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Essay / Murder of Hai Min Lee
A conviction is a formal declaration that someone is guilty of a criminal offense, made by the verdict of a jury or the decision of a judge in a court of law. In February 2000, Adnan Syed, 17, was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years. Adnan Syed was a 17-year-old boy attending Woodlawn High School in Baltimore, Maryland. He was tried and convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Was Adnan Syed wrongly convicted or did he actually commit the murder? The courts had no physical evidence linking Adnan to the crime scene, and a classmate of Adnan's, Asia McClain, provided him with an alibi. Without the courts having material evidence to link Adnan to the crime; they relied solely on the testimony of Jay Wilds. Jay's testimony changed each time it was retold, making him a non-credible source. Since Jay's testimony was not completely credible; I believe Adnan was wrongly convicted of a crime he did not commit. The day Hae Lee was murdered, Asia McClain, a classmate of Adnan's, remembers seeing him and talking to him in the library. According to Serial (2014), Asia McClain tells podcast host Sarah Koenig that she remembers seeing Adnan around 2:30 p.m. that day, but was never contacted by her lawyer during the trial . Sarah tells Asia that the moment she says she saw him at the library is also the same moment "they say he was in the car with her" right before she was murdered" (Koenig, Serial, Eps 1). Something doesn't add up if Asia says she saw him and spoke to him at that time, but the State says that's when she was murdered. According to Serial (2014), Sarah told Asia: "If you say you saw him at that time, that means the state's timeline for their entire theory of the case doesn't makes no sense. » If Asia says she saw Adnan around the time he allegedly killed Hae, then that automatically rules her out. Asia establishing Adnan's presence anywhere near the crime scene; it is not possible that he was convicted of her murder. As Adnan was not present at the murder scene and had an alibi, he was falsely convicted. Keep in mind: this is just a sample. Get a personalized paper now from our expert writers. Get a Custom Essay Those who believe that Adnan got the conviction he deserved, may say that Jay's testimony was enough to help convict Adnan. Jay Wilds, an acquaintance of Adnan's, told detectives that Adnan told him about his plan to kill Hae. He told the detectives that Adnan told him he was going to kill Hae, but Jay didn't think much of it. According to Jay, Adnan left his cell phone and car with Jay so Jay could pick him up after killing Hae. He says Adnan is calling him from a pay phone outside Best Buy. This isn't possible because when Sarah Koenig and Dana Chivvis went to look for the phone booth, they didn't find one. In fact, they even looked at the floor plans of the store and there's no phone booth on them. In the Serial podcast, “They dug up a photo of the store, dating from 2001, without a phone booth or pay phone… They looked for plans of the store when it was built in 1995, nothing” (Koenig, Serial, Eps. 5) . If there was no pay phone, how could Adnan have called Jay to come pick him up? Another flaw in this argument is that Jay's story is.