Adnan's Story Read online

  Back in November, the note had lingered in his binder, and he showed it to Hae’s best friend, Aisha Pittman, during health class one day when they were discussing pregnancy. On the back of Hae’s note they began writing notes back and forth to each other, messing around about whether Hae was pregnant. Aisha was friends with both of them, and there was no hiding anything from her.

  The police didn’t care much about the banter. What caught their eye were the words written in Adnan’s handwriting across the top of his exchange with Aisha.

  Note traded between Aisha Pittman and Adnan in November 1988, admitted to evidence at trial

  * * *

  An ambiguous line written on a four-month-old note and no forensic proof does not a conviction make, so the State was spending a considerable amount of time making sure their key evidence was not only solid, but solidly tied down. That evidence was their star witness, Jay.

  Since his first recorded police interview on February 28, 1999, hours before Adnan’s arrest, Jay had given three more interviews on the record.

  Jay’s second interview was at 6:00 p.m. on March 15, at the Baltimore City Homicide office, and this third interview happened three days later, on March 18, complete with a “ride-along” where the police took Jay out to recreate the events of January 13. The fourth interview was conducted on April 13, 1999, but no record of that interview exists anywhere in police or defense files. The only indication it even took place is a short memo noting it.

  While the first interview already had internal inconsistencies, the second and third added layers and layers of confusion and contradiction.

  In the second interview, Jay now said he knew how Adnan killed Hae, telling MacGillivary: “He tell me that ah, he’s going to do it in her car. Um, he said to me that he was going to ah, tell her his car was broken down and ah, ask for a ride. And that was, and that was it, that.”

  The story of Adnan asking for a ride comes, notably, after the police have heard this from Krista Meyers on February 29, a couple of weeks earlier. Neither Jay nor Jenn knew, when questioned earlier, how Adnan got hold of Hae to kill her.

  This time Jay also said that during a previously unmentioned store run with Jenn as he awaited Adnan’s call, he told her that Adnan was planning on killing Hae that day. Jenn had said no such thing, maintaining that she didn’t know any of this until that night when she picked up Jay. But then, the first time Jay had spoken to police, he had told them that he didn’t know of Adnan’s plans until the day it all went down. In the first interview Jay said he went to the Westview Mall to buy Stephanie’s gift; in the second he said he went to Security Mall, both located in the suburbs of the city.

  Hundreds of small inconsistencies like this pepper Jay’s interviews, and a few big ones stand out, for example, where it was that Adnan showed him Hae’s body. In the first interview, the “trunk pop” to reveal Hae’s body happens on Edmonson Avenue. In the second interview it happens at Best Buy. By the third interview Adnan has killed Hae in Patapsco Park but he doesn’t show Jay the body. The trip to Patapsco Park also jumps around, at 2:15 p.m. in one interview, at 4:30 p.m. in another. In the first interview he is at Jenn’s home, which she confirmed, when Adnan’s “come and get me call” comes in. By the third interview he is driving home when the call comes.

  In the first interview, only Adnan buries Hae. In the second, they both do. In the first interview, Jay disposes of his clothing in the trash cans at his own house; in the second he gets rid of them at the F&M store dumpster.

  In the second interview Jay visits the apartment of a girl named Kristina Vinson three times on January 13; in his first interview he doesn’t visit her at all.

  Whether and where Adnan smokes pot, where they get the pot, if and where they eat, who Jay visits during the day on the 13th, all of these details change with each interview, and sometimes within the same interview. Jay describes Adnan removing Hae’s items from her car and putting them in his car in two different locations in the second interview: at both the I-70 Park-n-Ride and at Edmonson Avenue.

  One consistency between the first and second interviews, an important one given the way the State’s case is going to go, is that the call Adnan made to “come and get me” came to Jay around or after 3:30 p.m., and that he didn’t leave Jenn’s house until around 3:45 p.m.

  Another consistency is the constant referrals to cell phone calls, their timing, his location during the calls, and the content of the calls. The calls to Adnan’s cell phone, which Jay had all day, are unmovable. Their records are fixed and they must be dealt with; Jay’s statements have to work with and around them. And to the best of his ability, he seems to do that. Over and over he’s asked about different calls, and two undated documents titled “Jay’s Chronology” and “Cell Phone Chronology,” found together in police files with notes from his March 18 police meeting, seem to indicate that they worked with him to get his stories to match the record.

  The cell phone records solve one of the State’s big problems—most of the varied, and changing, details of Jay’s statements are unverifiable. Jay’s testimony and corresponding cell phone records will become the basis of the State’s case at trial, in particular a 3:32 p.m. call to Nisha Tanna (the girl Adnan had met at the New Year’s Eve party) and the 7:09 and 7:16 p.m. incoming calls. But first they have to make sure they can get Jay to the trial.

  Throughout his interviews Jay has, repeatedly, implicated himself as an accessory to a very serious crime. He knows he needs an attorney but can’t afford a private one, so he does the next best thing—he contacts the Baltimore public defender’s office asking for a lawyer. He hits a wall, though—he doesn’t qualify for a public defender because he hasn’t been charged. And he continues to be in that limbo, implicated but not charged, until September 7, 1999.

  On that day, prosecutor Kevin Urick finally charged Jay as an accessory after the fact to first-degree murder. But Jay did not need to worry. The charges were not just filed nearly concurrently with a plea deal he was being offered, but also at the same time that he finally got an attorney, albeit in a highly irregular manner.

  Attorney Anne Benaroya had recently entered private practice after seven years as an assistant public defender in Baltimore, Maryland. In September of 1999 she was working with a boutique criminal law practice and was occasionally asked by prosecutors to speak with indigent defendants. On that particular day she had a jury trial against Urick that ended sooner than expected. As they wrapped up Urick asked her to speak to a young man who needed an attorney. She was qualified to be a court-appointed pro-bono attorney, so she agreed.

  Jay was being offered a plea deal, right then and there. Upon speaking with Jay she realized that he was already “loaded with prior statements to BPD,” in her words, and that the plea was a foregone conclusion. If he didn’t take the plea, Urick implied that the case could be tried in mostly white Baltimore County where a defendant like Jay wouldn’t fare so well. Benaroya realized that, having tangoed this long with BPD, Jay was actually lucky he was getting a deal at all. Urick didn’t have to offer him anything; he could just subpoena him based on his existing statements. Of course, an uncooperative witness can do plenty of damage at trial.

  The plea was the bargaining chip used to make sure Jay testified as needed, with the threat of imprisonment hanging over his head, but to enter a plea Jay needed to have an attorney. Urick couldn’t parade him before a judge without legal representation. Lucky for Urick, and Jay, Benaroya had the heart of a public defender and couldn’t say no. But at that point Jay hadn’t been arraigned yet, so Benaroya asked the court to proceed with the arraignment in order to enter her appearance as his attorney as well as to enter his plea.

  The parties then immediately entered a plea before the court, with Jay pleading guilty to one count of accessory after the fact to the murder of Hae Min Lee.

  According to the plea, as long as Jay cooperated by continuing to “tell the truth,” the State would recommend a five-year sentence wi
th all but two years suspended. However, when Jay is finally sentenced the following year, this is not the sentence he gets.

  * * *

  With Jay’s testimony secure, the State now has to deal with Gutierrez and her barrage of discovery requests. While the State ostensibly has an “open file” policy that would allow defense counsel to have full access to prosecution files, Gutierrez was forced to file demand after demand to get information about the charges.

  As of September 1999 the only information given to the defense is what was contained in the indictments and warrants from months ago:

  On 09 February 1999, at approximately 2pm., the Baltimore City Police Department responded to the 4400 block N. Franklintown Road, for a body that had been discovered by a passerby. Members of the Armed Services Medical Examiners Office responded and disinterred the remains. A post mortem examination [ruled the] manner of death a homicide. Subsequently, the victim was identified as Hae Min Lee … On 27 February 1999, your Affiant along with Detective William F. Ritz had the occasion to interview a witness to this offense at the offices of homicide. This witness indicated that on 13 January 1999, the witness, met Adnan Syed at Edmondson and Franklintown Road in Syed’s auto. Syed, who was driving the victim’s auto, opened the victim’s trunk and showed the witness the victim’s body, which had been strangled. This witness, then follows Syed in Syed’s auto, Syed driving the victim’s auto, to Leakin Park, where Syed buries the victim in a shallow grave. Subsequently, this witness then follows Syed, who is still driving the victim’s auto, to a location where Syed parks the victim’s automobile. Syed then gets into his car and drives the witness to a location in Baltimore county where the digging tools are discarded in a dumpster.

  Gutierrez had been attempting since May to compel full discovery on the details of the case, including repeated filings for the autopsy report and Jay’s statements. At one point she contacted the medical examiner’s office herself to get the autopsy report only to be told that they’d been instructed by the prosecution not to provide it to her.

  Although Gutierrez already knew the identity of the State’s witness because the police had told Adnan who it was during his interrogation, the State filed a motion with the court to bar discovery of the witness’s ID. In response to Gutierrez’s request in June for “[a] copy of any statements made by Jay Wilds as an unindicted co-conspirator or codefendant,” the prosecution replied that “[t]here is no unindicted co-conspirator or co-defendant.” Technically, the State was right—they hadn’t yet charged Jay.

  It is not until about a month before the trial is scheduled, on September 3, that the State discloses it has Adnan’s cell records and intends to introduce them at trial as business records.

  On the same day that Jay pleads guilty to accessory after the fact, Gutierrez files a motion to compel further discovery with the court, asserting that the defense hadn’t been given enough information to raise an alibi defense.

  Moreover, the State has identified, only upon inquest by this Court, that Ms. Lee was murdered sometime in the afternoon of January 13, 1999, but the State has contended it cannot establish the time of death with any further precision. Jay Wilds, according to the State, met Adnan Syed directly after the murder at a prearranged time and location and was present and assisted in the burial of Ms. Lee’s body in Leakin Park. While the State has “paraphrased” Mr. Wilds’ statements for various purposes, the State has not “paraphrased” or revealed any information regarding the actual time(s) Mr. Wilds alleges this activity occurred.

  Gutierrez has no idea at this point that Jay will testify that the burial took place long after school was out, because the indictment reads as if the burial happened right after Hae was killed.

  On September 24 the State discloses that it will introduce a witness from AT&T wireless, implying the witness will be a “documents representative”—someone who can authenticate the records, but not someone who will testify to the calls in a substantive way. They follow this up on October 8 with a disclosure that the State will call an AT&T expert witness at trial, someone prosecutor Kathleen Murphy and a Baltimore detective took a ride with that day to test cell tower locations. Jay joined them. The cell expert, whose name they disclose the following day, is Abe Waranowitz, a radio frequency (“RF”) engineer with AT&T.

  They also disclose a summary of Waranowitz’s oral report. The summary is not accompanied by any written results but is Murphy’s account of the expert’s oral reportings to her. The ambiguity results in a frantic letter by Gutierrez two days later to AT&T attempting to get the information alluded to in the State’s disclosure, namely maps with cell tower sites. This is the first the defense has heard the State will be offering any evidence related to cell tower site locations, and the trial is scheduled for three days later, on October 14.

  A motion by Gutierrez to “continue,” that is, delay the trial, is granted by the judge on October 14, and at that point she still doesn’t have a single statement made by Jay, any statements by Jenn, or cell tower location information or maps.

  But the day before the new trial date of December 8, Waranowitz faxes Gutierrez a list of the relevant cell tower sites, two maps he prepared, and a spreadsheet of cell tower frequencies, all of which still add up to less than meaningless documentation, given that Gutierrez has no idea what the significance of any of it is.

  And just like that, with barely anything to go on, Adnan and his defense team go to trial.

  * * *

  The first-degree murder trial of the State v. Adnan Syed began on December 8, 1999, in the Baltimore City Circuit Court with the Honorable Judge Williams Quarles presiding.

  I wasn’t there. It was a weekday, of course, a Wednesday, and my law school semester was fast coming to a close. Final exams were around the corner.

  I spoke to Adnan frequently in the weeks leading up to the trial. He was nervous but trusted Gutierrez. I had yet to meet her, but I had heard all about her and done my share of Internet sleuthing. She had an incredible reputation and, according to Adnan, had offered him a lot of attention and kindness in the past eight months. He could sense that she felt protective of him and it reassured him. She told him, repeatedly, that the State had nothing. The forensic disclosures they had made so far indicated that neither the blood on the T-shirt found in Hae’s car, or the hairs they tested, matched Adnan. They had nothing but Jay.

  It wasn’t until the first day of trial, when evidentiary and preliminary motions took place, that the State finally turned over Jay’s police statements from February 28 and March 15, after repeated motions by Gutierrez. Nothing about his March 18 or April 13 meetings was disclosed. The State still didn’t turn over Jenn’s statements, or those of any other witnesses, and challenged Gutierrez’s request for Jay’s statements by arguing (1) there was nothing exculpatory in them and (2) he was a witness and not a co-defendant.

  Cell tower location information faxed to Gutierrez.

  Gutierrez understood—probably after sitting through the grand jury examination of Bilal, and hearing from Saad and others that the police were asking about religion—that Islam and Adnan’s ethnicity were the foundation of the State’s argument toward motive. And she wanted the court to be aware and take into consideration any jury bias that could taint the proceedings as a result.

  Prior to voire dire, in which the jury was selected, Gutierrez says to the judge that “there have been particularly in print, but also in TV and radio media nonstop for the last eight weeks or so since the coup in Pakistan, news events regarding that coup and the political implications for peace in that area and others and specifically related to this country.” Judge Quarles asks her if she is “going for … basically, Arab, Islamic bias?” She says yes.

  The judge assures her that he will attempt to elicit any such bias from the jury pool and then asks this follow-up, “I understand the importance of Islam in the case, does her [Hae’s] Catholicism or lack thereof play any part in the case?”

  Even before opening a
rguments, the court is already aware that Adnan’s religion plays a role in this case, though it’s not clear how this information is known, since charging documents have no such information. Either the judge has in hand the bail hearing transcript, or the grand jury testimony, or has simply heard it through the legal grapevine. Regardless, it is now publicly known that this is not a run-of-the-mill dating violence case.

  Jury selection begins on the 8th and runs into the next day, when both the State and defense also give their opening statements. This is the first time Gutierrez and Adnan get to hear exactly what the State will be alleging in the particulars of the crime. The State lays out its case:

  [Jay] gets a page to meet the Defendant at Best Buy. He meets the Defendant there. The Defendant has Hae Min Lee’s car and says look I did it, pops the trunk, there’s the body of Hae Lee. At that point Jay Wilds is totally shocked and stays in a state of shock. […] You’re going to see another exhibit which is a map of cell sites and how they correspond to the City, and you’re going to see. […] That both of those calls were made from the [Leakin] Park cell site. And you’re going to hear how the body was buried and recovered from [Leakin] Park.

  It is a short, methodical, precise opening. Gutierrez, however, opens with a long, rambling (and sometimes inaccurate) lecture on Pakistanis and Islam:

  [Adnan] happens to have been born of Pakistani extraction. His parents are American citizens by choice. For those of you—you may or may not know some of the history of Pakistan, which is a country that was formed in the Arab world in the tip of the land mass called Asia. (Indiscernible) is in the northwest corner of what was once India. […] And Pakistan was formed because, within India, hundreds of years of settlements from Hindus and Moslems could not get along and subsequently Pakistan broke off. [… A]t some point, many Pakistanis—the bulk of whom were Moslem—many of them came to this country to seek peace and economic opportunity. […] They brought with them their religion. […] And they brought their customs and way of life.[…] And they formed communities as Moslems and as Pakistanis. […] On the rest of the world, Islam is a major religious force for people in many different countries—Arabic, Asian—but all over the world Moslems live. It is a monophystic (phonetically) meaning they believe in a single god and they believe in a way of life. […] They operate on a different calendar year. […] which doesn’t recognize—other than as a dividing point—the birth of Christ that one the basis of most Christian calendars. And in the Islamic calendar, which runs approximately 12 months—but on a different system—there is one month that the Islamic calendar use as a sacred month of renewal and discipline, and a call to the faithful Islamic to come together and do certain things to remind them of the discipline of their faith […] in addition to the house of worship where the faithful of Islam gather—and particularly during Ramadan—five times a day to pray according to the book of their religion—the [Koran]—to pray and open their souls and their hearts to the discipline of the words of Mohammed. […] The hope of the mosque in building the school is to prevent the impact on their children in what they view as the outside world, and every year they add a grade so that there is a fundamental Islamic school system where they can keep their children away from the evilness of a world that they interact with but they know does violence (inaudible). That is a world that Adnan Syed came from. And that friction certainly caused him friction. Now Adnan—and you will learn this from everyone—his friends, from the teacher, from the friends of Hae Lee herself. Adnan was a young man who was liked by everyone. He was a leader. He was a scholar. He was an athlete. […] And he viewed himself […] as a strict, fundamental Moslem, as a good Moslem.