Adnan Syed has been serving a life sentence for the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee, his ex-girlfriend.
But the 35-year-old may be innocent.
Journalist Sarah Koenig investigated the case and reported the findings on a weekly podcast called “Serial.”
Today, Syed’s defense has been granted an appeal.
The hearings, which currently await the judge’s decision, took place this month and cited flaws in the original case
According to the podcast’s investigation, Syed’s lawyer for the `99 case, Cristina Gutierrez, had declined to seek out a potential witness who could account for Syed’s location at Lee’s time of death.
“Serial” reported that Asia McClain, Syed’s high school classmate, testified as a witness in the recent hearing and claimed she talked to Syed in a public library the day of the murder.
The court asked her why che chose to speak out after more than 15 years.
“I felt for justice to be served we should put all the information on the table,” McClain answered. “I just thought it was the right thing to do.”
McClain connects her memory of the interaction that day with seeing Baltimore’s first snowfall of the year.
However, the prosecution pointed out there was no snow reported on the day of Lee’s death. McClain held firm to her statement that she had definitely saw him.
Syed’s conviction was also based on evidence used with cell phone tower technology to track Syed’s location on the day of the murder.
But according to the Baltimore Sun, Syed’s current attorney C. Justin Brown presented, for the first time, a fax cover sheet from AT&T in which the phone company raised questions about the reliability of technology at the time to pinpoint a phone’s location.
The Sun reported “Brown obtained an affidavit from the state’s expert witness regarding phone technology, who said he would have wanted to know about the disclaimer on the fax cover sheet and it could have changed his testimony.”
Syed’s homicide trial was one of the first to use the technology as evidence in the Baltimore court system.
The hearing ended on Feb. 8 and the judge will determine whether to grant the defense retrial in the coming weeks.
Information from the Baltimore Sun and the podcast “Serial” were used in this report.
