

We should not expect pure objectivity, a projected path from A to B in the traditional narrative sense, and above all, an Answer. We should expect plenty of meta-investigative investigations, lots of asides, pieces that don't fit together just right, and more than a little bit of frustration.
#Serial podcast episode 7 summary serial#
Am I alone in being perplexed that Adnan expresses more anger at himself for loaning out his car, smoking weed and otherwise being "a bad Muslim" than he does at the guy, Jay, who ostensibly killed his friend and framed him for it?Ĭruz: Now that we're at episode 9, I think as Serial listeners, we've learned what to expect (and not expect) from the show. As I see it, careful journalists digging into cases where there's a nontrivial chance of a wrongfully convicted person is an unalloyed good, especially in minority communities with comparatively less financial and cultural capital to navigate a system with bias problems.īut back to this episode. This isn't the space to flesh this out here, but amid a mini-backlash against Serial, accusing it of tone-deafness and cultural tourism in immigrant communities, I just wanted to register my own opinion, which is that Sarah Koenig has done as good a job as I can imagine anyone doing of treating everyone she interviews and portrays with fairness, and as complicated, fleshed-out individuals. One of my feelings would be, "That *%$%^#* Jay!!!!!" It seems like Adnan would be furious at Jay if he were innocent-but then again, it also seems like he would feign furiousness at him if he were trying to mislead us about his innocence.

I feel like if I were wrongly jailed based on one person's accusation, my hate for them would burn, at least in the moments when I was discussing my feelings before and at my trial.

But I don't get the even keel about the guy who accused him of murder. I get his ability to speak fondly of other friends who testified for the prosecution about some little piece of the story they knew, like, "Oh, I heard Adnan ask Hae for a ride that day." Lots of wrongly accused people could forgive that. The one I can't help but seize upon is Adnan's apparent failure, despite repeated opportunities, to angrily denounce Jay, the man who told the cops that he killed Hae. I try to avoid the temptation to accord them any import. Listening to accounts of Adnan's behavior during the investigation and trial, I naturally kept thinking, "Is that how a guilty person would act? Is that how an innocent person would act?" For the most part, I think such speculation is best avoided, that committing a murder or being wrongly accused of one is a circumstance so unusual that we can't reliably say that a given reaction means anything. What Happened to American Childhood? Kate Julian It's something that isn't conveyed on television crime dramas, for obvious reasons, and it turns behavior that would've seemed inexplicable-like writing a casual letter when he was about to be sentenced to life in prison-into an understandable thing.
#Serial podcast episode 7 summary trial#
For example, he explained how standing trial meant many, many hours just sitting in holding pens, doing nothing, waiting. Invisible aspects of the system come across partly in the course of Adnan describing what he went through and partly from his description of what that felt like. But that's okay, or at least it doesn't bother me, because what we get instead, via Adnan, is a service that Serial provides: It gives us a peek at parts of the criminal justice system that just aren't portrayed in many other places, even in procedurals like Law and Order. Those nudges aside, we get little useful information that advances our notion of what really happened. But unlike last week's episode, they nudge the undecided listener back toward thinking that there is reasonable doubt about Adnan's guilt, as does hearing from the man himself for extended interviews about his story. Another person, a friend of Hae, feels certain she saw her on the day of the murder at a time that messes up the state's timeline. A person who regularly shoplifted at the Best Buy where Adnan is alleged to have called Jay after the murder insists there were no pay phones there. Conor Friedersdorf, Lenika Cruz, and Katie Kilkenny discuss the latest episode of WBEZ Chicago's popular non-fiction podcast Serial.įriedersdorf: Episode 9 of Serial, "To Be Suspected," begins with new reasons to believe that the state's explanation of Hae's murder is off.
