Jay Wilds was the key eyewitness in the murder case against Adnan Syed, which Sarah Koenig explored in the course of her podcast-gone-viral Serial. I’ve known Adnan for many years, and I have long believed he was wrongfully convicted in the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee because of Wilds’ testimony.

So I was simultaneously ecstatic and enraged while reading Wilds’ interview about the case in The Intercept on Monday and Tuesday.

When I brought Adnan’s case to Sarah Koenig, I figured that she would discover in the course of her reporting what I already knew to be true: it was Wilds’ statements, which changed repeatedly between police interviews and trial testimony, that tied Adnan to the murder of Hae Min Lee on January 13, 1999. Nothing else – no forensic evidence, no history of violence, no other witnesses – led to Adnan’s conviction. Only the testimony of a man whose story continues to change led to Adnan’s imprisonment.

Nearly 15 years ago, the prosecution argued to the jury that it should ignore the “inconsistencies” in Wilds’ statements - that the “spine” of his story remained the same. But with his interview yesterday, Wilds broke that spine, and possibly the state’s case with it.

It took multiple interviews with the police and prosecutors for Wilds’ statements to line up with the only “corroborating” evidence the state could muster: records from Adnan’s cell phone, which Wilds had in his possession the day of the murder. While using cell records like a map to pinpoint the caller’s location (which prosecutors did in Adnan’s case) rests to this day on shaky ground legally and scientifically, they were still be used to support the timeline of events that day. Wilds’ story never fully matched the timeline established by those cell phone records. And now he’s told the Intercept a version which is wholly inconsistent with them.

Specifically, some calls made on the evening of the murder from Adnan’s cell phone no longer match up with Wilds’ story. It has always been the state’s theory of the case that Adnan and Wilds buried Lee’s body around 7pm that night; Wilds testified to that, and the state corroborated his account by pointing to two calls made at that time that “pinged” a cell phone tower in the wooded area where her body was found. Yet Wilds told The Intercept that he and Adnan buried Lee at midnight – at least five hours after he swore in court that they buried her. There are no recorded cell phone calls at that time.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are too many other inconsistencies between the Intercept interview and Wilds’ sworn testimony to enumerate here – and others have done it quite well – but, suffice it to say that, in my opinion as an attorney, there may be enough evidence for the state of Maryland to pursue a perjury charge against Wilds. There is no statute of limitations for perjury in Maryland, and it’s an offense punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Coupled with the terms of Wilds’ plea deal, which allow the state to revoke the arrangement if it was ever proven he lied about his involvement in the case (and under which Wilds served no jail time as an accessory after the fact to Lee’s murder), Wilds could potentially face dire consequences.

More importantly to me, it opens up new possibilities for Adnan’s case. Wilds’ interview, while not a sworn statement, can still be used to impeach his previous statements and credibility – and challenge the state’s version of events in any future re-trial. It could even be used as a basis – new evidence – for a new post-conviction appeal. And, if an appeal re-opens the case, a new trial may not be attractive to the state when there are so many questions about their key witness.

But even if Wilds’ interview is ultimately good news for Adnan, I remain filled with anger that the state relied on one eyewitness to convict and imprison for life a 17-year-old with no criminal record – an eyewitness who lied repeatedly to the police, and has now admitted to lying.



We have yet to hear the end of Wilds’ interview, and I welcome it. For over a decade I’ve prayed that Wilds would make some statement and reveal the truth about Lee’s murder. We still don’t know what happened to her. But what we do know now is that Adnan was convicted on the basis of a case that the state constructed from one unreliable supposed eyewitness. At the very least, they need to reopen the investigation – but I believe that, when they do, they’ll be obligated by ethics and the truth to overturn Adnan’s conviction.

