How Adnan’s Story Changed Me
Adnan Syed, whose story was made famous by the podcast Serial, recently became a free man after spending more than half his life in prison for a crime he did not commit. This is how his story sparked my interest in innocence work and criminal justice reform, two things I never thought I would care about.
Earlier this week, Adnan Syed was released from a Maryland prison after serving 23 years of a life sentence for the murder of his high school classmate and ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee. Adnan has always maintained his innocence.
In an extraordinary move, after years of doggedly fighting to keep Adnan in prison, prosecutors recently reversed course. About a week ago, after a year-long investigation, the state of Maryland filed a joint motion with Adnan’s defense team asking a judge to overturn his conviction. On Monday, the judge granted that motion.
That evening, Adnan was back home with his family for the first time since being escorted from his bedroom by Baltimore police in the middle of the night in 1999. He was 17 at the time.
I first heard about Adnan’s case listening to the Serial podcast back in 2014.
Like millions of others around the world, I was captivated by Adnan’s story. I felt a kinship with the characters because I understood exactly what life was like for a high schooler in 1999 — communicating via pager, getting a cell phone for the first time, slow dancing at prom to K-Ci and JoJo.
I imagined this happening in my own high school friend group. I wondered what it would be like to lose a friend like Hae so tragically then watch another friend go to prison for it, wondering all along if the adults who put him there got it right. I wondered which would be harder to reckon with, that my friend did something so horrible or that he didn’t.
It seemed like everyone was listening to Serial in 2014. We talked about it over morning coffee and evening cocktails. Though, I remember feeling uneasy about how we so casually swapped theories like we were following a TV show. This was someone’s real life, I thought, someone’s son and brother and best friend.
I was mostly convinced of Adnan’s innocence after Serial but I still had questions. Why would Jay lie? What about the Nisha call? How did Jay know where Hae’s car was parked if he wasn’t involved? These circumstances couldn’t be explained away, could they?
The one thing I could never get past, however, was this: For Adnan to be guilty he had to have deceived every one of his closest friends and family both before and after the murder, all these years later, never showing any signs of being a killer beforehand and never telling anyone about it afterward, except for one person who was more acquaintance than friend.
I remember high school as a time when our lives revolved around our friends. We were constantly together and when we weren’t together we were talking to each other on our phones, recounting every tiny detail of our days. If one of my best friends had done something so heinous in a fit of uncharacteristic rage I surely would have noticed something off about him. What’s more likely is he would have eventually told me about it. I don’t believe a teenager is capable of holding such a thing without it eating him alive from the inside out.
The story of the jilted, young lover who suddenly snapped was the stuff of movies — psychopaths exist, right? — but was it likely to happen in real life?
Furthermore, I had a difficult time understanding how so many responsible people — police, prosecutors, judges, and others — could get something like this wrong. Surely that’s not possible, I thought.
What followed for me was a deep dive into Adnan’s case. After Serial, I listened to Undisclosed, a podcast created by three attorneys who took a much closer look at what was brought to light in Serial.
Undisclosed addressed the questions all of us wondered about. It wasn’t as slickly produced as Serial but the reporting was far more thorough. Serial often gets credited for helping Adnan get to where he is today but it was Undisclosed that actually changed my mind.
Along with never missing an episode of Undisclosed, I read police interview transcripts, scoured Reddit posts, and sifted through myriad court documents in my free time. Either Adnan was a true psychopath or all the bits that made him look guilty could be traced back to missteps by those investigating the case.
The latter turned out to be true. The story of how Adnan ended up serving a life sentence did not unravel like a Hollywood movie about a jealous ex-boyfriend. The “psychopath” explanation, while appealing in its tidiness, was without merit.
The more I dug in, the more I discovered how badly the entire system failed this 17-year old defendant and his family, but even more so, the victim and hers.
I became enthralled not only by Adnan’s case but by adjacent stories within the broader justice system.
I found myself learning about other wrongful conviction stories, mainly through Undisclosed and the Truth & Justice podcast. While each story has unique characters and circumstances, there are through lines in all of them, mainly involving police and prosecutors who should have known better, or did, and are rarely held accountable for their mistakes.
The Undisclosed team alone has investigated and reported on 27 such cases. Thirteen defendants have been exonerated. Several others have been paroled or released early from prison. Two other defendants, believed to be innocent, remain in prison today but were saved from execution just hours before they were set to die.
The podcast revolution, started by Serial and carried on by so many others, is literally changing the system.
While I’m elated for Adnan and his family, it’s hard to celebrate stories like his. It’s painful to imagine what Hae’s family must be going through right now, too.
Why did it take more than 20 years to right such an obvious wrong?
Adnan has actually had a number of wins on appeals in recent years (the New York Times has a good summary of Adnan’s journey through the courts) but the State of Maryland has challenged every one of them until last week, digging their heels in and drawing out an obvious injustice, seemingly, for no good reason other than pride; it’s just hard to see it as anything other than that.
What’s more troubling is that the impetus for Adnan’s recent motion was a bit of newly uncovered evidence about two alternative suspects* — a handwritten note in the prosecutors’ original files from 20+ years ago that was unearthed by a prosuector in 2021. This evidence was kept from Adnan’s defense team all these years and it’s credible enough that Baltimore police have committed to a new investigation into these two suspects in 2022.
All hope is not lost, however. While work like this is excruciatingly slow and too often hindered by obtuse actors — yes, that is a Shawshank Redemption reference — there are many like Rabia, Colin, and Susan of the Undisclosed team and Bob over at Truth & Justice and many others who are working tirelessly to help the innocent find freedom.
I don’t work as an attorney or activist myself. My background is in graphic design and I work for an education startup — I’m happily employed as Creative Director at Folio.
Still, it’s interesting to reflect on this kind of work through the lens of a designer. Designers spend their days solving problems by imagining a solution that no one has thought of yet. Perhaps the public sector could use more of that. My hope is that more designers get involved in this and other types of similar work. Who knows, maybe I’ll do so myself in my next act.
If you’re interested in learning more about Adnan’s story I recommend the Undisclosed podcast. They remade their first three episodes and it’s a great place to pick up from after Serial. Start with Episode 1 — Adnan’s Day (Relaunch).
*No, Jay is not an alternative suspect. Like Adnan, it is now believed that Jay had nothing to do with the crime nor did he actually know where the car was parked before police did. Please listen to Undisclosed if you’re still not convinced.
