Now, while there are some great things about technology -- such as having a podcast that can grip the attention of millions of listeners -- there are inherent risks and downsides. And one of the biggest risks is due to social media. I don't think it's a huge surprise that there are some folks on the Internet who just don't understand the boundaries between appropriate and inappropriate. The reditter who posted photos of Jay's house and his address clearly crossed some lines. But by leaving his Facebook profile up (and even leaving it public for awhile), Jay is leaving himself accessible to some of this inappropriate contact. For someone who claims he wants to be left alone, he needs to be smarter about this.
But Jay's anger at SK just confuses me. He claims that "she created an evil archetype" of him and "sensationalized" his motives. But anyone who listened to the podcast knows that SK went out of her way to not cast judgment on Jay's motives and reasons. I criticized her for being too lenient on Jay. It seems Jay's real beef with SK is that she "helped fan the flames of this story that people had already moved on from." But which people is he talking about? I'm sure Hae's family have not moved on from this "story." And Adnan's friends and family have not either. And probably many of the people who knew them did not move on from the story either.
So the real issue seems to be that this story has turned up the crimes that Jay committed, which is jeopardizing his new life. But it's absurd to blame this on a podcast. Everyone makes their own decisions and must be held accountable for those decisions. And judging from his interview, Jay was not contrite enough from his involvement with this murder to clean up his act:
People have also posted information about my family, criminal charges against me, my dad and my uncle. I don’t know why that is at all relevant to what Adnan did. I mean, I know that I was a criminal, and I know that even after this happened, I didn’t have an occupation. I mean, I kept doing my job of criminal shit. But I’m past all that now. I made a good home for my wife and kids.
So am I really supposed to feel sympathy for Jay? After those crocodile tears at his sentencing, he simply returns to his same old "criminal shit" like nothing changed? He isn't a kid who made a mistake when he was young. He was a career criminal who consciously got involved in criminal shit for a period of time. So don't whine about how a reporter drew attention to your shady criminal activity -- blame yourself for doing that criminal shit in the first place.
Playing the victim is not a viable strategy here. Hae was the victim in this. Jay was someone who (at least) helped bury her body and stayed quiet for 6 weeks until he was offered a plea deal to testify. You don't want crazy people from the Internet harassing you? Take yourself off social media and don't make personal information available on the Internet. You don't want to foist the damage on your family? Then don't give an interview where you draw even more attention to yourself. This interview is simply going to shine a brighter spotlight on Jay and his family.
On another note, I was again impressed by SK's professionalism in handling what appears to be increasingly accusatory emails from Jay. Jay has no basis to believe SK leaked private information to Reddit. SK emphatically denies it, the Serial producers deny it, the Reddit mods deny it. And SK addresses the question directly and upfront (unlike anything we've heard from Jay) in her Dec. 29th email. Jay's insistence that SK is lying just makes Jay look like a paranoid fool, which also isn't helping his cause.
The final question of the interview was focused on what Jay bought Stephanie for her birthday. As Rabia's blog explains, this is theorized to be related to an item found in Hae's car - a gift box and a heart charm with a price tag of $119.95. There is no proof that the charm found in Hae's car was one that Jay bought -- it seems more likely to be unrelated. But this last question seemed a bit tacky. If NVC wanted to probe Jay's story, I feel she should have been more up front about it and conducted a more direct questioning of the new story he gave. Trying this gotcha type of question that's only going to further fan the flames of speculation is only going to make things worse for Jay. And considering that the supposedly tone and goal was that they wanted Jay to tell his side of the story, it feels a little underhanded.
Glenn Greenwald, co-founder of the Intercept, posted a response on reddit to some of the criticisms of the interview (excerpted, in relevant part here):
1) Natasha did explicitly ask him about his inconsistencies, and he explained at length why his story is different now.
2) As any trial lawyer will tell you, there are all sorts of ways to effectively question witnesses who are lying. Attacking them as a prosecutor is often not the best way; in fact, it can be the worst way, since it makes the witness defensive and clam up. That's particularly true when they are there voluntarily.
Natasha is acting here as a journalist, which means she wants everyone to have as much information as possible about Jay's story. That means letting him speak and getting his full claims on the record.
All over the internet, and the comment section, people are dissecting Jay's inconsistencies from this interview, which means it was extremely effective.
3) Rabia Chaudry - the person who did more to bring this case to light than anyone - has repeatedly said on her Twitter feed that she views Natasha's interview as one of the most important events yet in showing that Jay's testimony is completely unreliable, and specifically thanked her for the way she conducted the interview: by letting him speak:
If I were Adnan's lawyer, I'd be salivating over how to use this interview, which contains huge number of Jay's statements that I'd use against him.
It may have been more emotionally satisfying to some pro-Adnan listeners - from an entertainment perspective - if Natasha had gotten in his face and repeatedly demanded that he explain specific inconsistencies, but from a journalistic perspective, she chose the best possible approach for letting readers get as much information as they could.
If you see the inconsistencies in Jay's story, then other readers do, too. Nobody needs Natasha beating everyone over the head with it [for it to be] clear.
So in the end, what did this interview accomplish? It gave us an entirely new version of the events of that day. This version contradicts the facts and the cell phone logs and is easily discredited (apparently the Intercept does not buy the story either). So it just affirms the belief that Jay lies. It gave us a bit of an insight into Jay as a person, and he comes across as a borderline paranoid personality who is upset that the past is coming to haunt him today. Thus, it further discredited Jay's story while focusing more media attention on Jay and his family. It seems like he made things worse on both fronts. Whatever Jay was expecting out of this interview, it seems clear that he's not going to get it.
As for the possible legal ramifications of the interview on Adnan's appeals process, the EvidenceProf Blog does a good job explaining a potential avenue of relief. It definitely seems like Jay is admitting to having committed perjury. While it is unlikely the State would prosecute Jay for perjury (considering they probably were aware of or even encouraged some of the more questionable aspects of Jay's testimony), it also seems really dumb to admit to lying in court.
In the end, I suspect we have not yet heard the last of Jay Wilds.
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