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U.S. NEWS Friday 30 November 2018

Arguments in "Serial" case focus on lawyer, alibi witness

By DAVID McFADDEN
BRIAN WITTE
Associated Press
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Roughly two years after a new
trial was ordered, Maryland's highest court on Thursday
heard arguments in their review of the high-profile case
of a man whose murder conviction was chronicled in the
hit "Serial" podcast that attracted millions of armchair de-
tectives.
Tasked with upholding the retrial order for Adnan Syed
or reviewing a decision that could reinstate a conviction,
Maryland's Court of Appeals heard about an hour's worth
of arguments in the long-running case. Syed was convict-
ed in 2000 of strangling his high school sweetheart and
burying her body in a Baltimore park. He's been serving a
life sentence ever since.
But a Baltimore judge vacated his conviction two years
ago and a court ordered a new trial after concluding
that his trial lawyer was ineffective. The state appealed.
Earlier this year, the special appeals court upheld the low-
er court's ruling. The state appealed that decision, too.
On Thursday, state prosecutor Thiru Vignarajah acknowl-
edged that the late trial lawyer for Syed did not contact
an alibi witness but he asserts that the attorney under- In this Feb. 3, 2016 file photo, Adnan Syed enters Courthouse East prior to a hearing in Baltimore.
stood the "gist" of what that witness, Asia McClain, might Associated Press
have told her at the time. The attorney in question, Cris-
tina Gutierrez, died of a heart attack in 2004, about four
years after Syed was convicted of murdering 18-year-old
Hae Min Lee.
"The record is not silent on whether or not Ms. McClain
was contacted. The state agrees with that. The record
is silent on the critical question of why," he said, suggest-
ing that it is not clear why Gutierrez decided to take one
investigative path over another and asserting that it's
wrong to conclude that Syed's constitutional right to ef-
fective counsel was violated.
In 2016, a lower court ordered a retrial for Syed on grounds
that Gutierrez didn't contact McClain and provided inef-
fective counsel.
The defense team countered that it's entirely irrelevant
why Gutierrez failed to contact McClain, who said she
saw Syed at a library about the same time prosecutors
say his ex-girlfriend was killed in 1999.
Defense attorney Catherine Stetson told Maryland's high-
est court that Syed's original lawyer's failure to contact
the witness were "objectively unreasonable" and any
possible reasons don't matter. She said Gutierrez "had an
obligation to pursue that witness," among others.
By late Thursday morning, the appeals panel of seven
judges wrapped up the day's oral arguments. It's not clear
when their review of the Syed case will be completed.
The arguments in the Maryland appeals court brought
spectators from out of state. Chris Hendrixson drove from
Cincinnati, Ohio, to observe the hearing and perhaps
meet some of the people he's heard about on the pod-
cast.
"Like so many people, we just became captivated by this
case and this story through 'Serial,'" Hendrixson said out-
side the Annapolis courthouse.
University of Baltimore law professor David Jaros told The
Associated Press that the fact that a lower court had
found that there was "ineffective assistance of coun-
sel" was itself remarkable since it happens so rarely. That
alone makes Syed's case something of an outlier, he said.
"Ineffective assistance of counsel claims are exceedingly
hard to bring. And the bar for what is an effective assis-
tance of counsel is remarkably and shockingly low, with
courts actually holding that defendants had effective
representation even though their lawyer fell asleep at the
trial," Jaros said in a phone interview.q