You'd have to believe that Jay hung out with Adnan, borrowed his car, killed Adnan's ex-girlfriend (recently ex) despite having no motive and then picked Adnan up and hung out with him again while Adnan has no idea what's going on. That's extremely far fetched.

Sheltered lives. That's how I explain your naiveté when it comes to the idea that Adnan was framed.

This is going to be a long one, so grab some coffee. I'm going to tell you the real life story about a 16 year old who was falsely convicted of a crime he didn't commit, and was sentenced to prison for 15-25 years.

His name is Joe. Joe was your average teenager, smoked pot, shoplifted cigarettes and candy, drank occasionally, but was overall pretty well behaved. Josh, Joe's older brother, on the other hand was not. He was constantly breaking into people's houses, stealing valuables to sell at the pawn shops, beating people in the streets at night and stealing their purses/wallets, stealing cars, smoking meth, and abusing his children.

One day, a long time ago, Joe came down with a cold. He missed school because he was sick. His mother, his father, his oldest sister, and his nephew were all over at the house that day. In fact the nephew was in the bedroom with Joe playing video games.

On that same day, one of Josh's old probation officers was outside watering his garden, when a car rolls up on the street in front of his house. There were two people in the car, one in the front seat, one in the back. They pulled out guns and started firing at the PO and his house. The PO was hit seven times. Inside the house, his wife and baby were also hit.

When the PO pulled through all his surgeries, he gave a statement to the police. That he saw a rusty green sedan, with two men inside. Both men were white, and he identified Joe as one of the shooters.

Naturally, the police came to talk to Joe. But he had no idea what the police were talking about, and he told them just that. They questioned him for a while, and left their card in case he heard anything.

A few weeks pass, Joe has been being harassed pretty regularly by the police. They pull him over every time they see him, he's late for school everyday which lands him in detention every day, which makes him late for work, until he loses his job.

At some point, they find one of the people who were actually involved in the shooting. That person promptly claims that Joe was driving, because that was a big issue or something. He then goes on to describe how he picked up Joe from school the day they went to the PO's house, how they smoked some meth and were talking about how Josh was in prison thanks to that PO. He then says that they decided to go "teach that prick some life lessons". And they head off.

The police come to Joe's house, arrest him, and then interrogate him for 22 hours. They don't let him call his parents, they don't let him talk to a lawyer, they just kept at him for 22 hours. And then the cops say the magic words, "If you just admit what you did, you can go home."

So he did. He recanted the second they locked him up. He went to trial, and at the trial they had absolutely nothing linking Joe to the crime. The defense called all the witnesses they could, and every one of them claimed that Joe was home sick that day, he didn't go to school. The prosecution used this a way to show the jury that Joe was a no good hoodlum skipping school every chance he got. They also used the fact that his brother, Josh, was a criminal as proof that Joe clearly was cut from.the same cloth.

In the end, the jury convicted Joe to 25 years in prison. And get this, after 2 years in prison, the rusty green sedan showed up in an armed robbery of a convenience store. The owner of the vehicle confessed in a bragging way to the shooting, and nothing ever came of it.

Innocent people get framed in real life too. Its not some grand conspiracy, just bad luck and cocky cops.

/r/serialpodcast Thread Parent