Adnan's Story: The Search for Truth and Justice After Serial

True Crime is a burgeoning genre, with it early beginnings in literature (Truman Capote's In Cold Blood comes to mind) and moving on to television with America's Most Wanted and similar shows.If the culprits were caught and justice had prevailed every a time a crime was committed this genre would have never existed.

We can thank our much flawed criminal justice system and the government for keeping the true-crime genre alive and thriving. The cases taken up by The Innocence Project, the cases like West Memphis Three , Central Park Five and Fairbanks Four are some of the instances that showcase the monumental failure of United State's criminal justice system. Thousands of wrongly convicted innocents languish within the confines of the U.S's biggest money making machine - the America's prison industrial complex (PIC).

PIC thrives on the constant injection of minority blood. Minority young men and women (and also poor white youth) are wrongly convicted or slapped with atrocious prison terms that are no match to their minor crimes. They are brought in young, grow old and die chained to the PIC conveyor belt.

I was introduced to one of it typical victims - 17 year old American from Baltimore, MD - Adnan Sayed, wrongly convicted and incarcerated in 1999, through his friend, neighbor and lawyer Rabia Chaudry's book called Adnan's Story: The Search For Truth And Justice After Serial. More on Serial below. Adnan was a perfect candidate for PIC to devour, as a representative of minority two times over - brown and Muslim. It hardly counts that he was American, born and bred.

Adnan's story might not have seen the light of the day had not Rabia Chaudry become the torch bearer of the crusade to bring justice for Adnan and find the real killers of his friend Hae Min Lee. Rabia brought Adnan's story to the attention of This American Life's Sarah Koenig who made into a podcast called Serial in 2014. Serial became the most downloaded podcast in the history of podcasts bringing national and international attention to this monumental botch-up which destroyed a promising young man's life and messed up an entire community.

Rabia's meticulous deconstruction of Adnan's case, as a friend, a lawyer and a brilliant narrator, picks up the thread from where Serial left off. This gripping real life account adds and fills in the gaps Serial did not bring to light. There is also a newer podcast, Undisclosed, bringing in data and evidence, not presented in Serial. Undisclosed also has a huge fan following as it explores and presents evidence against (wrongful) convictions handed out by the U.S criminal justice system.

On July 22, 2016, right on heels of Serial's success and a couple weeks before Adnan's Story was published, a Baltimore circuit court judge Martin P. Welch overturned Adnan Syed's conviction for the 1999 murder of his friend Hae Min Lee. But as we all know the states do not accept their guilt or wrongdoing as easily and quickly as they handout guilty verdicts to the innocent citizens. The State of Maryland has succeeded in keeping Adnan's fate in limbo for another year.

The latest status (Sep 2018) of Adnan's case as per the law firm representing him is as follows,
"To recap, we won a new trial for Adnan more than two years ago(2016). Since that time the State of Maryland has been appealing the ruling granting the new trial. First the State appealed to the Court of Special Appeals (and lost). Now they are appealing to the Court of Appeals, which is the highest court in Maryland. The State, as the Appellant, filed the first brief a month ago. Today’s filing is our response. You can read the filing HERE."

Reading up on Adnan led me to revisit Damien Echols book - Life After Death and I watched the HBO documentary series Paradise Lost 1,2,3 in a couple of sittings. Maybe I will get around to write a review soon. After being immersed in such accounts of injustice it seems incredulous that we continue trusting our lives to these fallible human institutions like courts and governments. They are supposedly designed to serve and protect us, citizens, but many times they end up doing just the opposite.