We may, however, be at a crossroads. The public has always had an appetite for true crime, but there has been an unmistakable shift recently in the focus of such stories. The last five years or so have illuminated the dark corners of criminal justice. An exponential increase in exonerations has replaced stories of how horrific crimes are solved with stories of how horrific practices by some law enforcement and prosecutors ensure convictions at all costs. Inequitable sentences for drug offenses, unequal sentences based on race, the punitive conditions of many prisons that destroy instead of rehabilitate, and reprehensible practices such as long-term solitary confinement are all issues receiving more and more attention.
There is also a rising awareness of police brutality and use of lethal force against people of color, most prominently against black men, and the impunity and lack of accountability of state actors.
Meaningful reform may seem a Herculean task; so much is broken, so much cries for attention. But if I could choose one issue to focus on, it would be this: full accountability of people paid by our tax dollars to protect and serve us—police officers and prosecutors.
One realistic way to achieve legitimate oversight of these institutions and state actors would be through independent, civilian-led but agency-inclusive commissions appointed in each state. Even as a measure to prevent wrongful convictions, innocence commissions that operate completely apart from the judiciary have proven effective at cutting through the onerous and severely limiting appellate system in states like North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Wisconsin, and Illinois. These commissions review claims filed directly by incarcerated people who claim innocence, eliminating not just the systemic appellate limitations, but also the need for an attorney. They are, if well managed and diligently applied, an excellent and efficient model to restore justice to the wrongfully convicted. Maryland must have one; every state must have one. Likewise, independent commissions that hold prosecutors and police officers accountable should also exist. Civilians should have the power, as the ones who pay the salaries of these public officials, to ensure that state attorneys and cops don’t abuse their authority, and even have the power to revoke that authority.
* * *
Last year, in December, I went to visit Adnan with my husband. We navigated all the hoops required to be able to sit with him, separated by a Plexiglass divider, for an hour. As we walked into the visiting room, fairly full of families sitting around the u-shaped containment area, a pen for their incarcerated loved ones to ensure they never forgot where they actually were, Adnan sat with his back to us. It was odd. He usually faced the entrance as he waited for his visitors, then would rise to greet us and make use of his one hug at the start of the visit.
I felt immediate concern. His back was stiff; he stared straight ahead, not even turning his head to look our way. I thought, Is he angry? Is it because we haven’t visited in a few months? What’s going on?
We walked around the far side of the room where he sat frozen, and he finally made eye contact with us. He stood up stiffly, smiling, and then headed toward the area where he could hug my husband. Something was definitely off.
We sat down and I immediately asked him, “Hey, what’s up? Everything ok? You just sat there staring ahead when we came in.”
That’s when he explained what he had been going through for the past month or so, something he hadn’t mentioned over the phone for fear of worrying us. A few weeks earlier, as he came out of a bronchial infection that was going through the prison, he woke up one day with pain in his neck and shoulders. He assumed he had pulled a muscle in his sleep. The pain steadily worsened and slowly traveled down his back and arms over the next few weeks. He didn’t turn to face us when we entered because he couldn’t—it was too painful for him to look to either side, or up and down.
The prison had given him painkillers, but he was not taking them. He had seen too many other men over the years become addicted and he wasn’t about to risk it. He was just living with the pain, moving slowly or not moving at all, hoping it would go away on its own. People incarcerated at the North Branch Correctional Institution don’t get MRIs or physical therapy; they get meds administered to them based on superficial assessments without any testing. Figuring out what was causing the pain was probably never going to happen.
The agony was so severe that he couldn’t even look down to read or write, he could only face straight ahead. Adnan laughed, not a happy laugh, but a resigned one. All these years in prison he had been relatively healthy, barring minor issues, but he had little hope in his case. Now that his PCR was reopened and he had a shot at a new trial, he was suddenly afflicted in a way he’d never experienced. But like always, he said “Alhamdulillah,” still giving his thanks to God that he was better off than so many, and asked us not to tell his family.
I left the visit upset, knowing not much could be done, and said prayers on the ride home and in the days following.
A week later his family visited him and he could no longer hide his condition from them. Around the same time I left for Pakistan for a month-long trip. A few days into my trip I saw a Facebook post by Yusuf. He requested that people write to the governor because Adnan was in so much pain that he had fainted a few times, and one arm was now almost paralyzed.
I sat in a bit of shock. Fainting? Paralysis!? His condition must have either worsened since we visited him, or these things were happening before we visited and he didn’t tell us. A ball of anger and panic began to rise inside me. What if he became paralyzed fully, what if he died? But I was sitting across the world, juggling a thousand things around me, I couldn’t go visit him, couldn’t go knocking on the warden’s door. So I did what I could, I started tweeting about it.
I tweeted a screenshot of Yusuf’s post, asking people to contact the governor to request medical attention for Adnan. Within the first hour hundreds, then thousands of others shared the tweet, and tweeted at the governor, the attorney general, the Department of Corrections. By the second hour the Baltimore Sun ran a story that Adnan, the famous inmate from Serial, was severely sick. Calls began flooding the prison, demanding that he be seen. Other outlets picked up the story, and within the day it went viral.
It went so viral that Adnan saw it on the evening news from his prison cell and immediately called Yusuf.
Adnan was livid, in a way he had never been with his little brother before. It was true, he wasn’t faring well, but he didn’t want any of this to be public. It made him look bad, like he was complaining about the prison and the staff to the world. He worried about how they would treat him, not necessarily fearing any real retribution, but concerned that they simply wouldn’t be as nice to him anymore.
I began getting text messages from Yusuf saying he had messed up, he shouldn’t have done what he did. I reassured him that he had done what any concerned loved one would do and told him not to worry.
But the incident reinforced what I came to learn about the life Adnan had created for himself inside the prison walls. That life depended on carefully negotiating relationships in which everyone, even those responsible for keeping him incarcerated, saw him as a human being and liked him as such. And they did. At the end of an earlier visit, an elderly guard leaned over and quietly asked me how my visit to Adnan went. I told him it was good, always good to see him. He smiled and nodded and said, “He’s a great guy.”
That was and is the world Adnan has managed to build to protect himself—positive interactions with everyone, including the guards who locked him up multiple times a day. Anything that made the prison look bad threatened those relationships, threatened to make him fade into the crowd of thousands of inmates, just one of an unruly, criminal population. But this wasn’t just a calculation on his part, I realized. This was how he had been his entire life, even the short childhood from which he was snatched. Every person who has ever known Adnan can say this about him: he never wants to hurt or disrespect anyone.
Despite how clearly his own attorney damaged his defense, which he knows b
etter than anyone, he has never spoken about her to me in a disrespectful way. He doesn’t carry rancor against anyone. If there is one reason I’ve stood by his side it is these traits: grace, patience, and kindness through and through in the face of overwhelming injustice.
I shouldn’t have been surprised at the immediate and intense public response to his health, which hasn’t improved much, because without proper scans getting a diagnosis beyond “it’s a pinched nerve” is impossible, but no matter how many times it happens, I can’t get over the investment of people around the world in what is happening to Adnan. How do I understand and explain the support, love, prayers, and tears of strangers? How can I understand global attention to a state-level murder case? How can I understand over 500 million downloads of Serial and 80 million downloads of Undisclosed?
The only way I can process it is through my faith. That God was not going to let Adnan suffer all this in vain. Why he suffered any of it, why innocents suffer at all, is not a question mere mortals have ever been able to sufficiently answer. It’s enough for me to know that all throughout history, incredibly good people have suffered terribly, and suffering is not punishment. But much suffering is followed by redemption, sometimes that redemption even coming after the death of great people. Muslims believe the tradition of the Prophet Muhammad, in which he says that nothing bad happens to a believer, not even the prick of a thorn, that if borne with patience he or she is rewarded, either by elevation in rank in heaven or by the expiation of sins.
And eventually, the wrongs committed against the innocent are perceived, acknowledged, and history makes amends.
Why all this attention to Adnan? If you ask me, God wanted the world to know what happened to him, and it started with Sarah.
Serial destroyed the silence around Adnan and ushered in Susan, Colin, Bob, Dennis, and the dozens of people who’ve helped with the case, the thousands who’ve donated, the millions who’ve prayed.
As important as the millions of global listeners who, having heard his story, support Adnan, is the immediate community. The same aunties and uncles who watched Adnan grow, the same friends he shot basketballs with, the same families they encountered with every trip to the mosque, that were now back.
Every so often Yusuf will be approached by someone in the community who hugs him, tells him he’s been listening, that he’s so glad the story is out there, and that everyone is rooting for Adnan to come home. Women whom Aunty Shamim has known for decades but hadn’t uttered Adnan’s name since 2000 have come to her, held her, and asked about him.
Just saying his name to people, acknowledging he exists, is one level of healing. The second is the world knowing he is innocent. The third will be his coming home, after which it may take years to fully rectify, if it’s even possible, their lives.
People ask what Adnan wants to do when he comes home. One day, when Yusuf was feeling particularly low, Adnan was trying to humor him.
He asked Yusuf how much local apartments were renting for, which set off all kinds of alarms for Aunty—what, he wouldn’t come home to stay with them? Adnan was teasing them. He was going to open a bakery, he told Yusuf, and bake all kinds of pastries, cakes, cookies, mentioning beautiful sweet things to evoke positivity in his little brother.
Yusuf told me and then posted it on Facebook—his brother would open a bakery when he got out. I found it sweet and so hopeful, especially because I’d never heard Adnan ever remotely plan any such thing.
In reality, though, it’s still too tenuous to plan what Adnan may or may not do when he’s released. He will have the full support of his family, but it is a family that needs years to come back together. I and his other supporters will do our best to give him the financial support needed to get on his feet. In all these years, though he wasn’t able to get a college degree in prison, he still developed employable skills. He’s a whiz in the law library, having mastered legal research, and his knowledge of the legal system, terminology, and processes is sharp. His experience with the criminal justice system, and the workings of prisons, and prison life, position him perfectly for advocacy.
Mostly, Adnan brims with empathy for others who are struggling. He is emotionally perceptive, kind, compassionate. I see him spending the rest of his life finding a way to uplift others, whether he chooses to go to law school and defend the wrongfully convicted, or bake brownies and cookies. Maybe both, maybe all of it. That is what I wish for him, all of it.
In Serial Adnan explained to Sarah that while he doesn’t have the life he thought he would have, he still has a life. He wasn’t saying he was fulfilled. He was saying he didn’t want pity, he deserved dignity, he had made the best of the worst situation. How could he not come to terms with his life when he was surrounded by thousands of others who shared that same life and struggles but have much fewer resources and support than he does? Inside the soaring, barbed-wire walls of the human cages we build to keep the dangerous, unsavory, and unwanted away from our homes and towns, people continue to be people. They form friendships, find purpose, forgive, and live.
But as someone who has always felt the urgency of time, the shortness of life, the limitations of our abilities to do and experience every good thing the world has to offer, nothing makes me more sad than the thought that this may be the only life he will ever know. So when I imagine him out, I hope he is able to cram a hundred lives into the years he has left.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
On behalf of Adnan and his family, I want to thank the many who have made the telling of his story possible, who supported him with letters, prayers, donations, and love.
I want to thank those who came to our side to help with every challenge we faced in the past two years: Amanda, Shahed, Laila, Alicia, Samantha, Patrick, Ramiro, Ballookey, Christie, Evanem, Jia, Josie, Beau, Dez, Chris, Rebecca, Amar, Ben, Amelia, Matt, Beverly, Brendan, Jim, Laura, Michael, Mital, Pete, Shaun T., Scott, Jon Cryer, the folks at Launchgood, The Magnet Program, and many, many more.
To Adnan’s lawyers who have stood by his side over all these years, our deepest gratitude to Justin Brown, Chris Nieto, Chris Flohr, and Doug Colbert.
There are no words to thank Sarah Koenig and her team at This American Life for what they have done for Adnan. And there will never be a way to repay the diligence, time, effort, and exhaustive hours spent by Susan Simpson, Colin Miller, and Bob Ruff in investigating this case and creating podcasts to tell the world about it. Your integrity, generosity, and dedication are the rare gifts that make you incredible human beings. Thank you Dennis for steering me through all this, and continuing to show me the path ahead.
Thank you to my agent, Lauren Abramo, and editor, Elisabeth Dyssegaard, for talking me off of the many ledges, being patient during my stress-induced meltdowns, and making this book possible along with the entire team at St. Martin’s Press.
I thank my loving husband, Irfan Aziz, and two beautiful daughters for their support and understanding as I’ve spent hundreds of hours away from them, writing, researching, traveling, speaking on Adnan’s behalf. They are my foundation, my rock, my everything.
I thank my parents for raising me, my brother, Saad, and sister, Siddrah, to stand by what is right and speak up for the truth, for never forgetting Adnan, and never letting us forget him either.
Lastly I thank Saad, Aunty, Uncle, Yusuf, Tanveer, and mostly Adnan for trusting me to tell his story and to be his voice. My only fear is failing you, and my prayer is that I’ve honored your trust and done justice to Adnan’s struggle.
INDEX
The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.
Abramo, Lauren
Adcock, Scott (detective, State witness)
testimony at first trial
Addison, Rodney
Adger, Justin (Adnan’s friend and Asia’s f
ormer boyfriend)
Adnan Syed. See Syed, Adnan Masud
Ahmed, Bilal (Adnan’s mosque mentor)
arrests of
grand jury testimony of
Al-Awda
Ali, Wajahat
Ali, Yaser (Adnan’s friend, State witness)
testimony at first trial
Antepli, Abdullah (Imam)
Application for Leave to Appeal (ALA)
Aziz, Irfan (Chaudry’s second husband)
Baldwin, Jason
Baltimore City Police Department (BCPD)
Baltimore County Police
Be On the Look Out (BOLO) alert
Beasley v. State
Benaroya, Anne (Wilds’ attorney)
Bhatti, Umbreen
Bianca, Salvatore (criminologist, State witness)
Billingsley, Peter (Adnan’s friend)
Blackstone’s Formulation
Brady disclosure
Branch, Steve
Brown, Justin (Adnan’s PCR attorney)
Brown, Warren (attorney)
Buddemeyer, Phillip (city surveyor, defense witness)
Burgess, Sabien
Butler, Inez (high school athletic trainer, State witness)
Byers, Christopher
Carter, Ernest (Wilds’ friend, “Neighbor Boy” in Serial)
cell phone. See phone records
Chaudry, Saad (Adnan’s best friend and Rabia Chaudry’s younger brother, defense witness)
grand jury testimony
phone records subpoenaed
police interview of
relationship with Adnan
and Serial
testimony at second trial
Chivvis, Dana (This American Life producer)
Clemente, Jim (crime scene profiler)
Clinedinst, Donald (Hae’s new boyfriend, State witness)
mother of (Anita Baird, LensCrafters manager)
note from Hae to
police interviews with
relationship with Hae
and Serial
testimony at first trial
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