WASHINGTON (WUSA9) -- The defendant in the murder case that was the subject of the first season of the popular podcast "Serial" won a retrial.
“I will curb my enthusiasm because there is still a lot more fighting to go,” said Justin Brown, Adnan Syed’s lawyer. “He is still not out of jail.”
Syed's guilt or botched trial became a national conversation two years ago, when the podcast was downloaded millions of times.
The audio series examined whether or not Syed was wrongly accused of murdering his ex-girlfriend and former high school classmate Hae Min Lee in 1999. One of his friends testified that he helped Syed bury the victim at Leakin Park in Baltimore. The judge sentenced him to life in prison, where he has been for the last 16 years.
Even so, Syed's new legal team argued in February that a retrial was warranted for two reasons: His former legal team never used testimony from a potential alibi witness. And second, an expert witness for the State erroneously relied on cell phone tower data and incoming calls to Syed's phone to potentially locate his whereabouts the day of the murder.
According to Judge Martin P. Welch of the Baltimore City Circuit Court, Syed’s former legal team acted unreasonably by failing to point out that at the time of the trial outgoing calls, not incoming, as the State’s expert witness suggested, could be used to indicate a person’s location.
As a result, on Thursday, Welch vacated Syed's conviction. His opinion read that "failing to confront the State's cell tower expert…created a substantial possibility that the trial was fundamentally unreliable."
In other words, he denied the potential alibi witness issue and granted the cell tower issue.
The Office of the Attorney General for Maryland said in a statement that, “The State’s responsibility remains to pursue justice, and to defend what it believes is a valid conviction.” The State can appeal the case. But in the meantime, Syed's lawyer is trying to get him released on bail.
Syed's brother, Yousef, reacted to the news: "I always did believe in my heart -- especially for my mom. She's very strong and she would always you know like tell us to keep having hope.”
The family of the murder victim, however, is "very disappointed" in the judge's ruling. They believe Syed is guilty.
