That and other failures on the part of the defense more than justified a new trial for Syed, he argued.
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But in the state’s closing arguments, Maryland Deputy Attorney General Thiruvendran Vignarajah called Gutierrez a “meticulous” and “tenacious” lawyer, saying she did everything she could do to “vigorously advocate” for Syed, “pouring every ounce of her great talent” into defending him.
Brown said, “If Mr. Syed was with Ms. McClain at the library on January 12, 1999, he didn’t kill Hae Min Lee”.
Adnan Syed was convicted in the 1999 murder of his high school ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee, who was found strangled in a Baltimore park. Vignarajah also presented to the judge a document showing that Syed’s defense attorneys interviewed a security officer at the Woodlawn Public Library three days after Syed’s arrest, proving that his defense team was pursuing the possible library alibi.
“A mistake was made not to talk to an alibi witness who could have turned this trial around”, Brown said, calling Chapman “earnest”, “compelling” and “extremely credible”.
The defense attorney for Adnan Syed, the subject of the “Serial” podcast, said he deserves a new trial where he can put forth an alibi witness overlooked by his original defense attorneys.
“This is not a popular position, but the state’s role is to do justice”, the prosecutor said.
McClain conceded to ABC that she could only testify to what she remembered, and was not able to say definitively whether Syed was guilty of murder. He said he felt “the hearing went well for us” and “we accomplished the things we wanted to accomplish”. Brown says Gutierrez’s representation was substandard, and that this is grounds for a new trial.
But she moved to the West Coast and the defense could not locate her for Syed’s attempt to get a new trial in 2012.
Last week, McClain testified that she saw Syed in the library at the time the prosecution argues Lee was murdered. He said Gutierrez did not contact McClain out of a strategy to help Syed. “Whatever her personal motives, we forgive her, but we hope she will not use Hae’s name in public, which hurts us when we hear it from her. She did not know Hae, and because of Adnan she never will”. But Wilds ultimately testified for the state that he helped Syed bury Lee’s body.
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Despite this renewed attention, the prosecutor said, Syed wasn’t convicted because of ineffective counsel or faulty evidence, but because “he did it”. Syed himself said so, the prosecutor said, writing in a letter to the trial judge during his original proceedings that Gutierrez’s “hard work, determination and belief in my innocence assures me I’m in the best hands”. Koenig sat in the courtroom last week, taking notes for updates to her podcast, as witness after witness was asked if they too had listened to “Serial” or spoken with the reporter. The evidence was widely disseminated on the Internet, “so people were investigating this case all over the country”, he said.
