‘Serial’ Subject Adnan Syed: 4 Key Pieces of Evidence, Explained
Yesterday, Adnan Syed, whose conviction and life sentence for the murder of his high-school girlfriend was the focus of the first season of the hit podcast Serial, got the news he had been waiting to hear for over 16 years – Baltimore Circuit Court Judge Martin P. Welch, who presided over Syed’s post-conviction relief hearing in February, vacated his conviction and granted him a new trial.
Judge Welch’s 59-page opinion breaks down his decisions on the issues raised by Syed’s defense attorneys, Justin Brown and Chris Nieto, in their appeal. The short story is this: Welch found that Syed’s trial attorney, the late Cristina Gutierrez, didn’t challenge the reliability of some potentially faulty cell-phone tower evidence – what the judge called the “foundation” of the state’s case – a mistake so egregious that it violated Syed’s right to effective counsel. Judge Welch also agreed that Gutierrez acted unreasonably by failing to contact potential alibi Asia McClain, but said this wasn’t the reason he vacated the conviction, writing that Syed did not prove that calling McClain to the stand would have created a reasonable probability of a different verdict.
Last night, the state’s Attorney released a short statement about Welch’s decision, and indicated that they intend to appeal the ruling, potentially preventing the new trial from taking place. “It is the continued desire of the Attorney General to seek justice in the murder of Hae Min Lee,” the office said in a statement. “The state’s responsibility remains to pursue justice, and to defend what it believes is a valid conviction.”
Defense attorney Brown has said that he expects the state’s Attorney’s Office to appeal, though he questions why they would want to “draw it out.”
“On one hand, they lost, so their instinct is to appeal. But on the other hand, if they feel like they’ve got the evidence, and they feel like they have a strong case, why don’t they just retry it?” Brown told Rolling Stone. “Do they really want to draw it out for another year, year-and-a-half in the appellate courts? What purpose does that serve?”
If the state appeals and Welch’s decision to vacate Syed’s conviction is upheld by the higher court, the state will then have to decide whether to go forward with a retrial, or attempt to negotiate a plea deal.
Regardless of what happens next, Brown said that his team has begun preparing for a retrial. “We have not been resting on our laurels,” he said. “We’ve been investigating and looking toward a trial for the last month. We will be 100 percent ready.”
In his opening remarks at the post-conviction hearing in February, Deputy District Attorney Thiru Vignarajah maintained that a jury convicted Syed because there was “overwhelming evidence” of guilt. With that in mind, let’s review the evidence the state clearly believes will lead a jury to convict Syed a second time.