Jay's Testimony or State's Testimony?
Whose was it?To fully convict Syed, State used Jay Wilds, Adnan Syed’s friend and drug-dealer, as a prime witness, using his testimony as the primary source of State’s claim. They based most of the other evidence around Jay’s testimony, suggesting that Jay’s testimony clear, and reliable. Adnan was initially suspected because of Jay’s testimony pointing at Adnan. He demonstrated that Adnan Syed was frustrated that his ex-girlfriend cheated on him for Don, new boyfriend (Koenig). He claimed that Syed was only blowing steam off, but later recognized his rage to be real, and described his and Syed’s course of actions to allegedly kill Hae Min Lee. Using his testimony as the crux of the prosecution, the State was able to fully convict, and imprison Syed for nearly 16 years (Simpson). Recently, he supposedly released more evidence further proving that Syed is responsible of Lee’s death. He claims that Adnan did kill Hae, and that they both buried her in Leakin Park (Vargas- Cooper).
The prosecution/State most likely did not account for the inconsistencies of his testimony(ies) for the court hearing, because Jay’s testimony changed nearly every week before the court hearing to match the State’s prosecution, such as the time of his visit with Adnan, and the time of murder. The number of inconsistencies hint of the probability that the testimony is most likely tampered or modified. As he recently was interviewed by The Intercept, he answered many of the unanswered questions that supposedly reveals more of the case. He also openly admits to the amount of inconsistencies in the initial testimony in 1999 (Vargas- Cooper). Most believe that this interview cannot be taken as his final views, because this interview does not match the testimony of 1999’s trial (Mc-Donnell-Parry). What can stop him from creating more inconsistencies in his testimony again? It is possible that he changes his testimony again to match the evidence of the State.
Jay Wilds’ testimony cannot be taken seriously for the court, because his testimony will most likely be skewed. Jay’s testimony, although full of holes, reveals some information that was never available to the police. When he first revealed how he and Syed killed Lee, he stated that he never saw Syed kill her, but later testimony, he asserts that he and Syed both kill her, suggesting the reliability of his testimony. Susan Simpson from The View from LL2 says it best when she stated that “Jay was given both a carrot, in the form of an amazingly favorable plea bargain if he stuck with the prosecution’s script, and a stick, in the form of threatened jail time if he failed to do so.” Jay was also allegedly threatened by Syed to help him kill Lee, where he would leak his drug-dealing business to the local police, further revealing its’ reliability (Bondar). It is possible that the threat pushed Jay’s and Syed’s relationship from friends to enemies.
“Jay was given both a carrot, in the form of an amazingly favorable plea bargain if he stuck with the prosecution’s script, and a stick, in the form of threatened jail time if he failed to do so.”