Liars and Saints

 My understanding of the Adnan Syed story begins with a high-school love affair. A relationship ends, Adnan is hurt. The girl--Hae Min Lee--is found dead, murdered. It's easy to find Adnan guilty, because of racism and sketchy cell tower "evidence," and so Adnan is sent away for decades. Legal advocates get angry. There is DNA that hasn't been tested. The man who "found" the body, Alonzo Sellers, later tries to assault a young woman in a car. Also, Hae Min's car was stored suspiciously close to one of Sellers's associates. Sellers shows moments of explosive rage on the stand. Could he be guilty? Moments in the new HBO documentary seem somewhat unethical. By subtly tarring Sellers--without getting Sellers to talk on-camera--the documentary filmmaker could be almost as questionable as the prosecutor (Vicki Walsh) she is attacking. (There is hand-wringing about a bad polygraph test, but I've heard again and again that polygraph tests shouldn't c...

This Sunday night, we'll see the fourth and final episode of "The Case Against Adnan Syed." I'm not really impressed so far. The show seems so interested in proving Adnan is not guilty, it sacrifices some credibility. There's a sense of bias. If the show were more serious about the anti-Adnan arguments, then, oddly enough, I might be more willing to adopt a pro-Adnan stance. Some thoughts after the third episode: -There is still a cell-phone tower discrepancy. Why doesn't the show address the prosecution's on-going argument that, in fact, the cell-phone info *was* reliable? This is maddening, because it's not as if we're talking about a deep philosophical issue here. One side must clearly be right, and one side must be wrong. -The "Jay" phone call irritated me. At one point, we see Jay's ex calling him to try to get the inside scoop on what happened with Adnan. (There's a strong effort to discredit Jay throughout. He's a l...

Someone needs to check up on the prosecution. In an interview with the D.A., The Intercept publicized the D.A.'s claim that "Serial" hadn't "really tried" to track him down. But then "Serial" confirmed it had indeed tried--and had "tried hard." The D.A. then misidentified the date on which "Asia" tried to contact him; he was off by one full year. (A particularly important year.) This guy seems a bit fishy. That said, the D.A. maintains that the cell-phone data he leaned on was, indeed, accurate. He says that the pro-Adnan camp is talking about cell-phone technology that was introduced after the events surrounding Hae's death . It seems like there should be a clear answer here. Who is right: HBO, or the D.A.? Adnan reminds me a bit of O.J. Simpson. The intense love; the breakups, the reunions, the new breakups, the new reunions. The fact that Hae found Adnan so intimidating, she asked a teacher to *lie* for her....*to* A...

"The Case Against Adnan Syed" has started, and here a few items to bear in mind, if you're not yet fully obsessed: * A great deal hinges on cell-phone data. One side argues that information from cell-phone towers is reliable; the other side argues the opposite. The pro-Adnan side is very excited to suggest that you can't trust the towers, but it's important to note that the prosecution has never backed down from its "we-trust-the-towers" stance. * The HBO show may have crippled itself. Vox argues--intelligently--that if you really want to make someone look innocent, then you must first start with a serious examination of the counterarguments. This wins you credibility. If you *begin* by saying, Look, we know he had a history of being possessive and controlling, and he once scribbled something about wanting "to kill," and his girlfriend once asked a teacher to lie for her because she was so afraid of Adnan....If you *acknowledge* all of thes...

*** I've written before about my admiration for Michelle McNamara--and specifically about McNamara's gift for finding one detail in a story that others seem to overlook (and then shedding brilliant light on that detail). Hilary Mantel said any writer worth her salt should "light up" the topics she touches, and this is what McNamara does. For example, only McNamara, of all the storytellers I've encountered, points out that the McCanns were vacationing for six days in Portugal, and following a strict routine, before their daughter was abducted. (Does this mean that someone was watching them closely--e.g. a waiter at the bar?) And if James van de Velde didn't kill Suzanne Jovin, does the discovery of Jovin's body in the wealthy area of East Rock mean that a Yale undergrad *who was also a child of Yale professors* did the deed? McNamara again dazzles me with her observations about the MacDonald case. Famously, MacDonald may or may not have murdered his fam...