Since Sarah Koenig’s crime podcast, Serial, came to an end, it’s been fascinating to see people involved in the case of the 1999 murder of the high-schooler Hae Min Lee come forward to speak on the record about it—especially two in particular, Jay Wilds, a key witness in the case, and now, prosecutor Kevin Urick. Though Koenig was able to speak over the long term with Adnan Syed, who was charged with Lee’s murder, neither Wilds nor Urick were particularly forthcoming with information when she contacted them—Wilds spoke to Koenig only when she showed up at his house unexpectedly; Urick claims that he wasn’t contacted by the podcast’s staff until its run was almost over (the staff of Serial deny this), and didn’t want to comment. In this latest interview, though, Urick does discuss the case, and says something that no one on the podcast did—that it was an open-and-shut, “run of the mill” case of domestic violence:
The Intercept: The podcast “Serial” has focused enormous attention on the murder trial of Adnan Syed. Before all this, was there anything that stood out to you about the case?
Kevin Urick: The case itself I would say was pretty much a run-of-the-mill domestic violence murder. Fortunately a lot of relationships do not end in domestic violence, do not end in murder. But it happens often enough that you can identify it as a domestic violence case resulting in murder. That was the whole problem the defense had with the trial. They could not come up with a defense to that evidence. At the time the case was going on, there was no local press coverage. When the appeal was argued, there was no press coverage of that either. And the court of special appeals felt there was nothing new or novel about the arguments that were made in the appellate brief. It was not even a published opinion.
And:
TI: There were plenty of inconsistencies in Jay’s confession, his testimony, and his statements to The Intercept after trial. Don’t all those inconsistencies discredit him?
KU: People have to realize, we try cases in the real world. We take our witnesses as we find them. We did not pick Jay to be Adnan’s accomplice. Adnan picked Jay. Remember, Jay committed a crime here. He was an accomplice after the fact in a murder. A very serious crime.
And there is almost always during a trial when you’re dealing with people out of a criminal milieu, that they have a lot of things they don’t want to talk about. They had some involvement with crime. There are always prior existing statements, even when you’re dealing with non-criminals.
People can very seldom tell the same story the same way twice. If they did, I’d be very suspicious of it because that would look like it was rehearsed. So all the time, you take your witnesses as they are, you try it in the real world, we put it on, we let the jury judge credibility. Jay was on the stand for five days.
The Intercept’s argument? There wouldn’t have been a story if Syed was guilty of Lee’s murder, so the podcast was built around the idea that there had been a miscarriage of justice. Urick seems to agree with this, saying that Koenig used “sleight of hand” to make the cell phones records that played a crucial role in Syed’s conviction seem like faulty evidence. This is quite an accusation to leverage at a journalist, but it’s also an incredibly interesting argument, and regardless of if he’s right, Urick’s full interview is a fascinating read.
I didn’t listen and don’t care – but that argument, that the journalist spun the story to make it more interesting? Wouldn’t the journalist have just picked a different story, if he thought this one wasn’t actually a miscarriage of justice? There are plenty of others to choose from!
If that’s the Intercept’s argument, then it’s a stupid argument. I don’t think there is any sleight of hand on anyone’s part. It’s correct to be concerned about the state’s timeline – syncing Jay’s testimony to the available physical evidence was the state’s entire case.
The case also didn’t need to be hyped – it’s just a fundamentally interesting story: either Jay or Adnan is lying about Adnan committing murder. There can’t be another explanation. Koenig believed that a focused new investigation could ferret out the answer.
What makes this case different than many murders is that Adnan (despite being totally guilty) has done a good job of consistently sounding like what we would expect an innocent person to sound like, but Jay also sounds pretty credible on the major points of his story, so the dissonance is fascinating, especially in the face of pretty competent cross examination (which usually exposes people lying about complicated, semi-verifiable things).
Huh? None of Jay’s major points sounded credible. His definitive statements all seemed like cliches lifted right from the last TV crime drama to pass his sight. His account of secondary details were even less grounded. And if the defenders sing-songy, grandstanding cross-examination is considered “pretty competent” the prosecution probably could’ve convicted anyone even tangentially involved in the murder if they wanted, including the drunk streaker who found the body.