Sarah Koenig

So for Atif, that kiss on the cheek is a tell.

It's the real Adnan.

But for that other guy who said Adnan stole and who thinks Adnan might be guilty of the crime he's in prison for, that same peacemaker quality was something he brought up to me as evidence that Adnan was full of shit.

Here's the curious thing, though.

The same people who tell me they think Adnan was capable of killing Hay, or that stealing from the mosque was a great evil, or that Adnan was a pathological liar, they also tell me, to a man, that Adnan was a great guy.

This is the same anonymous person who thought Adnan had taken many thousands from the donation boxes.

And that don't feel fake to you?

Like that part feels real too, is what you're saying?

You think a person can sort of contain both those things inside their personality?

This is Charles Ewing.

He's a forensic psychologist and a lawyer.

He teaches at the SUNY Buffalo Law School.

He told me he's evaluated several thousand criminal defendants and testified in more than 700 trials as an expert witness.

Mostly, lately, homicides committed by people in intimate relationships and homicides committed by young people.

Ewing had listened to about half the episodes of the show.

And obviously he can't weigh in on a non-psychological health.

That'd be ridiculous.

But I want him to find out what's a valid way to try to understand what's going on when someone kills someone else.

What's the range of options here?

Ewing said most of the time he's doing insanity evaluations, or evaluations for extreme emotional disturbance, and usually in cases where there's not a question of whether the defendant did it, more a question of why.