Entertainment Everything That's Happened With Adnan Syed's Case Since 'Serial'

Adnan Syed's arrest photo | HBO Adnan Syed's arrest photo | HBO

If you're thinking about tuning in to HBO's new docuseriesThe Case Against Adnan Syed, the first episode of which aired on Sunday, you probably listened to the flagship season of NPR's Serial podcast in 2014. You might need a refresher on everything that's happened with the case since then: It's been almost five years since Sarah Koenig turned all of us into armchair detectives, and a lot has changed since the horrendous murder of high schooler Hae Min Lee became water cooler theory fodder, including the making of HBO's limited series, which might actually shed some more insight on the case. But, before then, you'll want to bone up on everything that's happened with Adnan Syed's case, and whether or not he actually did it.

Adnan Syed appealed his case… again Before Serial even began, Syed had made two appeals to his case -- one in 2003, one in 2010 -- and both were denied. On February 6, 2015, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals allowed Syed to appeal again, which he did. The special appeals court remanded his case to the circuit court because of offered testimony from Asia McClain, who said she had been talking with Syed in the library at the time of the murder, which occurred miles away in a Best Buy parking lot.

Syed and Hae Min Lee at junior prom | HBO

Cell phone incoming call data was deemed suspect If you listened to Serial, you probably remember that a lot was made of Syed's cell phone records, especially the incoming call data. Two of the people questioned by police after these records were obtained -- Jay Wilds and Jennifer Pusateri -- led to Syed getting convicted: Pusateri told police that Wilds had called her using Syed's phone, and Wilds confessed that he had helped Syed bury Lee's body in Leakin Park. Wilds' confession didn't come until later, after he first denied being involved at all in what had happened, and supporters of Syed say that audio from his interviews with police reek of coaching. Another podcast series, Undisclosed: The State vs. Adnan Syed, produced in 2015 by one of Syed's advocates, lawyer Rabia Chaudry, found that in audio of Wilds' testimony, he seemed to respond to a tapping noise: Initially, he wouldn't know what to say to police interviewers until a soft tapping was heard, and then he'd become responsive. Syed's lawyer Justin Brown claimed in 2015 that the cell data, provided by AT&T, wasn't a reliable form of evidence, citing AT&T's own warning that only the outgoing call data was accurate enough to be admissible in court: "Outgoing calls only are reliable for location status. Any incoming calls will NOT be considered reliable information for location."

Syed's post-conviction relief hearing lasted for five days Syed was originally granted a two-day post-conviction hearing by Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Martin Welch, to determine if the trial would be officially reopened. Everyone who was anyone was there, including Sarah Koenig, and the whole thing lasted for five days, from February 3 to February 9, 2016. It was at this hearing that Asia McClain testified that she'd been talking with Syed in the library at the time of the murder, miles away. On June 30, 2016, Judge Welch announced that Syed would be granted a new trial.

Rabia Chaudry talks to an investigator | HBO

Syed's new trial is denied days before the HBO series premiered In 2018, the State applied for another appeal of the court's decision to grant Syed a new trial, and on November 29, 2018 a Court of Appeals panel of seven judges heard arguments for (from Syed's counsel) and against (from the State) Judge Welch's decision to give Syed another shot. On March 8, 2019, two days before the first episode of HBO's docuseries aired, the Maryland Court of Appeals denied a new trial in a 4-3 vote.



Adnan Syed's case became an international sensation Aside from Serial and Undisclosed, two books and one documentary special have been released about the case: Confessions of a Serial Alibi written by Asia McClain Chapman, Adnan's Story: The Search for Truth and Justice After Serial written by Rabia Chaudry, and a one-hour Investigation Discovery documentary special titled Adnan Syed: Innocent or Guilty? aired in 2016. Episodes of Koenig's podcast have been downloaded more than 100 million times, though both she and Chaudry have been criticized for their investigations, most notably by Hae Min Lee's family. "It remains hard to see," the family stated in 2016, "so many run to defend someone who committed a horrible crime, who destroyed our family, who refuses to accept responsibility when so few are willing to speak up for Hae." The Case Against Adnan Syed director Amy Berg said in an interview that her process in re-examining the case for her series was very objective: "Because there is a sense of injustice in the criminal justice system, I think true crime junkies tend to believe the system is wrong. Because it is a lot of the time! So it’s hard to have sympathy for both sides of the story... Objectivity has to be about the facts."