Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
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Hello, Serial listeners. Sarah Koenig here. This week, I'm going to do something I haven't done before, which is duck back into Adnan Syed's case for a few days to report on a court proceeding that's happening in Baltimore. If you have no idea what I'm talking about right now, quick, go listen to season one of Serial and then come back to me in roughly 10 hours.
What's happening this week is not a new trial. It's a hearing. It's actually a continuation of Adnan's petition for post-conviction relief. That's something you try only after you've exhausted your regular appeals. It's kind of a last-ditch effort. He first filed that petition, wow, in 2010, I think, long before I got interested in this case. In fact, I think the very first time I talked to Adnan was right when the court had ruled against him, had denied this petition.
But he appealed it. And that's when it started to get interesting. In broad strokes, Adnan was arguing that his defense attorney at the time of his trial was incompetent, that she made mistakes that were so bad that he should get some form of relief, that maybe his conviction for killing Heyman Lee should be overturned. One of those mistakes, Adnan claimed, was that his attorney never contacted a potential alibi witness, Asia McClain. Remember her?
Anyway, after season one of Serial ended, some new stuff came to light, including some new evidence regarding Asia McClain and about problems with the crucial cell tower testimony at Adnan's trial.
And over the past year, the wheels of justice rolled slowly, slowly like they do. And finally, this week, the Baltimore City Circuit Court will hear this new evidence. We'll hear what some new witnesses have to say about what happened or didn't happen at Adnan's original trial 16 years ago.
Right now, it's Tuesday, February 2nd, 2016, the night before the hearing starts. As soon as I'm done recording this, I'm getting in my car and driving to Baltimore, and I'm going to show up at the courthouse at 8 a.m. tomorrow, like they told me to, and I'm going to watch and listen, and I'm going to tell you what happens. Not week by week, but day by day. I'm fascinated to see who exactly will testify, what they'll say, and how it will be to have all these people back in one courtroom.
All right. Now we're going to refresh your memory about the case of Adnan Syed. And then after that, it'll magically have turned into tomorrow. And you'll hear me calling my producer, Dana Chivas, to tell her and you about day one of Adnan's hearing. This is a Global Tell Link prepaid call from Adnan Syed.
An inmate at a Maryland correctional facility. This call will be recorded... I definitely understand that someone could look at this and say, "Oh, man, you know, he must be lying. It's so coincidental." What did he tell you? He told me that she had broke his heart. It was extremely wrong for anyone to treat him that way. Why would you admit to doing something that drastic if you hadn't done it? There's no way that she was at best by 2:36. Did anybody else use the phone?
I think, like, the odds of you getting the charming sociopath, you're just not that lucky. It sounds believable. I think you might be that technicality. Hello? Hi. Hi. Can you hear me okay? I can hear you.
Are you recording? I am recording. Okay, so I am also recording here in the studio in New York, so let's sync up our sound. Hi! Where are you? I'm in a hotel room. Oh. I'm in the closet of the hotel room, like in the...
And I've got some pillows behind my back, but then on either, like I'm flanked by these two very racy bathrobes. Like one is like a leopard print and one is a zebra print. And they're hanging on either side of me. But it's making a good little sound studio here. Like the classy podcast host you are. I feel very, I feel very swelligant right now. So how'd it go? It was...
I found it fascinating. I found all of it fascinating. Yeah, like who were the players there today? Who were the first people who testified? Yeah, so the first half of the day was establishing that Christina Gutierrez, Adnan's trial attorney, back in the original criminal trial, had been –
declining in a bunch of ways, sort of physically, professionally, financially. So there were like two attorneys who had worked with her from the mid to late 90s.
And, you know, 99, obviously, is when she takes Adnan's case, who testified of like how bad it got. And it did seem like it was pretty bad from their testimony, like that she was in physical pain. She was passing off cases to people because she was overwhelmed. Her performance in the courtroom seemed sort of definitely not how she had been, which was kind of this like legendary, you know, sought after performance.
very successful defense attorney and that she just was like her, her powers were definitely waning. And, but sort of more to the point was this question of why would she not have called, why would she not have looked into Asia McLean as a possible alibi witness for her client, for Adnan? And is that, is there any strategic reason why you would not
Check in to this person for her not to call Asia McClain. Okay. And then, you know, the big witness of the day was Asia McClain. Tell me about Asia. Like, what did she say? What was that like?
It was, I have to say, like, it was kind of intense in the courtroom when she was testifying. You know, and it was, like, I don't even know totally how to talk about it, but, like, serial was a part of her testimony. So that was also just a very strange, a little bit surreal, like, is this happening right now moment. Because...
the way that I first learned about the case, right, was just like, there's been this miscarriage of justice. Like there was this key witness who was never heard from and she would have provided the perfect alibi. And
And she was never heard from. And it's just like, you know, this gross negligence happened. And so it all, remember this? Like this was how we opened the whole thing was just like, we just need to find this girl and find out what she will say. Yeah. It was like, she's the key to this thing. She's the key to this thing. I remember feeling like that. Yeah. Yeah. Like this can't be that hard. Like we'll just track her down and see what she says. Right. And then we do track her down and then it's, it's not that simple. Right. It's not at all. It just, it's so much more complicated than her, whatever. Right.
just to see her sort of stride in the courtroom
And she's pretty striking looking also. She's beautiful. Yeah, and she's kind of tall and she had these like very high heels on and she looked, you know, very put together and she's got like bright red lipstick. And so it was just, it was like, wow, there she is. There was just like a lot of drama in the room when she was testifying. Like why though? What was the thing she was saying that was causing this drama? I think because...
I think because there had been so much talk about her and about what she might have said, would have said, you know, parsing everything she said, parsing her letters, parsing her affidavit, parsing the stuff that she said to me. And then to just hear her say these things.
things that sounded like very straightforward. Which were what? Which were kind of arresting. Like, I don't know. She was just saying like, she's, she was very sure of herself and very sure about what she remembered, which is like, you know, this same thing we've been hearing, right. Which is like, I remember I, you know, I was in the library, the Woodlawn public library after school on January 13th, 1999, starting at about 1045 or so. I,
I was waiting for hours for my boyfriend to pick me up. He was super late. I was super bored. As soon as school ended, I remember Adnan walked in. We chatted, you know, like this whole thing. We chatted for 15, 20 minutes. Like, did it land? Like when she, when she. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I think, I think it totally, I think it totally did land. She seemed very normal.
And then she said these very idealistic things that I think that's probably also what made people kind of emotional, like where she said, I'm trying to find it. I mean, they were just so simple, the things that she said, but she was sort of like, so Adnan's attorney, Justin Brown, said, why did you want to testify? And she just said, I felt for justice to be served. We should put all the information on the table. I just thought it was the right thing to do.
I was scribbling like crazy in my notebook. I was like sort of scribbling. So I was like just super focused on writing. And so was everyone around me. It was just like scribble, scribble, scribble, scribble, scribble, you know. So I didn't really look around the room. But more I was trying to see what Adnan's face was doing. Could you see his face from where you were sitting? No, I couldn't. Were you just sort of looking at the back of his head or what? I was sort of looking at the back of his head. I was trying to see if he was even looking at who was testifying. And
You know, I couldn't tell. To me, it seemed a lot like he was just sort of looking down or looking straight in front of him, like at the table in front of him. He was very, very still the entire proceeding. Yeah, like barely moving, like he would shift occasionally, but almost like he just became a stone. Huh.
Asia, today on the stand, was it still – did you find it was still as compelling what she was saying, that simple thing she had to say? Was that still as compelling to you now, today? Hearing her explain her letters, like things in her letters that seemed a little like, what does that mean? And so she sort of went through the letters. Oh, like what? Oh, well, so she said –
This is pretty detailed, but there's a part of one of her letters where she says, if you need me, like maybe I can help you account for some of your unaccounted for time between the hours of 2.15 and 8 p.m. You know how she says that in one of the letters? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's also one of the things in the original post-conviction hearing that Judge Welch ruled –
noted in his opinion where he's saying it just sounds like she's offering to lie it sounds as if she's flirting with you or something yeah that maybe she's flirting or like this is a very big window of time so like what she's saying like I'll just I can make sense and so Adnan's attorney had her explain like well what do you mean by that and she said oh well I had been to Adnan's house that day
to tell his parent, to tell his family, like, if you, you know, what I knew. And they told me he was struggling to account for that afternoon. Like, he couldn't really remember what happened after school, between school and going to the mosque at 8 o'clock, around 8 o'clock. So that was the period of time. So she was saying, I can account for this little slice of it, of that period, if you need. Yeah.
Oh, so that's why she writes the letter in the first place. Yeah. Right. So that kind of thing was interesting. You know, not interesting, but it just felt like, oh, I got it. Okay. It all seemed like very straightforward and clear. She came off really well for the defense. And we have yet to see what the state's going to do to her tomorrow. Like that will continue tomorrow. They started and you could see like they are going to go really hard on her, I think. Oh, really? Yeah. Like how could you tell? Yeah.
Because of how they even started. I mean, the prosecutor's tough. He's tough. I'm not totally sure what their plan is with Asia, but I think what they're going to try to do is... I don't think they're going to try to discredit her exactly, but I think what they're going to say is, you think of yourself as a person with a really precise memory, but here are some ways in which we're going to show you that your memory isn't as precise as you think it is. And so...
I'm totally speculating here, but to show that if you had gotten on the stand back at Adnan's trial, this testimony wouldn't have worked very well. It wouldn't have changed the course of the trial. Because of her memory? Here's all these ways I can poke holes in what you're saying in your testimony.
Oh, and so he was starting to poke holes? He wasn't starting to poke holes yet. Like he didn't get that far. It got late and then we stopped. But he was clearly trying to, he was sort of laying the foundation for her to not remember stuff.
Oh, like to ask her questions that she's going to have to flounder a little bit and then ultimately say something that's either not satisfying or she's going to be like, I can't remember. Like a bunch of times she had to say like, I don't remember. I'm not sure. I don't remember. I'm not clear. I could speculate if you want, but I don't know. I'm not sure. And they didn't have anything to, they weren't directly related to her story.
So it was like, did you play sports? Yes, I did. I played volleyball and basketball. Well, did you have basketball practice that day? I don't think so. I don't, I'm not sure. I don't think so though. So you, you had basketball practice or you didn't, you know, it was like that, but a lot of that, just like small things. But Sarah, do you think they're doing this because, do you think they're doing this because
to say you're remembering a different day. I think it's possible that's where they're going. But you think maybe that's the direction they're going in. I think, I mean, it's the direction I'd go in if I were to stay. Yeah. All right. So you're going back to the courthouse tomorrow? I am. It's starting again, 9.30 tomorrow morning. All right. So you will check back in with me? Yeah, I'll call you tomorrow. All right. Talk to you tomorrow. Bye.
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