Although Serial moved on from Syed’s case in its second season (instead telling the story of Bowe Bergdahl), Syed’s story kept moving. Welch agreed last week that Syed had received ineffective assistance from his trial counsel and overturned his conviction. She has certainly been a driving force behind the campaign to free Syed, who has been serving 16 years of a life sentence. “We weren’t so much shocked because of the legal arguments”, Koenig writes, “but because it was such a long shot, this outcome”.
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Weymouth said he was already acquainted with Syed’s case through the Serial podcast.
“At the time, it seemed to me Adnan was spinning optimistic”, Koenig wrote. After all, Syed had first requested to be relieved of his conviction back in 2010, and the petition was denied in 2013.
The judge’s ruling comes following last year’s second post-conviction hearing, where his legal team presented new evidence from AT&T stating that previous evidence used to pinpoint Syed’s location at the murder scene were not reliable.
Koenig was on Skype with executive producer Julie Snyder when she saw the news.
The prosecution has stated that it will appeal the judge’s order for retrial, and assuming it’s unsuccessful, Judd Legum, writing for ThinkProgress, says that the prosecutors will have three options: go through a new trial, negotiate a plea deal, or dismiss the case.
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Koenig also acknowledged the statement from Hae Min Lee’s family about the judge’s decision. Koenig explained that it was the podcast Undisclosed that first brought to light the unreliability of the cell phone expert’s testimony in the original trial. “We continue to grieve”. “Getting the new trial is in a lot of ways the most hard step”. “It has 30 days to respond”, Koenig wrote”. In a recent interview with The Washingtonian, Chaudry discussed her feelings when she heard about the retrial from Syed’s Lawyer, Justin Brown. “The firm’s substantial litigation experience in Baltimore, coupled with its successful track record in innocence cases, makes them the ideal firm to help get Adnan out of prison”.
