Mr Brown said that this information had not been raised by Mr Syed’s previous lawyer. Adnan, whose case was the focus of the Serial podcast, is serving a life sentence for the murder of his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee.
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On Monday Syed’s attorney, C Justin Brown, filed a motion in court that said a newly introduced document showed “the cell tower evidence was misleading and should have never been admitted at trial”.
“In addition, the State’s misuse of cell tower location, and trial counsel’s failure to do anything about it, amounts to separate claims of ineffective assistance of counsel, prosecutorial misconduct, and a denial of Syed’s due process – claims that Syed raises with this filing”, Brown wrote.
The Court of Special Appeals agreed in February to hear Syed’s appeal of a lower court ruling that denied his request for a new trial. As Serial listeners know, that kind of hesitancy is important considering much of the state’s case against Syed was based on a series of incoming calls he received back in 1999.
At time of publication, there was no word from the Attorney General’s Office.
Syed, now 35, was convicted of killing Lee, a Woodlawn High School classmate, on January 13, 1999, though prosecutors at the time had no physical evidence or eyewitnesses connecting him to the crime. The State then relied on this supposed proof in arguments to the Post-Conviction Court. But the lawyer did not interview her.
This warning was not “properly raised at trial”, Brown wrote.
Investigators used the call log from Syed’s cell phone to corroborate the story of the man who accused Syed of Lee’s murder, former classmate Jay Wilds. But Brown says those were the types of inbound calls AT&T said were unreliable, the paper reports. Hae Min Lee, the murdered ex-girlfriend of Adnan Syed. Her body was found in Leakin Park in Baltimore, Maryland. “They have no explanation for that”. But the attorney simply “failed to act on it”.
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However, in a note attached to the data, AT&T warned that only outgoing calls can be traced, and that “incoming calls will not be considered reliable information for location”.
