Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
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This is Sarah Koenig. Please leave a message. Damn it, Sarah. If you'd like to email me. Hello. Hello. Hi. Hi. So it's Friday night. You're in Baltimore. It's Friday night in Baltimore. So, okay, so you ended the day yesterday, and there's this one big question, which is, was the phone in Leakin Park? And I'm very curious to know if you got an answer to that question. So, I don't know.
You texted me at lunchtime and said you had an answer for me. What I have the answer to is the thing you're dying to know is what does AT&T mean when it says you can't use incoming calls for location status? So here's the answer that the states expert said today. What that means is...
It's referring not to cell towers, but it's referring to the switch, the sort of like the giant brain of all this of the cell towers in an area. It's the thing that decides like which tower gets which handles which call. I believe so. You probably know about that better than I do. But yeah. Yeah.
Okay. And so he's saying the best explanation he could... Oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you this. The switch that covers the DC Baltimore area, or at least the one that did in 1999, I don't know if it's the same one, but it's called the dog bone, which I thought was funny. The dog bone? Why? Because it covers two metropolitan areas. So it's like a
a ball at one end and a ball at the other. Oh, right. Yeah, like a dodgeball. Obviously. Did that just sound dirty when I said that?
The dog bone. Apparently AT&T folks in the know call it the dog bone. Anyway, what he's saying, the best explanation that this cell tower expert gave, he's an FBI agent and his specialty is cell tower analysis. So what he's saying is what that disclaimer means is, for example, say I live in Atlanta and
And so that's my home switch is going to be Atlanta. Say I get on an airplane, I turn my phone off, I get on an airplane, I fly to Baltimore and I arrive in Baltimore, I don't turn on my phone. Like I never, I don't enter right away the Baltimore cellular network, but calls are coming into my phone while it's off.
Those calls on a call log on a record of my activity will show the Atlanta switch for those calls when I'm actually in Baltimore, but my phone doesn't know yet that I'm in Baltimore. That is actually a question that I have had for like two years. I know. But this FBI expert is saying that doesn't apply to the Leaking Park calls.
Because the issue with those Leakin Park calls was cell towers, not switches. So he's saying the cell testimony at the trial was fine. Yeah. Well, he's saying there's one call, actually, that he disagrees with. And for anyone who's got the call log in front of them, it's the 514 call, which is a voicemail call. Yeah.
But yeah, basically, other than that one call, he's saying he thought that the cell tower expert who testified at Adnan's original trial did a perfectly fine job, and he agreed with that testimony. But the expert, the cell expert who testified for Adnan's side, who testified yesterday,
disagreed completely and he is saying that that original cell testimony from anon's trial doesn't hold up because the expert back then never saw that disclaimer and that this that disclaimer does apply to cell towers so that's the problem and they're going to continue to fight about that
It's going to be this is going to be a brawl over this thing. And it's still going like they they're not done cross examining him. I see. And they added another day to the hearing on Monday. And I could even see it going beyond Monday, frankly. They have a lot to cover. OK, so this is not this is not settled at all. This is not tied up. All right. No, uh uh.
So what else happened today? So the rest of the day was all about the alibi issue. And two things happened in that. One is that Anonside put on an investigator. They had hired an investigator, and they basically said, look, they gave Christina Gutierrez's entire story.
alibi witness list that she had disclosed to the state back in the day before the first trial. Christina Gutierrez-Gudnon's original defense attorney? His original defense attorney, the one who all this is about. And she had 80-some names on this list, right? It's like a huge long list.
So Justin Brown's team had said to this investigator, all right, go find as many people as you can off this list and find out if they spoke to Christina Gutierrez or her office back then. And what he said is he was able to get in touch with 41 people. Of those, four people said they had spoken to Christina Gutierrez.
And none of them was spoken to about being an alibi witness. Only four people? Even though this is an alibi.
Only four people. Wow. And so it was one of those things where you're like, whoa, that doesn't sound good, you know? It was a little, it was like, yeah. But then the state came back and sort of showed a bunch of documents from her files, all of which you and I have seen. I mean, they're all stuff we have as well. And I remember these too. And, you know, it does show that they were doing some work to...
find witnesses to find alibi witnesses to speak to people to subpoena people so it was just it was a little bit mushy like the back and forth of that it was kind of it felt like sort of a draw or something i don't know it like clearly whatever she did wasn't great that wasn't her defense like she just didn't go that route um possibly for you know lack of trying but um
She didn't do nothing on it. So it was a little hard to... Sounds inconclusive. It was inconclusive who won that round, I have to say. Was there a superstar witness today or something like that? Yeah. So the most drama probably that happened was that this guy, Dave Irwin, testified for the defense as an expert witness on criminal defense. So he's a criminal defense attorney? Yeah.
Yeah, a longtime attorney. He's been an attorney since the early 70s, and he had worked as a prosecutor. He had worked as an assistant AG. He'd worked for the Justice Department. He has his own private practice as a litigator. He teaches how to do criminal defense work. I mean, he's just- He's well-versed. Yeah, yeah, distinguished career. And he was just so unequivocal about how-
There's no excuse he can think of for why she didn't investigate, at the minimum, investigate Asia. And he just put it in such – in like just no uncertain terms. Like he basically said if you have a credible alibi witness, that is the best possible defense you can have, right? Right.
And so he's like, that's what you're always looking for. And he told this parable actually about a long time ago when he was, I think it was, he was saying he was a prosecutor at the time and he had this case and the defense put up this alibi witness who said, you know, actually at the time of the crime, I saw the defendant on a bus traveling to Philadelphia or somewhere like that. And, and he said, he sort of came back at this woman and he said, she was like this, you know,
lovely young woman and said like well how do you know you had the right day and she goes well it was my birthday and um so it their day really stuck out to me yeah he said it was totally humbling to me and he said ever since I've been looking for Asia McClain
I'm just like, oh, my God. Because he was saying how that case really reminded him of this one because it was the same kind of witness. Right. Like, that's who you want. Like, that's an Asia McLean. Like, that's the caliber that she was. That was that. That case is Asia McLean. Yeah. And it like he lost the case. The same caliber as as this woman who remembers the date specifically because it was her birthday.
Exactly. Exactly. Very believable, very credible, very likable. And then Justin Brown kind of ticked through all the things that the state had criticized about her letters and her memories of like, you know, the inconsistencies, small inconsistencies, or it seems like she's too eager to help. Or could it have possibly contradicted, you know, a statement that the
that Adnan had said to the police about where he was. And he was just like, no, no, no, no. He was like, everything about her letters seemed like assets to him. He was like, first of all, she's bringing up the surveillance stuff, the possible surveillance cameras in the library. And he's like, regardless of whether it exists, the fact that she wants it to exist means she's so confident in what she remembers that she wants it corroborated. Right. So that's good.
That she's just very confident in what she remembers. She's saying she's not really good friends with Adnan or with Hay. And he's like, that's perfect because she knows them both, but she's not going to be biased anymore.
Because she's not good friends with either one of them. Yeah. He said, oh, the fact that she's offering up her boyfriend and her boyfriend's friend, you know, who would come to pick her up. Who could back her up. So he's like, she's giving you two more witnesses. He's like, she's perfect. And he said,
In a situation like that, you immediately pounce, you move as fast as possible, and you go in person, talk to that witness. Always. You always check out the possible alibi witness. That's very convincing. He was just so categorical about it. And then he said, in terms of what he thought it could have done for Adnan's case, he called it a game changer. He said it would have changed the ballgame's result dramatically.
And that's, of course, the thing, right, that Adnan's side needs to show is that it would have changed the outcome of the trial if she had testified at the time. And so his upshot was just like, so, you know, his analysis was Christina's lawyering fell below the standard required by law, basically. He sounds like a very good witness for the defense. He was a great witness for the defense. I feel convinced. Right.
Well, that, but, you know, hold off because they did not cross examine him. So the state has not had its crack at that guy. Okay. And like you said before, this didn't turn out to be the last day of the hearing and they're going to continue on Monday. Yeah. They're going to continue on Monday. Um,
Okay. But I, I can't be here Monday. I can't cover it Monday. No, we need you to get, we need you to go home. I know. So I have to do our other, our season two podcast. I have to make the next episode or it won't happen. So we need you to do that. I think what we'll do is I'll cover it in some way. Um,
Definitely when the judge rules. Probably something on our website. When you write that, we'll definitely let people know. On the email, it'll be on the website. Okay, yeah, yeah. That sounds good. Do we know when? We don't know when the judge will rule. I don't know. I mean, he'll probably take some weeks and do it carefully and come up with his ruling. I mean, he seems very deliberate and very, I don't know, he seems to be listening very, very carefully.
Can you just explain what the possible outcomes are? Like, what are the possible things that he could decide? Right. So, I mean, all of this is about will he, will this judge decide that he thinks Adnan should get a new trial? So if he decides to, that he thinks Adnan should get a new trial based on these issues, I mean, I got to think the state will appeal that decision.
So an appeal will happen. If he says, no, I don't think a nun should get a new trial, then it goes back to the Court of Special Appeals for them to decide what to do. So probably either way the outcome will be... It's going to go back to the appeals court.
But that said, it's like this does not feel like some sort of like technical bump along the way that like they're just sort of getting through to get things on the record. You know, it feels like it's a real sort of like fight for survival in there. It feels like a mini trial really is what's happening, even though it's not a trial. That is how it feels. All right. I should probably hang up. All right. I'm gonna let you go. Bye, Dana.
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