Maryland appeals decision to grant new trial for 'Serial' Adnan Syed case

BALTIMORE, Aug. 2 (UPI) -- The Maryland Attorney General's Office has appealed the decision to grant a new trial to Adnan Syed, whose murder conviction was profiled in the Serial podcast.

In the appeal filed Monday, Attorney General Brian Frosh's office urged the judge to "review, and reverse, the post-conviction court's ruling.

On July 1, Baltimore Judge Martin Welch vacated Syed's conviction and ordered a new trial on claims his trial lawyer failed to cross-examine an expert witness about the reliability of cell tower location evidence.

The Serial podcast, which debuted in 2014, raised questions about the investigation and his trial. An offshoot podcast called Undisclosed also questioned cell tower evidence. The podcast drew 38 million people in the season's final month.

Syed, 35, was convicted in 2000 and sentenced to life in prison in the murder and kidnapping his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee. One month after she went missing in January 1999, her strangled body was found in a shallow grave in a park.

"The (defense) attorney (Maria Cristina Gutierrez) failed to do the simplest thing and just pick up the phone and call this alibi witness and see if she was legitimate," Syed's new attorney C. Justin Brown told CNN on Friday. "Without Serial ... I don't think we would have gotten as far as we did."

Also, the testimony of a friend of Syed's, Asia McClain, was not taken into account. Before his trial, Syed gave two letters to his lawyers from McClain saying she was with the defendant at a library during the murder.

The attorney general's filing says that if Syed's defense wants McClain's testimony to be considered, it would request testimony from two of the witness' classmates. One of them -- the two are sisters -- got into an argument and said she was going to lie to help Syed avoid a conviction.

Syed remains incarcerated awaiting a new trial.

Deputy Attorney General Thiru Vignarajah maintains that Syed's original trial counsel was not ineffective, as Syed's current attorneys maintain, and said there are questions regarding the cellphone evidence.

A post-conviction hearing was convened to hear from the alibi witness.

In Monday's appeal, Vignarajah argued that post-conviction hearings can't be held with "no new evidence, no change in law, no material link to the original justification for remand, and no reason why the claim could not have been raised at numerous prior proceedings."