Serial Case Lawyer Argues Adnan Syed's Phone Records Don't Prove Anything

Adnan Syed from the infamous Serial podcast is back with a new hope to get him off in the murder of Hae Min Lee—unreliable phone records.

On Monday, Syed’s lawyer C. Justin Brown filed a court motion asserting that the cell phone evidence turned over by the Baltimore police that placed Syed in Leakin Park at the time of Lee’s death were inadmissible. According to the Baltimore Sun, Brown says that the calls were submitted with a cover sheet that read “Outgoing calls only are reliable for location status. Any incoming calls will NOT be considered reliable information for location.” Syed’s original lawyer Cristina Gutierrez never knew about the cover sheet and couldn’t protest its use or have it thrown out in 2000 during Adnan’s first trial.

“We feel that the fax cover sheet from AT&T is an extremely important piece of evidence, and we are bringing it to the court’s attention as quickly as possible,” Brown told The Baltimore Sun. “We hope the court considers it.”

Maryland prosecutors have avoided comment. Syed, now 35, was convicted of killing Lee in January 1999 and sentenced to life in prison. Though police and prosecutors had no physical evidence tying Syed to the murder of Lee, the testimony of Jay Wild, Syed’s not-so-close friend at the time who said he helped Syed bury Lee’s body in Leakin Park was the “linchpin” of Maryland’s case against Syed.

Jay was interviewed by The Intercept’s Natasha Vargas-Cooper (who has since joined Jezebel as a senior reporter) last year, where he sounded even odder about whether what he’d said in court was true. And the story rolls on.