The American Justice System: Its Fairness in Serial Podcast

Cases across the nation are often corrupted because the arguments are one-sided opinions claimed by prejudice perspectives. A court system’s results may not always be as accurate as they claim to be due to the evidence not being considered. Corruption in the criminal justice system is so deeply rooted into the system, it now seems to be hard to reduce to successfully have a fair trial. The problem with the system is that prosecutors have acquired far too much power and face few consequences for poor behavior.

Over 2,000 people have been exonerated from criminal convictions since 1989, stated in an article by to the American Conservative. In the majority of these cases it was criminal or unethical behavior by witnesses, law enforcement and even the government that put these individuals behind bars. After all, 52% of these exonerations involved official misconduct, according to the Registry of Exonerations. Those who have been wrongly convicted should have a second chance at a fair trial or if there is any suspicion of corruption there should be a mistrial.

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An example of corruption of the criminal justice system would be a police officer in Baltimore who was indicted after bodycam footage showed him planting evidence in a drug arrest. Another one would be, Andrew Wilson who Loyola Schools Project for the innocent helped exonerate after spending 32 years in prison for a wrongful murder conviction. The prosecutor in his trial withheld key evidence , 32 years is an extremely long time to spend in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.

There needs to be a big change in the criminal justice system because those who have families and a future ahead of them our losing their freedom because of all the corrupt individuals in the justice system who have power that they have abused. Considering the fact that there are real criminals out there that have yet to be prosecuted, really shows that the criminal justice system cares nothing about real justice. The American justice system is unfair and should be fixed by those who care about others future and wellbeing. In the podcast, “Serial,” the narrator, Sarah Koenig, claims the court system is prejudice because some evidence isn’t involved in the case when that evidence actually impacts the case greatly.

The listeners of the podcast wants to know if the court system is as trustworthy as they claim it to be or is the case impacted by one’s claim. Sarah Koenig throughout the podcast provides evidence to help her argument by using analyzing evidence to show how and why the results are unjustified. All of the evidence provided by Sarah shows different point of views about who is reliable and who is not trustworthy, which makes the audience determine if they believe or disbelieve in Adnan being innocent. Through Koenig’s convincing logic about how the court system is not trustworthy, she appeals to her audience by providing evidence to show how Jay was connected to the murder but didn’t have to face all of the complications that Adnan faced. Sarah exclaims, “ Since Jay’s credibility was the State’s case, Adnan’s attorney, Cristina Gutierrez, tried to rip it to shreds. That essentially was her defense. She uses the words “truth” and “lie” as often as possible in her cross-examination,” (Koenig).

Sarah provided this piece of evidence into her argument to show how Jay’s argument was the only one considered where as Adnan’s argument wasn’t noticed because he’s the initial suspect of killing Hae Lee. The audience can now decide if they want to believe that the court system only trusts Jay or is the court system really considering both, Jay and Adnan’s, arguments. She continues to state, “People lie in court under oath all the time. Witnesses lie. Lawyers lie. Police lie. This should come as a shocker to no one. I’m not saying that’s what happened here, I’m just saying that I’m not assuming that everyone who participated in Adnan’s trial told the truth. But clearly the jury found Jay believable, or believable enough. After a six week trial, they convicted Adnan in just two hours. We talked to six jurors and none of them had any lingering doubts about the case. None of them wondered if the investigation was shoddy,” (Koenig). Each one of Jay’s interviews and his testimony during this case are filled with lies and fibs, which made his story hard to piece together. According, to other people's this made sense because Jay was known to often make stories up.

With each story and interview, new details would be added in, making everything seem weird. Jay could have just been remembering more as time went on, or maybe the prosecutors forced Jay to put details into the story to make Adnan more guilty. At one point, Jay was charged with accessory of first degree murder after his plea deal, that he plead guilty to. He was told to attend the trial to dismiss any jail time, maybe this when prosecutors told him to make the story look good for him and bad for Adnan. The justice system has failed tremendously with providing justice and being honest. Many innocent individual lives have been ruined because of unfairness and corruption in the justice system, including Adnan Syed. This shows there is a clear crisis of trustworthiness, reliability, and integrity within the criminal justice system.