Those few sentences were instructions that “incoming calls are not reliable for determining location.” It was Simpson who first honed in on a couple of sentences on a fax cover sheet sent by AT&T along with Syed’s subpoenaed “subscriber activity report,” from which a selected number of pages had been entered into evidence at trial. Along with Syed family friend and lawyer Rabia Chaudry – who brought the case to Koenig’s attention and appeared on the first episode of Serial – “Undisclosed” featured the investigative efforts of lawyers Susan Simpson and Colin Miller. The reliability of the cellphone evidence was first called into question in the aftermath of Serial on an unaffiliated follow-up podcast called Undisclosed, which carefully deconstructed the police investigation into Lee’s murder.
With that in mind, let’s review the evidence the state clearly believes will lead a jury to convict Syed a second time.
In his opening remarks at the post-conviction hearing in February, Deputy District Attorney Thiru Vignarajah maintained that a jury convicted Syed because there was “overwhelming evidence” of guilt.
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“We’ve been investigating and looking toward a trial for the last month. “We have not been resting on our laurels,” he said. Regardless of what happens next, Brown said that his team has begun preparing for a retrial. If the state appeals and Welch’s decision to vacate Syed’s conviction is upheld by the higher court, the state will then have to decide whether to go forward with a retrial, or attempt to negotiate a plea deal. “Do they really want to draw it out for another year, year-and-a-half in the appellate courts? What purpose does that serve?”
But on the other hand, if they feel like they’ve got the evidence, and they feel like they have a strong case, why don’t they just retry it?” Brown told Rolling Stone. “On one hand, they lost, so their instinct is to appeal. “The state’s responsibility remains to pursue justice, and to defend what it believes is a valid conviction.”ĭefense attorney Brown has said that he expects the state’s Attorney’s Office to appeal, though he questions why they would want to “draw it out.” “It is the continued desire of the Attorney General to seek justice in the murder of Hae Min Lee,” the office said in a statement. Last night, the state’s Attorney released a short statement about Welch’s decision, and indicated that they intend to appeal the ruling, potentially preventing the new trial from taking place.
Judge Welch also agreed that Gutierrez acted unreasonably by failing to contact potential alibi Asia McClain, but said this wasn’t the reason he vacated the conviction, writing that Syed did not prove that calling McClain to the stand would have created a reasonable probability of a different verdict. The short story is this: Welch found that Syed’s trial attorney, the late Cristina Gutierrez, didn’t challenge the reliability of some potentially faulty cell-phone tower evidence – what the judge called the “foundation” of the state’s case – a mistake so egregious that it violated Syed’s right to effective counsel. Judge Welch’s 59-page opinion breaks down his decisions on the issues raised by Syed’s defense attorneys, Justin Brown and Chris Nieto, in their appeal. Welch, who presided over Syed’s post-conviction relief hearing in February, vacated his conviction and granted him a new trial. Yesterday, Adnan Syed, whose conviction and life sentence for the murder of his high-school girlfriend was the focus of the first season of the hit podcast Serial, got the news he had been waiting to hear for over 16 years – Baltimore Circuit Court Judge Martin P.
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