Advertisement Appeal hearing set in Adnan Syed case Syed's attorney: This is the last step Share Shares Copy Link Copy

An appeal hearing has been set in a 15-year-old murder case in Baltimore County.Lawyers for Adnan Syed confirm an appeal hearing has been set for January to see if Syed qualifies for a post-conviction relief.Popular podcast, "Serial," has been downloaded on iTunes more than 5 million times and follows one story in depth week by week, including Syed's.Syed has been in prison for 15 years for murdering his fellow Woodlawn High School classmate and ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, in January 1999, and burying her body in Leakin Park. He was largely convicted on cellphone records and the testimony of an acquaintance who said Syed told him he was going to kill Lee, showed him the body and even helped dig her grave.Throughout the podcast, producer Sarah Koenig and her colleagues uncover new evidence by revisiting the crime scenes and talking to people the police didn't talk to, and Syed himself calls Koenig from the maximum security prison in Cumberland.Although the buzz surrounding the case is new, Syed has been trying to prove his innocence for years. So long, in fact, that his case is now in its final stages of appeal.A hearing scheduled for January represents what Syed's lawyer, C. Justin Brown, said is the man's "last best chance" at freedom."I joke that when I was hired to do Adnan's appeal I was a free-wheeling single man and now I'm married with two kids. It's been a lengthy process," said Brown, who has represented Syed for more than five years. "There are three parts to the legal process: a trial, then an appeal, then you have post-conviction relief. This is the last step."Syed, now 34, was convicted of first-degree murder, robbery and false imprisonment in 2000 and sentenced to life in prison. Prosecutors said Syed strangled Lee after becoming inconsolably jealous when the two broke up and she began dating someone else.The primary points Brown makes in his appeal are some of the same reasons Koenig told listeners in her podcast's first episode that she decided to investigate the case: there were no eyewitnesses tying Syed to the crime, and Syed's attorney, Cristina Gutierrez, failed to interview a witness who said she was with Syed at the time Lee was killed. Gutierrez, a high-profile Baltimore-area criminal defense attorney, was disbarred in 2001 when client funds went missing. She died in 2004 of a heart attack.Brown, in his appeal, said Gutierrez knew about Asia McClain, a classmate of Syed's who saw him in the library around the time prosecutors say Lee was killed. But Brown says the attorney failed to pursue her alibi during trial."The entire trial depended on whether Syed could prove where he was at the time of the murder," Brown wrote. "Meanwhile, a credible witness -- an honors student who had no obvious bias in favor of Syed -- had come forward unsolicited with a recollection that she had been with Syed around the time of the murder ... Yet the lawyer did absolutely nothing."Brown also wrote that Gutierrez erred when she did not seek a plea deal for Syed, who asked her several times whether a plea option was available.The Maryland Court of Special Appeals asked prosecutors to respond to the post-conviction appeal in September to see if they too believed Syed had ineffective counsel in a move Brown said is highly unusual. Ultimately, as millions of listeners try and parse the evidence for themselves, what happens next is up to the judges."It's an unusual phenomenon," Brown said. "The Court of Special Appeals has shown some interest in the case and asked the state to respond to our application, which is more than they usually do in this procedural posture. But I truly think the appellate courts make their decisions based on the merits of the case, and not the popularity of a podcast."WBALTV.com editor Saliqa Khan contributed to this article.