Adnan Syed Forces Retrial In US State of Baltimore

A podcast is at the centre of a new legal development in a murder case that dates back to 2000.

Adnan Syed was found guilty of the murder of his ex-girlfriend Have Min Lee, in 2000. However, doubts were cast over the conduct of the case, and the verdict, in the podcast Serial, broadcast in 2014.

Today, a new trial was ordered by a judge in Baltimore – a decision which is a major breakthrough for the Maryland prisoner in his fight against the conviction.

The Baltimore judge, Martin Welch, granted Syed’s request for a new trial. Since the broadcast of the Serial podcast, a huge number of people have been examining afresh the details of the murder of Hae Min Lee.

The arguments made in the Baltimore court suggested that Cristina Gutierrez, Syed's lawyer in the original trial, had not just been an ineffective counsel, but had also failed to follow through and investigate a alibi that would potentially have exonerated the accused.

Welch’s order, made today, disagreed that Gutierrez had erred when she failed to contact Asia McClain, the key alibi who was featured on the Serial podcast. The judge also refused to accept Syed’s claims that prosecutors had failed in their duty, by withholding evidence that would have exonerated Syed.

However, the judge did accept that Syed’s lawyer should have cross-examined an expert witness, provided by the State, about the limited reliability of cell tower data that had apparently placed him near the burial site.

Syed has been serving a life sentence since his conviction in 2000.

C Justin Brown, Syed’s current attorney, stated at a press conference on Thursday that the judge’s order means the conviction is erased. “It’s gone,” he said. "As of this day, he’s not convicted anymore.”

C Justin Brown added that he expected the State to appeal the decision. “We’re prepared to fight,” he said. "Our heels are dug in… We know the state’s not going to give up and we’ll be ready.”

Earlier this year, Syed’s mother, Shamim Syed, in an interview with the Guardian newspaper, insisted that she believed that racism played a huge role in her son’s arrest.

“For me it was discrimination,” Syed stated. “He was a 17-year-old Muslim. If his name was something else they wouldn’t touch him but his name was Adnan Syed and his parents were from Pakistan. They forgot he was born and raised in America.”

Serial was not the only podcast to deal with the case. Rabia Chaudry, a family friend of Syed who brought the case to the radio producers, launched her own podcast called Undisclosed. It set out further details of the crime.

In particular, this latest podcast questioned the evidence from cellphone towers very effectively.

Syed’s lawyers argued in court that the data linking his phone to the burial site on the day of Lee’s murder was misleading. Specifically, it apparently lacked a cover sheet warning that incoming call data was less than reliable.

Chaudry celebrated the news on Twitter with the statement, “I am shaking with joy, shaking!”

His legal team will now be pushing for Syed to be released.

“I’m feeling pretty confident right now,” Chaudry stated. "This was the biggest hurdle. It’s really hard to get a new trial.”

Following its release in 2014, Serial became the fastest podcast to reach 5m downloads and streams in iTunes’s history. Its reach covered the US, Canada, the UK and Australia, and it also scraped its way into the top 10 in Germany, South Africa and India.

This latest development notwithstanding, Hae Min Lee’s family believes that Syed is guilty.

“It remains hard to see so many run to defend someone who committed a horrible crime,” they said via social media, "who destroyed our family, who refuses to accept responsibility, when so few are willing to speak up for Hae. She stood up for what was right, regardless of popular opinion.”

The attorney general’s office in the United States have not commented so far.