As we all know, or should know at this stage, Adnan Syed was cast into the public limelight not exclusively because he was convicted of the murder of his ex-girlfriend but because of a podcast series, Serial.
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“We are confident that when the court hears all of the evidence it will do the right thing: grant Adnan Syed a new trial”, Mr Brown said on Tuesday.
Courtesy of Yusuf Syed/AP Adnan Syed, now 34, was sentenced to life in prison after he was convicted in 2000 of killing his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee.
In the second of three Season 1 “Serial” updates from Syed’s post-conviction hearing, star witness Asia McClain, who was a former classmate of Syed’s, testified for the second day in a row, according to The Chicago Tribune. During cross-examination, Vignarajah said a friend of Syed’s told investigators that Syed had sent a handwritten letter to Chapman and instructed her to type it and send it back to the jail.
McClain, who was never contacted in Syed’s criminal trial despite claiming she had an alibi for him, has taken the stand this week though. His attorneys have argued that he received ineffective counsel.
But McClain said she didn’t testify in the post-conviction hearing because Urick “discussed the evidence of the case in a manner that seemed created to get me to think Syed was guilty and that I should not bother participating in the case”.
Earlier in the trial, an alibi witness testified that she spotted Syed at the library on the day prosecutors say he killed Hae Min Lee at a different location.
Chapman was cross examined by the state on Thursday, and the prosecution attempted to pick holes in her story of Syed whereabouts at the time of the murder.
David Irwin, a defense attorney, testified as an expert witness on the legal obligation to contact and investigate potential alibi witnesses, declaring that an alibi “is the best possible defense you can have”.
BALTIMORE (AP) – As a hearing enters a third day for the convicted killer at the center of popular podcast “Serial“, the focus of testimony has shifted away from an alibi witness toward cell tower data that defense attorneys contend was misleading.
In the 2000 trial, prosecutors used the testimony of Jay Wilds, an acquaintance who said he helped Syed bury Lee’s body in Baltimore’s Leakin Park, and phone records they said tied Syed to the area.
He said Chapman’s testimony could have changed the outcome of the trial.
“They said he was having trouble remembering what he did that afternoon… between getting out of school and going to the mosque”, she said.
The murder conviction of a Baltimore man that was explored by the 2014 podcast “Serial” was based in part on unreliable cellphone data, a forensic expert testified at a court hearing on Thursday.
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Syed is seeking a new trial.
