Serial S01 - Ep. 13: Adnan Is Out
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This is a global chAllenge. Prepare call from .

and not say IT and in made .

that the marine correctional facility is cost will be recorded and monitored.

There is a major development. In a case intimately .

expLoring the ipod canoes, a stunning reversal felt more states atterley presenting .

new evidence of two other. What this all means is that after gates behind bars are, none could be released from prison.

And not say i'd got out of prison yesterday, I was extraordinary. The whole thing here's is a torney.

Today, my friend and client at nonie walks free for the first time in twenty three years.

On wednesday of last week, city prosecutors filed a motion saying they could no longer to stand behind the murder case they built against the non. They were asking a judge to vacate the conviction. Five days later, a none was out on home detention for now, but out home.

Good afternoon. I'm god is good. Since the inception of my maryland mosby.

multiple states attorney started to give a statement to the dozens of TV cameras and microphones massed on the sidewalk outside the courthouse.

The public must know that the justice.

But SHE couldn't compete with the mayhem when IT none finally walked out. From the people who've been arguing for his release, some of them for decades. The pent up strain of year's worth of rage and frustration suddenly loosen on the sidewalk.

spilling onto calvert street.

A one didn't say a word, just kept his cool while sharif deputies hurried him through the scrum in into a White van. A non, and I have talked on an off over the years, more recently seemed like he was trying to tempt down his hopes, not get ahead of himself. Couple of his old attorneys, though, the guys who tried to get him out on bail when he was seventeen, I caught them out on the sidewalk hugging.

Will be.

he said.

I don't know I.

O.

I was in the courtroom for the hearing. More than one hundred people, at times shockingly quiet, as if known was breathing at the beginning Young lie. The brother of haman lee, whose murder was about to be unsolved, spoke via sume directly to judge Melissa fan Young.

Lee tried to keep IT together, but he couldn't. When I think it's over, he said he always comes back a real life living nightmare for twenty plus years, but he also told the judge he believes in the justice system. He is not against the new investigation, he said.

The judge fan make the right decision. Then the prosecutor read the highlights of promotion into the record. A non's layer made a brief statement, and within about forty minutes the judge was ready with her decision on this one thousand nine day of september twenty twenty two, SHE said.

In the interests of justice, the motion to vacate is here by granted. You might be asking, what on earth happened? I've spent the last few days trying to understand IT myself wherefor this motion of V K.

The first, like a firework out of the prosecutors office, the very same office that asked the jury in one thousand eight ninety nine to quote, come back with a guilty finding for first degree premeditated murder by the defendant. And non, I ate. The prosecutors today are not saying that done as innocent.

They stopped short of exonerating him. Instead, they're saying that back in one thousand and ninety nine, we didn't investigate this case thoroughly ough. We relied on evidence we shouldn't have, and we broke the rules when we prosecuted.

This wasn't an honest conviction, according to prosecutor's office. They didn't set out to pick apart of non's case. Their own case might do.

They say IT just kind of crumbled once they took a hard look. I know if you heard season one of cereal, you know how I got there. Here's how they got there. Almost a year ago, a new law took effect in maryland, the juvenile restoration act.

One of the things the law says is that if you've served at least twenty years in prison for a crime you committed when you were a juvenile, you can ask the court to reduce your sense, maybe even let you out. So the day after this new law comes into effect, on october second, twenty twenty one announced current attorney archaea delivers his case over to the baltimore city states attorney's office for them to look at. Because if you remember, a non was only seventeen when he was arrested for killing him, moni, his classmates and former girlfriend.

This request goes to Becky filled men, chief of the sentencing review unit for the prosecutor's office. One of the factors SHE has to way in deciding whether to support a sentence reduction under this new law is the facts of the crime. So beg filming starts reading and pretty soon she's bothered.

Something isn't right with the case. She's having a hard time answering, which should be a simple question, what's at nonie's level of culpability in this room time? Becky, filming is pretty new to the prosecutor's office, pretty new to being a prosecutor.

She's been high, but the public defenders office for years, her sense of alarm was cultivated on the defense side. The sentence review isn't supposed to be a reinvestigation of a case, but that's what starts rolling. By march, Becky's office, joined by announce lawyer, asked a judge to order a new high tech D, N, A testing that takes a while to work through the system.

So while they wait, becking air console work together, pulling threads, Becky's office consult cellphone experts, a polygraph expert. She's all up inside google maps and land records. The state's massive case file is over at the attorney general office a few blocks away, but he starts hoping IT over there in june the ages, officers, like seventeen boxes, a case materials have to copy machine, knock your self out SHE copies a bunch of stuff from the first seven boxes, takes the papers back to her office to read.

And that's when he discovers some hundred written notes. They're messy, hard to make out. But when he discovers the writing, SHE realizes these notes are about a potential alternate suspect in the case.

SHE calls up air consumer who tells her a, we've never seen these notes before. They're both shocked once the DNA results came back in mid August with nothing really conclusive or useful, they took stock of everything they've learned. The result was a disturbing vocative problems whose cumulative effect gave the state quote overwhelming cause for concern.

Under the circumstances, they couldn't justify holding a non in prison anymore. So Becky fellman wrote a motion to the court, a motion to vacate. The motion to vacate does not tell us a new story of the crime, doesn't lay out an alternate theory of who killed him and lee.

Instead, the motion lays out how the system mell functioned back then and how little we know now. The headline of the state's motion is that they've developed more evidence about two people who might have been involved in the crime, but whom they say weren't properly ruled out of suspects. They don't name these people.

They just call them the suspect or the suspects because they say the investigation is ongoing. They might have been involved together or separately, they don't know, but both were known to detectives at the time. The first thing and worst thing, they list about these possible suspects, those handwritten ten notes becke feldman found in the states trial boxes.

They appeared to be written by a prosecutor memorializing two different phone calls from different people who called the states of Turner's office to give information about the same person. The notes aren't dated, but as best as I can tell, the calls came in several months apart. And before a none was tried, the rest of the information from both calls is that a guy the state had more less overlooked, had a motive to kill him in lee, that this person was heard saying that he was upset with her and that he would, quote, make her disappear.

He would kill her and quote in court yesterday, Becky said the state had looked into this individual and found the information in those handwriting notes to be credible, that the suspect had the quote motive opportunity in means to commit the crime, whether he did, he didn't, though legally speaking, this would be a major breach if they failed to turn over evidence like this to the defense that's known as a brady violation. And that's what so alarm speci felt. Men that IT looks like a non's lawyers never knew about these calls that alone could be used to overturn the dance conviction.

So that's the biggest problem. The motion explains this brady violation regarding one of the two alternate suspects the prosecutors are not naming. And the motion says they've also got other new information about these two suspects.

One of them had a connection to the location where he money's car was found after SHE disappeared. One or both of them have relevant criminal histories, mostly crimes committed after announced trial, one of them for a series of sexual assaults. I know who these suspects are.

One of them was investigated at the time, submitted in to a couple of polygraphs. The other was investigated also, but not with much bigger. As far as I can tell.

He's now in prison for sexual assault, but no one has charged either of these guys in connection with hamleys murder. So i'm not gonna name them either. That's all the new information they found about the case, but the motion continues.

They also looked at the old information and now they're saying they've lost faith in that too. They don't trust the state's main evidence of trial, the testimony of their star witness, j. Wilds, and the cell phone records.

They don't hold up separately. They don't hold up together. If you've listen to our show, you probably remember all this.

Jay was a friend of a nuns who told the cops that had none said he was going to kill, hey, and that after he did IT, he showed jay her body in the trunk of a car and then covers jay into helping bury her in a wooded city park. The motion explains, as many people have before, that the details of jays story kept changing. Beg fellman points to one glaring example, the location where jay says that none first showed him his body. In his first taped interview with the detectives, jay tells them he met up with a none somewhere along emerson avenue, and that's when he sees his body in the trunk.

yeah. Passion and open, say one advice and to all of the scrip, do you record any crates? One of and I don't know my name when I say a couple .

weeks later, jay tells the cops he met with none and saw his body in a different spot.

And while he broke .

to your house, yes, you receive a phone call from happen on his self a which is in york yeah. And the conversation .

was one that did come to give me, and that's Better.

And jay stories gotten even more confusing in the years since the trial. The motion notes that jay told her, a reporter back in twenty fourteen, that he'd been out in front his grandmother's house when a none came by and pop the trunk. At the trial, prosecutors kept in to the jury. We know he's not the greatest witness.

I do remember that when we first heard his testimony that we were all sceptical, like who is those caring? Where did he come from?

That's a journey. Lisa flan, the prosecutions, we're telling the jury, don't worry, you don't have to rely on his testimony alone because what he's saying is corrupted by the cell phone records. Cl phone evidence was crucial of the state's case IT under pinches testimony about what happened that night, where they went, whom they spoke to IT glued together the timeline, the cellphone evidence helped clear up the shaking ss of jays story.

IT was after hearing the other testimony and then seeing the records and like the cell phone record um you knowing that? okay. So even as he advised, has many proved that he was at this place at this time?

But bec film man wrote last week motion that the cell phoe emits a trial. IT was unreliable. Announced defense team has been saying this for years, but the state only recently talked to three experts about what the cell records actually show and don't show.

And the experts all agreed, you can use the incoming call records to back up jazz narrative doesn't work like that for a hoster reasons. I won't borrow you with. We didn't get to the bottom of this incoming call problem back when we were reporting this story.

At the end of the motion, Becky film attacked on a, by the way, final section about one of the two main detectives s on the case, bill reds. He was accused of misconduct in another murder case that went to trial the same year. Announce in that case detectives tes was accused of manipulating evidence, fabricating evidence, not disclosing exculpatory evidence, not following up on evidence that appointed to a different suspect in twenty sixteen.

The guy convicted in that case was exonerated. Ritz was one of the two detectives who repeatedly interviewed jills. So that's the bulk of the state's motion to vacate new information about two potential suspects, important evidence withheld from the defense, renewed suspicion of jays story, loss of confidence in the cellphone evidence and while the brady violation alone is enough for the state to cry on goal, all of IT together.

Well, yes, overwhelming cause for concern. A non's case was a mess, is a mess. That's pretty much where we were when we stop reporting in twenty fourteen. Baltimore city police have told the prosecutors office they are going to put someone back on the case. Someone will try to talk to the two suspects, but you identified in the motion. I have zero predictions about what could come of that, but I do know that the chances of the state ever trying to prosecute a non again, or remote at best.

When robby, a children, first came to me about this case, I hadn't heard of IT. No other journalists were looking at IT. Most of the reporting I did was to try to find out, obviously, who killed the Young woman.

But also, if everyone's doing their job right, how does a kid get convicted on evidence this shaky? In the years since our story? First day, robyn, others have pushed to find out more. Now here come city prosecutors. They're going even further.

In the picture that emerged is this announced case contains just about every chronic problem our system can call up, police using questionable interview methods, prosecutors keeping crucial evidence from the defense, slightly junky science, extreme prison sentences, juvenile treated as adults, how grinding ly difficult IT is to get your case back in court once you've been convicted. The bottom court room, at once hearing was held, is an old school architectural jam. You said they're hoping the massive chandeliers well secured, the soaring ceilings, are meant to inspire soaring thoughts about justice, presumably unfairness.

Yesterday there is a lot of talk about fairness, but most of what the state put in that motion to vacate all the actual evidence was either known or knowable to cops and prosecutors back in one thousand eight ninety nine. So even on a day when the government publicly recognizes its own mistakes, it's hard to feel cheered about a triumph. Fairness because we have built a system that takes more than twenty years to self correct, and that's just this one case.

This episode was produced by Julie snyder, dana chavez in me, editing by dana and july, fact checking by ben fAilin, mixing by my comedy original score by mark phillips and nick thorburn. Our digital editor is Julie whittier, m website producer is boris, and to bo is our supervising producer. Special thanks to sam donny bencosme NASA and jeffrey maranda serials produced by serial productions .

and the new york times.

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