And sometimes, as in Adnan’s case, they change the real-world outcome of the case they portray… Adnan would never have been released had Serial not been made.

Few observers would have objected had a remorseful Adnan been released on parole after 23 years of excellent prison conduct. Instead, he was freed based on his own false claims and the biased media coverage they generated. Hae Min Lee’s surviving family have had to watch as her murderer is feted as a folk hero and victim-protagonist of a story in which she has been marginalized. Many of those who celebrated Adnan’s release still have no idea how strong the evidence against him was. Even so, they donated money, wrote letters and op-eds, and denounced the supposed cruelty and injustice of the system that convicted him. They were all deceived.

The piece has been extremely well-received so far, and has been accessed tens of thousands of times and counting, although I hardly expect most of those folks actually read all 24,000 words.

Comparing the case of Adnan Syed to Jens Söring brought home to me just how weak Söring’s arguments are. Adnan Syed never confessed (although he did ask for a plea-bargain), and was also implicated by an accomplice, in that case his friend Jay Wilds. But Jay Wilds’ testimony was much more inconsistent than Elizabeth Haysom’s — he changed his story 4 or 5 times, while remaining consistent about the important parts. Adnan Syed’s case attracted the attention of a number of respectable journalists and lawyers who examined all the evidence in the case — although, as I show in the article, they succumbed to the same confirmation bias, tunnel vision, and echo-chamber thinking that grips most believers in fake innocence claims. Further, Adnan’s supporters are sticking by their story (for now), while Söring’s American supporters have gone deafeningly silent.

Don’t get me wrong: Adnan Syed’s innocence claims are also ultimately unconvincing, but nowhere near as silly as Jens Söring’s claims. Of course I’ll keep posting here, and hope to have a nice new full case document for you soon. But I have to admit, taking on Adnan Syed’s arguments was like challenging a Level 3 Boss on a video game. Disproving Söring’s innocence claims is like taking out the anonymous henchmen who wander around aimlessly next to explosive barrels.