> One of the suspects had threatened Lee, saying “he would make her (Ms. Lee) disappear. He would kill her,” according to the filing.
> “Given the stunning lack of reliable evidence implicating Mr. Syed, coupled with increasing evidence pointing to other suspects, this unjust conviction cannot stand,” said Assistant Public Defender Erica Suter, Mr. Syed’s attorney and, Director of the Innocence Project Clinic. “Mr. Syed is grateful that this information has finally seen the light of day and looks forward to his day in court.”
> The suspects were known persons at the time of the original investigation and were not properly ruled out nor disclosed to the defense, prosecutors said.
I think this is enough to justify letting him get out and they can decide if they want to do another trial. That's a pretty important miss on the prosecutors originally and the other suspects should have been ruled out before focusing all on him.
EDIT: Also, on a personal level and in a normative sense, it's been 20 years and he should be allowed to re-enter society and of all the crazy people we let back, he's probably one of the safer choices for rehabilitation.
I would love to hear from an actual neutral legal party if that's actually the case. Adnan had a motive and a strong testimony against him from an accomplice who's story had checked out. Is it actually a big miss to not rule out every possible suspect?
But on your broader point, I largely agree that anyone freed from unnecessarily long and potentially unjust prison sentences is a good thing.
Jay's story "checked out" because it matched the cell phone evidence and also the testimony of another witness. The problem was that the cell phone evidence was later proven to be completely misinterpreted, and the other witness's testimony apparently misremembered the day (it was something along the lines of her being in class at a certain key time). Without those, it sounds like there's nothing left for his story to rest on.
We're forgetting that Jay knew the location of key evidence.
The cellphone data was only "misinterpreted" in that it was not a slam dunk, but we can still conclude they don't line up with Adnan's testimony for the day.
> witness's testimony apparently misremembered the day
... based entirely on a random interview about what another person remembered 20 years later.
The first few times police interviewed him he thought they were going to go after him on drug charges. After he had a plea deal and a lawyer his story was pretty straight. He even pointed out where the evidence was. And this is the testimony that was offered to the jury and scrutinized on cross examination.
The entire sub-plot in the podcast about his testimony was somewhat misleading on Serial's part.
I don't find that to be a very convincing argument. His story could have become more consistent because he stopped lying, or it could have become more consistent because he had more practice telling his lie. Lying is hard at first, but once you've gone through a few takes and once you have the advice of a lawyer to keep you from saying anything stupid, it becomes much easier to tell a coherent story.
> “Given the stunning lack of reliable evidence implicating Mr. Syed, coupled with increasing evidence pointing to other suspects, this unjust conviction cannot stand,” said Assistant Public Defender Erica Suter, Mr. Syed’s attorney and, Director of the Innocence Project Clinic. “Mr. Syed is grateful that this information has finally seen the light of day and looks forward to his day in court.”
> The suspects were known persons at the time of the original investigation and were not properly ruled out nor disclosed to the defense, prosecutors said.
source: https://apnews.com/article/adnan-syed-conviction-baltimore-p...
I think this is enough to justify letting him get out and they can decide if they want to do another trial. That's a pretty important miss on the prosecutors originally and the other suspects should have been ruled out before focusing all on him.
EDIT: Also, on a personal level and in a normative sense, it's been 20 years and he should be allowed to re-enter society and of all the crazy people we let back, he's probably one of the safer choices for rehabilitation.