I haven’t meant to imply that your concerns are totally invalid or that every question can be answered. Sometimes I think we have to separate nagging uncertainties from reasonable doubt. Not all questions can be answered. Nor do they have to be to create reasonable doubt.
That said, I can at least take a shot at answering these questions.
Jay SAYS he helped bury Hae’s body BUT that is NOT corroborated by the cell phone calls. Again, the whole reason Syed was granted a new trial in the first place was because the court found ineffective assistance of counsel because Syed’s counsel failed to introduce the AT&T cover sheet saying that incoming calls were unreliable for location. The call that supposedly placed Syed in Leakin Park at the time of burial was an incoming call.
PLUS, Jay himself now says that he didn’t see Hae’s body in the afternoon and the burial didn’t happen until at least midnight. So the calls are irrelevant. Which has to lead one to question how Jay knew to provide a version of events, including a lot of random turns, trips to a lake to smoke pot, etc. that would somehow match up with the cell phone “evidence” when he now says none of that actually happened. Check out the Intercept interview. The material facts change completely. The entire story is unrecognizable. The point being that Jay managed to hit the highlights back then because he was almost certainly coached. Check out the names of the detectives who got sued by wrongfully convicted person Ezra Mable https://www.courthousenews.com/Free-After-10-Years,-Man-Sues-Baltimore-Cops/ That list included Detective Ritz.
As for pleading as an accessory after the fact, I think it is reasonable to think that Jay isn’t terribly bright and was coerced. Either the police came to Jay through the cell phone calls, or he came to them to collect the reward money. Either way he was a talkative guy who just happened to be a suspect in about a half dozen other crimes back in 2009. All of that stuff conveniently disappeared. They couldn’t let a supposed accessory to murder just walk and the police for the first time in anyone’s knowledge found Jay private counsel. It was weird.
And don’t forget that literally everything about Jay’s story is extraordinarily bizarre. Assume Syed is the murderer. Remember in Serial when they drove the route to Best Buy and decided it was possible because they had like two minutes to spare? But think about what had to happen in those two minutes. Syed had to convince Hae to park somewhere out of sight, leap at her and kill her without leaving any physical evidence or himself being injured, then move her body to the trunk without being spotted, and finally run like hell to a pay phone to call… Jay??? Then Jay has to arrive, see a dead body which Syed is surprisingly casual about showing him, and Jay’s reaction is to drive to a park and ride and then drive around looking for weed while Syed apparently makes a quick call to Nisha? Really? I’ve never murdered anyone, but both their reactions strike me as remarkably casual for high school students - one of whom was afraid of his mommy catching him going to prom. Nor does it make any sense to go to track practice late (which nobody remembers), get stoned at whatever that lady’s name’s house was, and then go to services with one’s family for Ramadan after burying a body that you could have just left at the park and ride. Did you see where Hae’s body was buried? It is WAY off the road and we’re supposed to believe two stoned teenagers carried her out there, found a depression under a log, covered the body with dirt and debris all while stoned and without flashlights in a burgeoning ice storm? Nothing about Jay’s story makes a lick of sense unless you feel some obligation to match it up with the cell phone records, which weren’t accurate anyway. Conversely, the cell phone records do make sense if you’re a couple of teenagers driving around aimlessly eating some Big Macs to break the Ramadan fast and smoking a little weed.
You know who else never called Hae? Don. Her boyfriend. Not once. (text barely existed in 99 and Syed only had a cell phone for one day at the time. Hae didn’t have one.) Both he and Syed can’t be the killer, right? So if the failure to call is evidence that one is a murderer there is a real problem. I suspect it is more likely that they both thought Hae’s parents were overreacting and Syed went to Ramadan services and didn’t think about it again until school started up the following week (school was cancelled the next day). Also worth noting that supposedly the entire idea behind Syed getting a cell phone in his uncle’s name was so he could make the “come and get me call” to Jay. Think about that though. If that was true, why would he call Hae and give her the number? If the police hadn’t found that number they never would have called him, or subpoenaed the phone records, or known Jay existed. Just one more thing that makes absolutely no sense if Syed is the killer.
Finally, Syed’s story was always that he didn’t recall specifically what he did that day because it was generally unremarkable, but he LIKELY was at school while waiting for track practice to start. Asia is the one who has the specific memory of the event. I don’t remember what I ate for lunch yesterday. (Really. That’s not just an example.) By the time Syed gave a statement six or more weeks had passed.
That is why Asia’s testimony would have been so crucial. She remembered seeing him until about 2:40, and at the first trial Debbie testified to seeing him at the guidance counselor’s office around 2:45. Those two things alone make it impossible that he committed the murderer. Which is why it is absolutely inconceivable that Syed’s attorney didn’t follow up on the alibi witness. With that testimony she could have put Syed on the stand to say that he didn’t recall at the time of his statement what he had done that day, but that Asia’s testimony refreshed his recollection that he was at the library and then decided to walk over to the guidance counselor after that where he talked to Debbie, which he would then recall because he knew it was the same day he talked to Asia. Then, if his lawyer was any good, he’d also “remember” that he spoke to his coach at track practice about the prayer he was going to lead for Ramadan services the next day (his coach only remembered the conversation generally but couldn’t recall the date). That uses one solid witness (Asia), solidifies Debbie’s former testimony through Syed (Debbie said she couldn’t remember at the second trial, but her prior testimony had been introduced), and gives a factual basis for dating his coach’s recollection about the prayer. It gives the jury a reasonable, countervailing narrative where Gutierrez left a black hole. The bottom line is that if nobody can place your client at the scene they shouldn’t testify because it rarely helps. But if someone says “I saw that guy do it/I saw the body” your client has to say they didn’t do it. They just have to. You have to create an alternate narrative. That should have started with Asia. It didn’t. That has cost Syed his life.
