Key Witness In The "Serial" Murder To Come Forward In Defense Of Adnan

The Blaze – The former classmate of Adnan Syed’s who could hold the key to unraveling his conviction in the murder of Hae Min Lee has written a new affidavit reasserting that she was with Syed at the exact time the state argued that he killed his ex-girlfriend in 1999, and alleging that the original prosecutor in the case essentially convinced her not to participate in the appeals process. In her affidavit, provided exclusively to TheBlaze, Asia McClain says she has “c[o]me to understand [her] importance to the case” and realized she “needed to step forward and make [her] story known to the court system.” “Serial” raised questions about whether he received a fair trial and is, in fact, even guilty. One of the biggest revelations was about McClain, also a Woodlawn student at the time, who wrote Syed two letters after he was arrested saying she saw him in the public library the day Lee disappeared. She was never heard from at trial, even though her timeline of seeing him contradicts with when the state argued that he killed Lee. 

Prosecutors said Lee was dead by 2:36 p.m., but in an affidavit written after Syed was convicted of first-degree murder, McClain stated that she had been talking with him from about 2:20 p.m. to 2:40 p.m. (school let out at 2:15). McClain said no attorney ever reached out to her about her contact with Syed that day. It was only when a Syed family friend approached her after the trial that she wrote out her first affidavit. McClain says she didn’t question the lack of attention paid to her during the trial because she assumed the evidence against Syed must have been much stronger than anything her after-school chat could have toppled. 

Syed’s petition for appeal raised multiple issues, including a claim that his first lawyer, Cristina Gutierrez, had been ineffective because she didn’t interview McClain as a potential alibi witness (Gutierrez died in 2004). His new defense team attempted to contact McClain in 2010, but she did not speak to them; she did, however, contact the former trial prosecutor, Kevin Urick. The podcast’s first episode featured audio from one of those appeal proceedings in which Urick testified that McClain told him that “she was being asked questions about an affidavit she’d written back at the time of the trial. “She told me that she’d only written it because she was getting pressure from the family, and she basically wrote it to please them and get them off her back,” Urick testified. But McClain says that never happened. “I never told Urick that I recanted my story or affidavit about January 13, 1999,” the new affidavit states. “In addition, I did not write the March 1999 letters or the affidavit because of pressure from Syed’s family. I did not write them to please Syed’s family or to get them off my back. What actually happened is that I wrote the affidavit because I wanted to provide the truth about what I remembered. My only goal has always been to provide the truth about what I remembered.”

McClain, now 33 and living in Washington state, said that when Syed’s defense team contacted her in 2010, she was wary. “I was under the impression that there was a tremendous amount of evidence that convicted Adnan and that for whatever reason, his team was reaching out to me as a Hail Mary, so to speak,” McClain told TheBlaze in an interview. “I really didn’t realize how, I guess you could say how weak the state’s case was, the information, the evidence that they had and the testimony that they had.” So she contacted Urick — by then in private practice in Maryland and no longer a Baltimore prosecutor — and asked him why Syed’s team was reaching out. In her new affidavit, she not only says she wasn’t pressured to tell her story — at odds with his testimony — but alleges he essentially convinced her not to participate in any of the proceeding.

If you were a Serial listener, and specifically if you sided with Adnan, this is pretty big news. The one girl who basically presented an alibi that completely discredits the State’s case that was inexplicably never heard from, is finally coming forward. Turns out she never recanted her story, which the State said she did. Turns out she never spoke to Adnan’s lawyer and so she never understood just how valuable her story was. It seems weird coming all these years later, but thats potentially what this podcast did – shed light on this case for Asia McClain because nobody else involved ever bothered to. The story has remained consistent throughout all these years. And so, just like everything with this case since there’s no evidence, its all about whether or not you believe someone’s story. People who believe Jay’s story will probably not believe Asia’s alibi, because thats more convenient for them and they are idiots. People with brains will at the very least say, well if you believe one story, theres really no reason to not believe this other story, and they both contradict each other so there’s no way we can act like this murder is a definitive open and shut case.

At the end of the day, I dont think it really matters. I dont know much about appeals but I’d have to imagine you need a TON of evidence to overturn a ruling. Otherwise they open up a can of worms for every case every that wasnt a slam dunk. On the surface, as a casual podcast listener, it sounds to me like an appeal can be won based on new evidence and/or failure of defense. It would seem to me that this chick providing an alibi would be new evidence and Adnan’s lawyer never talking to her would be failed defense. But like I said its just another story, no sort of smoking gun that absolutely proves Adnan’s innocence. I dont expect that to be enough to overturn the case. But based on looking at this case in an over simplified, logical manner, that seems like enough for an appeal. At the very least I just want Jay Believers to realize how hypocritical they are by flat out saying they just choose not to believe Asia McCalin’s story and adamantly believe his.