<p>
</p>
<p>It could have been someone known to Jay who was not Adnan.</p>
<p>Why does it have to be Jay or Adnan? There is no physical evidence to connect Adnan. There is only Jay’s story, which was quite fluid for some time and is still full of quite a few holes, if one really considers all the information available, and not just that selected by the prosecution. As a former boyfriend Adnan is a convenient cliche/place to start looking----but that doesn’t mean he did it. </p>
<p>Maybe he did. But on the evidence presented, it was pure conjecture, hype, and story-telling. There is a lot of physical evidence that was totally ignored and untested. Maybe it would support Jay’s/detectives’ version of events, but maybe it wouldn’t. There are a number of witnesses that were not heard from regarding both Hae and Adnan’s activities on that day and days proceeding. </p>
<p>A lot has been made of the fact that Adnan called Hae three times the night before her disappearance, but not after. He called to give her his cell phone number. But how often did he call her the whole week before? Maybe he really didn’t call that much at that point. Don didn’t try to call her either. I imagine there were quite a few folks who weren’t trying to call her. So unless he was in the habit of calling faithfully every day, that factoid, in and of itself, doesn’t mean much of anything.</p>
<p>An innocent man in prison for any time, but especially for life, based upon supposition, maybes, possibilities, and ethnic prejudices is a very sad and wasteful state of affairs. </p>
<p>We should demand and expect more of our system----and ourselves. What if our child or kin is the next caught up in a possible, but totally wrong, collection of ‘facts’, factoids, and innuendo? </p>
<p>These nightmares really do happen to innocent people—and more often than we’d like to believe. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It’s not pure conjecture. They have an eyewitness. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>They do not. </p>
<p>They have an eyewitness (a claimed one, at any rate) to the burial. That’s good enough.</p>
<p>No, it’s not. Especially when that witness had everything to gain by agreeing with whatever the detectives suggested happened. Jay’s statement was all statements by the detectives with Jay agreeing with those statements. And that was only recorded after several hours of unrecorded interrogation.</p>
<p>In exchange for his testimony against Adnan, Jay was connected up with free counsel recommended by the prosecutor and a plea that gave him a full walk, no jail time. </p>
<p>Jay gave the cops Hae’s car.</p>
<p>Does anyone recall hearing Sarah ask Adnan why he did not testify? I would imagine that even though the Fifth Amendment guarantees the right to remain silent, the jury had to hold that against him.</p>
<p>I thought in murder cases the accused almost never takes the stand? </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Not if they were following the judge’s instructions.</p>
<p>But at least one juror told Sarah she wanted Adnan to testify because she felt she needed to hear it from him that he didn’t do it and for him to explain things. The juror said she knew the defense didn’t have the burden to prove innocence, but she wanted him to show he didn’t do it. </p>
<p>Yes, “JAY [emphasis added] gave the cops Hae’s car”. But that proves what Jay knew or did— not necessarily what Adnan said or did. Jay is the only person who knew anything about any aspect of the case. And his details were rather fluid for quite sometime. Images of a slot machine spinning until the ‘jackpot’ line up falls into place. </p>
<p>None of the physical evidence was tested, reviewed or factored in. The whole case was built on Jay. But how much of what he said was just going along down the road the detectives created? Without Jay, there is no case to pursue against Adnan. </p>
<p>Adnan’s counsel told him not to take the stand. He said he wanted to but followed their advice, which turned out to be disastrous as the jury disregarded instructions and held it against him - they said they did. </p>
<p>As to an eyewitness - no. No person saw Adnan and Hae together that day. There was no physical evidence against Adnan. Jay claimed to be an accomplice after the fact - that is a completely different matter. The case against Adnan was circumstantial and built on the testimony of someone who had everything to gain by it and did. </p>
<p>Did not Jay say that he saw Adnan open up his trunk and reveal dead Hae? That’s all the eyewitness I need. If I believe Jay, that’s all I need. Guilty. And how did Adnan’s phone get to Leakin Park if Adnan didn’t take it there to bury Hae?</p>
<p>Jay was absolutely an eyewitness in the legal sense. His testimony is “direct” evidence, not circumstantial evidence. As with all eyewitnesses, the question is whether his testimony is credible.</p>
<p>Physical evidence – like DNA evidence – is circumstantial evidence. Circumstantial evidence can, in some cases, be quite strong.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Jay had Adnan’s phone in his possession.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It doesn’t bother you that Jay changed his tale multiple times, admitting under oath that he lied repeatedly to police?
That the state’s short timeline for the murder conflicted with another “eyewitness” saying that she was with Adnan in the library during that window? That’s all I need. Reasonable doubt.</p>
<p>As to physical evidence - there was none against Adnan. The only physical evidence was purposely destroyed by Jay. It boggles the mind that people find the drug dealer more credible than this former young student.</p>
<p>I wish there was more information about the timeline, because if the state was incorrect about the 20 minute period in which she was killed, everything changes.</p>
<p>As a matter of law, Jay’s testimony is sufficient. It was up to the jury to decide whether or not to believe him. They did not have to believe everything he said; they just had to believe the parts that were material (directly relevant). Did he see the body? Was Adnan with him when the body was buried?</p>
<p>The cell phone pings corroborated Jay’s account of the burial time in Leakin Park. That was at night, well after Adnan’s car and phone had been returned, and other witnesses had seen Adnan. Also after Adnan had received the phone call from the police looking for Hae.</p>
<p>The jury made a determination based on the testimony and evidence they heard, not what was presented on a podcast 15 years later. It was a 6 week long trial. We heard maybe 45 minutes of selected snippets of testimony.</p>
<p>Legally, upon conviction, the presumption of innocence no longer exists. On appeal, the burden is on the defendant to show legal cause why his conviction should be reversed.</p>
<p>@Snowdog </p>
<p>The library witness did not testify at trial, and when the defense attempted to raise that issue in a previous appellate proceeding, she signed an affidavit retracting her testimony. So there was no “eyewitness” to Adnan in the library on the day of Hae’s disappearance.</p>
<p>@emeraldkity4 - there is no way to know when she was killed, but there is a very clear timeline as to when she disappeared – that had to be sometime between 2:30pm when the high school let out, and 3:15pm when Hae was expected to arrive to pick up her little cousin at preschool. Something happened to prevent her from arriving at her intended destination. </p>
<p>Jay knows who did it, either himself, or Adnan, or the mysterious serial killer that I don’t believe for a second because how would Jay know about the mysterious serial killer.</p>
<p>If Adnan is innocent, then he knows that Jay is guilty guilty guilty. So why is Adnan not accusing Jay?</p>