I did not know of Adnan Sayed until about six weeks ago. Now I know a lot about him.
He is 32 years old and the son of first generation Pakistani immigrants to America. He went to Woodland High School in Baltimore County, Maryland. In school, he kept good grades, was a part of the track team, and was a practicing Muslim.
He has spent the past 15 years as a convict in a “correctional facility” in Maryland, convicted by a jury for the murder of a 17-year-old Korean-American – his girlfriend Hae Min Lee – in January 1999.
The prison he is in has educated Sayed. Today, he goes about explaining the workings of a jury to new inmates with the help of graphs in which he plots the price of tea at CMart and 7/11 stores. Most people do not look beyond the dramatically different graphs to realise the “price of tea” at both shops is the same.
The same information, he is pointing out, can be presented persuasively to a jury to make it arrive upon conclusions that may not necessarily be true.
Search for innocence
Rabia Chaudhry is Sayed’s best friend Saad’s sister. She is an attorney in the Baltimore area and has been working relentlessly since 2000 to prove Sayed’s innocence.
Rabia reached out to Sarah Koening, a journalist and a producer with the public radio show This American Life, about a year ago. She knew of Sarah from her bylines in The Baltimore Sun. Koening was intrigued by the case Rabia presented and dug deeper into the evidence that Rabia had painstakingly collated.
Koening now presents Serial, an exciting new form in narrative journalism, where she follows the story of Sayed. The podcast series has taken the world by storm. It has been downloaded more than a million times over the past two months.
Recreation of timeline
Serial comes from the stable of This American Life (WBEZ Chicago, National Public Radio, United States) and is the result of thorough reporting on a case that has long disappeared from public consciousness.
The Serial team has spent the past year going through many boxes of legal documents, police transcripts, trial testimony, cell phone records and other documents. They have also taken many field trips to Baltimore, often recreating some critical elements of the event timeline or trying to speak to some key witnesses.
The end product is a riveting investigation, narrated weekly by Koening, interspersed with audio clips of the trial testimony, which sucks you in from the very first episode.
Why would someone kill a 17-year-old? Was this a case of racial bias? Why did the defence attorney not present all the evidence judiciously? How could the jury convict someone without any forensic evidence?
These questions swirl around my mind as I listen in week after week. (A new episode is available for download every Thursday).
Relative truth
Behind the storytelling and the meticulous reportage is the essential humanity of this project. Narrative long-form allows the creators to shine a light on the tardiness of the police investigation and the “autopilot” nature of the judicial system. Oftentimes, as a listener, I end up getting frustrated at the inconclusiveness of the evidence or the naivety of an assumption. But it is this messiness that makes me believe in the nobility of this endeavour and keeps me hooked.
At its core Serial is a meditation on the relative nature of “truth”. Most times, it is never about the price of tea, but about how the price is presented.
The Serial team says they are reporting on the go and the episodes are just about a week behind their reporting, so maybe no one knows how this is going to end.
But I, for one, hope it ends well for Sayed, who has spent almost half his life behind bars for a crime he may not have committed.
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He is 32 years old and the son of first generation Pakistani immigrants to America. He went to Woodland High School in Baltimore County, Maryland. In school, he kept good grades, was a part of the track team, and was a practicing Muslim.
He has spent the past 15 years as a convict in a “correctional facility” in Maryland, convicted by a jury for the murder of a 17-year-old Korean-American – his girlfriend Hae Min Lee – in January 1999.
The prison he is in has educated Sayed. Today, he goes about explaining the workings of a jury to new inmates with the help of graphs in which he plots the price of tea at CMart and 7/11 stores. Most people do not look beyond the dramatically different graphs to realise the “price of tea” at both shops is the same.
The same information, he is pointing out, can be presented persuasively to a jury to make it arrive upon conclusions that may not necessarily be true.
Search for innocence
Rabia Chaudhry is Sayed’s best friend Saad’s sister. She is an attorney in the Baltimore area and has been working relentlessly since 2000 to prove Sayed’s innocence.
Rabia reached out to Sarah Koening, a journalist and a producer with the public radio show This American Life, about a year ago. She knew of Sarah from her bylines in The Baltimore Sun. Koening was intrigued by the case Rabia presented and dug deeper into the evidence that Rabia had painstakingly collated.
Koening now presents Serial, an exciting new form in narrative journalism, where she follows the story of Sayed. The podcast series has taken the world by storm. It has been downloaded more than a million times over the past two months.
Recreation of timeline
Serial comes from the stable of This American Life (WBEZ Chicago, National Public Radio, United States) and is the result of thorough reporting on a case that has long disappeared from public consciousness.
The Serial team has spent the past year going through many boxes of legal documents, police transcripts, trial testimony, cell phone records and other documents. They have also taken many field trips to Baltimore, often recreating some critical elements of the event timeline or trying to speak to some key witnesses.
The end product is a riveting investigation, narrated weekly by Koening, interspersed with audio clips of the trial testimony, which sucks you in from the very first episode.
Why would someone kill a 17-year-old? Was this a case of racial bias? Why did the defence attorney not present all the evidence judiciously? How could the jury convict someone without any forensic evidence?
These questions swirl around my mind as I listen in week after week. (A new episode is available for download every Thursday).
Relative truth
Behind the storytelling and the meticulous reportage is the essential humanity of this project. Narrative long-form allows the creators to shine a light on the tardiness of the police investigation and the “autopilot” nature of the judicial system. Oftentimes, as a listener, I end up getting frustrated at the inconclusiveness of the evidence or the naivety of an assumption. But it is this messiness that makes me believe in the nobility of this endeavour and keeps me hooked.
At its core Serial is a meditation on the relative nature of “truth”. Most times, it is never about the price of tea, but about how the price is presented.
The Serial team says they are reporting on the go and the episodes are just about a week behind their reporting, so maybe no one knows how this is going to end.
But I, for one, hope it ends well for Sayed, who has spent almost half his life behind bars for a crime he may not have committed.