Maryland’s highest court on Thursday heard arguments in the case of the man who rose to fame after the podcast “Serial” revisited his 2000 murder conviction.
Adnan Syed was convicted in 2000 and sentenced to life in prison for strangling his former high school girlfriend, 18-year-old Hae Min Lee. Her body was found buried in a park in Baltimore about a month after she disappeared in 1999.
Two years ago, a Baltimore judge tossed out Syed’s conviction and granted him a new trial. The ruling from the lower court came two years after the debut of “Serial,” which spent its first season chronicling Syed’s case. The podcast raised questions about whether Syed was guilty and generated attention to the murder case.
The judge determined that Syed’s now-deceased lawyer, Cristina Gutierrez, provided ineffective counsel for Syed. The ruling was upheld in Maryland’s Court of Special Appeals, but the state of Maryland appealed that decision.
During oral arguments Thursday at the Maryland Court of Appeals, lawyers for Syed focused on how his original lawyer failed to contact a potential alibi witness, Asia McClain. McClain said she saw Syed at their high school’s library when prosecutors said Lee was killed.
Maryland’s Court of Special Appeals had ruled that Gutierrez’s decision not to call McClain violated his Sixth Amendment rights.
