[Serial Podcast Season 1 spoilers below]

I’m going to assume you have gone through the first season of Serial and know most of the background. However, some important recap:

According to Jay’s testimony, Adnan strangled Hae and then solicited the help of Jay to dispose of the body. The police wondered why Jay, an acquaintance of Adnan, would ever go along with that. Jay stated that he initially refused. But Adnan threatened to go to the cops about Jay’s pot dealings. Wanting to avoid that, Jay becomes an accessory to murder.

To me, this makes no sense at all. I could understand why Jay might prefer burying the body to having to deal with the police over some (relatively minor) marijuana, but the latter scenario would never happen. Adnan simply does not have a credible threat here. If Adnan goes to the police to turn in Jay, Jay can easily plead out of the crime by handing them Adnan. Jay has all the leverage here. Adnan has none.

Did Jay not realize this? I can’t imagine that is true. Jay is supposed to be street-smart. He might not understand the difference between Nash equilibrium and subgame perfect equilibrium, but he certainly should understand the difference between a credible threat and an incredible threat.

Would Jay not be willing to snitch on Adnan if Adnan turned him in? If so, then Adnan would not be deterred from pointing the police to Jay, and so maybe Jay would go along with it. But I can’t imagine this is true either. First, it would require Jay to not want to rat on the guy who just ratted on him, even though it would likely mean that Jay’s charges would be dropped. Second, we in fact know Jay was willing to snitch on Adnan—because he did!

This leads me to conclude that Jay’s lying. I’m not sure why or what it means, but I think it’s important.

TL;DR: Jay’s story is not subgame perfect.

Am I missing something here?