via CBS13
A laywer for Adnan Syed, the subject of the popular This American Life spinoff podcast Serial, argues that trial attorney Christina Gutierrez’s failure to interview a possible alibi witness was an error of “such a fundamental nature” that it requires a new trial to resolve. “The circumstances here are worse than the circumstances of any other case in which a court has found ineffective assistance of counsel relating to an alibi issue,” wrote attorney C. Justin Brown in a 31-page brief filed Monday. Syed was sentenced to life in prison for the 1999 murder of ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee, but the podcast examining his case uncovered that his lawyer didn’t properly investigate classmate Asia McClain’s claim that she saw Syed in their high-school library at the time the murder took place.