Syed asked the Supreme Court to review this state court decision, and to consider whether he received ineffective assistance of counsel, in violation of the Constitution’s Sixth Amendment. According to Syed’s petition, that lawyer “failed to contact McClain and never followed up on McClain’s offer to identify other witnesses who saw Syed at the library at the time of the murder.” Instead, the lawyer “argued that because Syed attended track practice on most days after school, he likely did the same on the day that Lee was killed.”Īlthough lower courts agreed with Syed that he received constitutionally inadequate representation at trial, Maryland’s highest state court voted 4-3 against Syed. His lawyer, however, never called McClain to the witness stand. Thus, Syed may have an alibi - if he was in the library during the murder, he couldn’t have killed Lee. In his petition asking the Supreme Court to hear the case, Syed’s attorneys say that a witness, Asia McClain, says that she spoke to Syed in the high school library during this timeframe. Prosecutors claimed that the murder occurred between 2:15 and 2:35 in the afternoon. He was a high school senior at the time of the murder. In 1999, Syed was convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee.
#Serial podcast serial#
Maryland, a case that received national attention after Adnan Syed, the petitioner in that case, was featured in the podcast Serial in 2014. The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will not hear Syed v.