You can determine someone’s guilt by how they act. Being guilty is an emotion, often expressed as sad or depressed. Guilt isn’t a destructive emotion, but it can be over-consuming if you let it get the best or worst of you. Serial is an investigative journalism podcast hosted by Sarah Koenig. The podcast is about a 19 year old that gets accused of murdering his ex girlfriend back in 1999. Hae Min Lee, an 18 year old high school senior, disappeared on January 13th, 1999. Her body was found in Leakin Park on February 9th. The death was caused by manual strangulation. Her family reported her missing after she didn’t pick up her younger cousin from daycare, investigators started calling friends, and eventually an anonymous call came in and said to talk to Hay’s ex boyfriend, Adnan Syed. The investigating officers then questioned two people from this call log who were at the heart of the active police investigation. Jay Wilds, one of Adnan’s friend, led police to the victim’s car, which had been missing despite an ongoing police search. Syed was arrested on February 28, 1999, and charged with first-degree murder.
Later, Wilds said, Syed called him and asked to meet in a Best Buy parking lot. Wilds said that Syed had showed up driving Lee’s car, with her body in the trunk, asking for help. They eventually abandoned Lee’s car in a residential lot, he said. Lee’s family gathered at their home on Rockridge Road upon receiving official confirmation that she had died. The 18-year old, who was born in Korea but emigrated with her mother and brother at the age of 12, was mourned and remembered by friends and relatives that day. Syed made a appeal in 2003 which was unsuccessful, and later made an appeal for post conviction relief in 2010 based on ineffective assistance including that Gutierrez did not investigate Asia McClain as an alibi witness, this appeal was initially denied in 2014. Eventually Syed did not have a chance with doing another trial. There was not a single piece of evidence that Adnan committed this crime, but he was convicted anyway. From the Serial Podcast, Syed did not sound sad or depressed about the murder of his ex-girlfriend. He simply kept stating his innocence.
Since there was no physical proof that Adnan murdered Hae Min Lee, they could only do one thing, and that was connect what their relationship was like by asking around. Hae had a diary where she would write about Adnan, alot. The two of them would argue once in a while, have sexual interactions often, did some drugs, like a typical high school couple. It seemed odd and out of the ordinary to convict Adnan of a murder, a lot of people around the school said he didn’t look like the type to do such a thing. Adnan and Hae had broke up recently after the murder, but Hae was already moved onto another guy. This gives a suspicion that Adnan could of been hurt or “heartbroken” about the breakup. It was hard to tell if Adnan was innocent or not. He kept to his story most of the time, with an overall saying that he did not kill Hae. Also, Adnan did not seem to have a guilty conscious. He seemed straight forward through all the phone calls, and did not seem guilty.
Seeing if someone is guilty can be a difficult thing to do. It takes a lot to really see or get the truth out of someone. All people are different, some people hide things way better than others. There really is no explanation for guilt, it’s a natural feeling. Guilt can also help you gain greater self-understanding by helping you to recognize when, in fact, you’ve done someone else harm. In the podcast Serial, Adnan did not release any guilt about the murder of his ex girlfriend. No one might ever know what happened to Hae Min Lee.
