US judge grants new trial for ‘Serial’ podcast’s Adnan Syed

Syed, 36, is serving a life sentence for the 1999 murder of his former girlfriend Hae Min Lee, 18.

Adnan Syed enters a Baltimore courthouse on February 3, 2016, prior to a hearing. Barbara Haddock Taylor/The Baltimore Sun via AP, File

A US judge on Thursday ordered a new trial for Adnan Syed, whose murder conviction was put into question by the 2014 podcast Serial.

Syed, 36, the son of Pakistani immigrants, is serving a life sentence for the 1999 murder of his former girlfriend Hae Min Lee, 18, in suburban Baltimore. His lawyers had sought a new trial amid questions about the fairness of his first trial that were raised by the podcast in late 2014.

Baltimore city circuit court judge Martin Welch ordered Syed’s conviction vacated because of ineffective legal help.

“Petitioner’s request for a new trial is hereby granted,” Mr Welch said.

Lee’s body was found buried in a Baltimore park. Syed was convicted in 2000 of murdering her.

Mr Welch, who oversaw a five-day hearing in February about reopening the case, said Syed’s original lawyer, Cristina Gutierrez, had failed to cross-examine a prosecutors’ expert about the reliability of mobile phone tower location evidence.

During the hearing, Syed’s lawyers had argued that Gutierrez had failing skills when she defended him. She was later disbarred, and died in 2004.

Mr Welch rejected Syed’s lawyers’ contention that his original defence team had failed to call an alibi witness, Asia McClain Chapman.

A former high school classmate of Syed, she testified during the hearing that she had spoken with him at a library on the day Lee went missing. She said he appeared calm.

* Reuters