August 25, 2015
The defense attorney for Adnan Syed - who was the focus of the wildly popular radio podcast series "Serial" - has filed a motion to introduce new evidence in a post-conviction hearing.
In the motion, filed Monday, attorney C. Justin Brown claims cellphone tower data used in the trial was unreliable and should be dismissed. Syed was sentenced to life in prison in the 1999 killing of Hae Min Lee.
Obtained and reported on by Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton, the motion also points out that cellular carrier AT&T included a warning about the accuracy of cell tower data on a fax cover sheet to Baltimore police, a point that wasn't raised at the time of the original trial.
If that warning had been "properly raised at trial" by Syed's previous defense attorney, Brown wrote,"much of, if not all of, the cellular evidence would have been rendered inadmissible."
Syed, now 35, was convicted of killing Lee, a Woodlawn High School classmate, on Jan. 13, 1999, though prosecutors at the time had no physical evidence or eyewitnesses connecting him to the crime.
Questions about his conviction and guilt served as the storyline for "Serial," which was reportedly downloaded an estimated 76 million times.
Read more at The Baltimore Sun.
