A lawyer for Adnan, the subject of the “Serial” podcast, says that new evidence proves the phone records that sent him to jail are inadmissible – which means Adnan’s murder conviction could be overturned!
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Syed, now 35 years old, is currently serving a life sentence for allegedly killing his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee.
As Serial fans will likely remember, two incoming calls were said to place Adnan in the park where Lee’s body was found. But, in a fax to Baltimore police, AT&T warned at the time that “Outgoing calls only are reliable for location status”.
Brown argues in the motion that a prosecutor’s “misuse” of the cellphone data and the failure of Syed’s original lawyer to question the evidence at trial support Syed’s petition to reopen court proceedings.
It “is an extremely important piece of evidence, and we are bringing it to the court’s attention as quickly as possible”, Mr Brown told The Baltimore Sunday.
The detectives used the call log from the phone to corroborate the story of the man who accused Syed of her murder, a former classmate named Jay Wilds.
But now, in light of the newly discovered AT&T warning, Brown is challenging the evidence in his motion, saying that it is “in the interest of justice” that Syed be able to defend himself against these challenges.
The Maryland attorney general’s office has not commented on the motion. He was sentenced to life in prison, despite the lack of physical evidence tying him to Hae Min’s death.
Serial may have ended last December, but fascination with Adnan Syed’s case continues, as new developments crop up every now and then.
The Maryland Court of Special Appeals in February agreed to hear Syed’s appeal for a new trial so the witness Asia McClain, could be added to the record.
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He argued in the motion that the note from AT&T, though not initially introduced in the case, is pertinent, and was omitted from Syed’s trial only because of “human error” on the part of his attorney, Cristina Gutierrez, who died in 2004. But Brown says those were the types of inbound calls AT&T said were unreliable, the paper reports.
