BALTIMORE _ Three judges from Maryland's second highest court on Thursday heard arguments from attorneys for Adnan Syed and the state attorney general's office over whether the 36-year-old _ who is serving a life sentence for murder _ should receive a new trial.
Specifically, the judges questioned the attorneys about what weight they should give to an alibi witness who was never questioned at Syed's 2000 trial.
The 90-minute hearing inside a packed courtroom at the Court of Special Appeals in Annapolis centered around Asia McClain Chapman, who claimed to have seen Syed at the Woodlawn library when prosecutors said 18-year-old Hae Min Lee was killed. She was not called to testify at his trial.
The state is appealing a lower court judge's ruling last year that vacated Syed's conviction and ordered a new trial. Syed's attorneys then filed a separate conditional appeal, asking the court to look at the alibi issue.
The court did not rule Thursday. It will issue a written opinion at a later date, and that ruling could then be appealed to the state's highest court.
"How can you possibly evaluate an alibi witness without speaking to her?" Chief Judge Patrick L. Woodward asked during the state's presentation by Thiru Vignarajah, special assistant attorney general.
Vignarajah said Syed's trial attorney, the late M. Cristina Gutierrez, did work to present an alibi for Syed's defense, which included establishing his routine of going to "school, track and mosque."
If there is a deviation from that routine, that could be harmful to his defense, Vignarajah said.
He said Gutierrez did speak to other witnesses who gave conflicting information, none of which pointed to him being in the library the day Lee was killed. Gutierrez did speak with a security guard at the library, but no one corroborated McClain's account, Vignarajah said.
The judges questioned Syed's current attorney, C. Justin Brown, about whether there was any case law that would establish that Gutierrez provided ineffective counsel to Syed for not speaking to McClain in building his defense.
Is it a defense attorney's responsibility to speak to "an alibi witness who completely upsets your alibi?" Judge Kathryn Grill Graeff asked, to which Brown said yes.
He said defense attorneys should continue to gather information until the trial.
Brown said there's no more "powerful defense" than an alibi.
No witnesses were called Thursday, and Syed, who remains in a Western Maryland prison serving a life sentence, was not present at the hearing.
Thursday's hearing was the latest step in a years-long appeals effort for Syed, who has maintained his innocence.
His case attracted international attention in 2014 after he became the subject of "Serial." The podcast was downloaded millions of times, drawing legions of devoted fans who scrutinized the case online.
Syed was granted a post-conviction hearing in February 2016, during which his new attorneys argued over the failure of his original counsel to call an alibi witness and over the reliability of cellphone evidence used to place Syed at the scene where Lee's body was found.
Four months later, retired Judge Martin Welch, who had denied Syed's previous request for a new trial, vacated his conviction and ordered a new trial.
The judge said questions about the cellphone tower evidence should have been raised by his trial team.
During his post-conviction hearing, Syed's defense team introduced a fax cover sheet from AT&T in which the phone company raised questions about the reliability of technology at the time to pinpoint the location of a phone.
A cellphone technician who testified for the state in the 2000 trial submitted an affidavit in which he said that he was unfamiliar with the fax cover sheet and that it could have changed his testimony.
Syed's mother, Shamim Rahman, attended the hearing, along with Rabia Chaudry, a family friend.
Chaudry said she spoke to Syed earlier in the day and that he was in "good spirits."
She said the state is simply "wasting taxpayer dollars" to fight against a new trial.
"We're hoping for a favorable decision," she said.
