Hello, serial listeners.
Sarah Canig here. This week I'm going to do something I haven't done before, which is ducked back into a non-Scied's case for a few days to report on a court proceeding that's happening in Baltimore.
If you have no idea what I'm talking about right now, quick, go listen to season one of serial and then come back to me in roughly 10 hours.
What's happening this week is not a new trial.
It's a hearing. It's actually a continuation of a non's petition for post-conviction relief.
That's something you try only after you've exhausted your regular appeals.
It's kind of a last-ditch effort.
He first filed that petition, wow, in 2010, I think, long before I got interested in this case.
In fact, I think the very first time I talked to a non was right when the court had ruled against him, had denied this petition.
But he appealed it, and that's when it started to get interesting.
In broad strokes, a non was arguing that his defense attorney at the time of his trial was incompetent, that she made mistakes that were so bad that he should get some form of relief, that maybe his conviction for killing Hayman Lee should be overturned.
One of those mistakes had non-claimed was that his attorney never contacted a potential alibi witness, Asia McLean.
Remember her? Anyway, after season one of serial ended, some new stuff came to light, including some new evidence regarding Asia McLean, and about problems with the crucial cell tower testimony at a non's trial.
And over the past year, the wheels of justice rolled slowly, slowly like they do.
And finally, this week, the Baltimore City Circuit Court will hear this new evidence.
We'll hear what some new witnesses have to say about what happened or didn't happen at a non's original trial, 16 years ago.
Right now, it's Tuesday, February 2, 2016, the night before the hearing starts.
As soon as I'm done recording this, I'm getting in my car and driving a Baltimore, and I'm going to show up at the courthouse at 8 a.m.
tomorrow, like they told me to.
And I'm going to watch and listen, and I'm going to tell you what happens.
Not week by week, but day by day.
I'm fascinated to see who exactly will testify, what they'll say, and how it will be to have all these people back in one courtroom.
All right. Now we're going to refresh your memory about the case of a non-sayed.
And then after that, it'll magically have turned into tomorrow.
And you'll hear me calling my producer, Dana Chivas, to tell her and you about day one of a non-searing.
This is a global talent link prepaid call from a non-sayed.
And in May, that's a Maryland correctional facility.
This call will be recorded.
I definitely understand that someone could look at this and say, oh man, you know, he must be lying.
It's so coincidental. What did he tell you?
He told me that she had broken his heart.
It was extremely wrong for anyone to treat him that way.
Why would you admit to doing something that drastic if you hadn't done it?
There's no way that she was at best flight 236.
Did anybody else use the phone?
I think the odds of you getting the charming sociopath, you're just not that lucky.
It tells, believable. Even now, if the 950 went from technicality, except then that was proof is innocent, great, you know, but I think you might be that technicality.
You know, I don't have a baby to explain it.
And it is what it is. If someone believes me or not, you know, I have no control over it.
Hello? Hello? Hi. Hi. Can you hear me, okay?
I can hear you. Are you recording?
I am recording. Okay, so I am also recording here in the studio in New York, so let's sync up our sound.
Hi. Where are you? I'm in a hotel room.
Oh, I am in the closet of the hotel room, like in the...
And I've got some pillows behind my back, but then on either, like I'm flanked by these two very racy bathrobes, like one is like a leopard print and one is a zebra print.
And they're hanging on either side of me.
But it's making a good little sound studio here.
Like the classy podcast toast you are.
Don't very... everybody is swalligant right now.
So how did it go? It was...
I found it fascinating.
I found all of it fascinating.
Yeah, like who were the players in there today?
Who were the first people who testified and like...
Yeah, so the first half of the day was establishing that Christina Gutierrez.
A non-trial attorney back in the original criminal trial had been declining in a bunch of ways, sort of physically, professionally, financially.
So there were like two attorneys who had worked with her from the mid to late 90s.
And you know, 99, obviously, so when she takes a non-skase, who testified of like how bad it got.
And it did seem like it was pretty bad from their testimony.
Like that she was in physical pain.
She was passing off cases to people because she was overwhelmed.
Her performance in the courtroom seemed sort of definitely not how she had been, which was kind of this like legendary, you know, sought after, very successful defense attorney.
And that she just was like her powers were definitely waning.
But sort of more to the point was this question of why would she not have called...
Why would she not have looked into Asia-Meclean as a possible alibi witness for her client for a non?
And is there any strategic reason why you would not check in to this person for her not to call Asia-Meclean?
Okay. And then, you know, the big witness of the day was Asia-Meclean.
Tell me about Asia. Like what did she say?
What was that like? It was...
I have to say, like, it was kind of intense in the courtroom when she was when she was testifying.
You know, and it was... Like, I don't even know totally how to talk about it, but like serial was a part of her testimony.
So that we were... Also just a very strange, a little bit surreal, like, is this happening right now, a moment?
Because the way that I first learned about the case, right, was just like, there's been this miscarriage of justice.
Like there was this key witness who has never heard from, and she would have provided the perfect alibi.
And she was never heard from, and it's just like, you know, this gross negligence happened.
And so it all... Remember this?
The whole thing was just like, we just need to find this girl and find out what she will say.
Yeah, it was like she was the key to this thing.
She was the key to this thing.
They were feeling like that, yeah.
Yeah, like this can't be that hard.
Like, we'll just smack her down and see what she says, right?
And then we do track her down, and then it's not that simple, right?
It's not at all... It's just...
It's so much more complicated than her, whatever.
Just to see her sort of stride in the courtroom.
And she's pretty striking looking, also.
She's beautiful. Oh, really?
Kind of tall, and she had these very high heels on, and she looked very put together, and she's got like bright red lipstick.
And so it was just... It was like, wow, there she is.
There was just like a lot of drama in the room when she was testifying.
But why, though? What was the thing she was saying?
I think it was causing this drama.
I think because there had been so much talk about her and about what she might have said, what have said, you know, parsing everything she said, parsing her letters, parsing her affidavit, parsing the stuff that she said to me, and then to just hear her say these things that sounded like very straightforward.
Which were... Which were kind of arresting.
Like, I don't know. She was just saying like, she was very sure of herself, and very sure about what she remembered, which is like, you know, this same thing we've been hearing, right?
Which is like, I remember, I was in the library, the Woodland Public Library, after school on January 13, 1999, starting at about 10.45 or so.
I was waiting for hours for my boyfriend to pick me up.
He was super late. I was super bored.
As soon as school ended, I remember Adnan walked in.
We chatted. You know, like this whole thing.
We chatted for 15, 20 minutes.
Like, did it land? Like, when she...
Yeah. So, I'm saying, I think it totally did land.
She seemed very normal.
You know, and then she said these like very idealistic things that I think that's probably also what made people kind of emotional, like where she said, I'm trying to find it.
I mean, they were just so simple, the things that she said, but she was sort of like...
So Adnan's attorney, Justin Brown said, why did you want to testify?
And she just said, I felt for justice to be served if we should put all the information on the table.
I just thought it was the right thing to do.
I was scribbling like crazy in my notebook.
I was like, sort of scribbling.
So I was like, just super focused on writing.
And so was everyone around me.
It was just like scribble, scribble, scribble, scribble, you know?
So I didn't really look around the room, but more I was trying to see what Adnan's face was doing.
Could you see his face from where you were sitting?
No. Are you just sort of looking in the back of his head or what?
I was sort of looking at the back of his head.
I was trying to see if he was even looking at who was testifying.
And you know, I couldn't tell.
To me, it seemed a lot like he was just sort of looking down or looking straight in front of him, like at the table in front of him.
He was very, very still the entire procedure.
Really? Yeah, like barely moving.
Like he would shift occasionally, but almost like he just became a stone.
Huh. Asia, today on the stand, was it still, was it, did you find it was still as compelling what she was saying?
That simple thing she had to say, was that still as compelling to you now today?
Hearing her explain her letters, like things in her letters that seemed a little like, what does that mean?
And so she sort of went through the letters.
Oh, like what? Uh, oh, well, so she said, this is, this is pretty detailed, but there's a part of one of her letters where she says, I, if you need me, like maybe I can help you account for some of your unaccounted four time between the hours of two, 15 and 8 p.m.
You know how she says that in one of the letters?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's also one of the things in the original post-conviction hearing that Judge Welch ruled, uh, noted in his opinion where he said, right?
Oh, right. Just sounds like she's offering to lie.
It sounds as if she's offering to lie or something.
Yeah, that maybe she's flirting or like, what?
This is a, yeah. This is a very big window of time.
So like what she's saying, like I'll just, I can make sense.
And, and so a non-saturni had her explain like, well, what do you, what do you mean by that?
And she said, oh, well, I had been to a non's house that day, um, to tell his parent, to tell his family like, if you, you know, what I knew.
And, um, and they told me he was struggling to account for that afternoon.
Like, he couldn't really remember what happened after school.
Oh. Between school and going to the mosque at eight o'clock, around eight o'clock.
So that was the period of time.
So she was saying, I can account for this little slice of it of that period if, if you need.
Oh. So that's why she writes the letter in the first place.
Yeah. Right. So that kind of thing was interesting.
You know, not interesting, but it just felt like, oh, I got it.
Okay. It all seemed like very straightforward and clear.
Uh-huh. She came off really well for the defense.
And we have yet to see what the state's going to do to her tomorrow.
Like, that will continue tomorrow.
They started and you could see like, they are going to go really hard on her, I think.
Oh, really? Yeah. I think so.
Like, how did you tell? Because of how they even started.
I mean, the, the prosecutors tough.
He's tough. I'm not sure what they're, what their plan is with Asia, but I think, I think what they're going to try to do is, I don't think they're going to try to like, discredit her exactly.
But I think what they're going to say is you think of yourself as a person with a really precise memory, but, but here are some ways in which we're going to show you that your memory isn't as precise as you think it is.
And so I'm totally speculating here.
But to show that if you had gotten on the stand back at a non-striol, this testimony wouldn't have worked very well.
It wouldn't have changed the course of the trial because here's all these ways I can, here's all these ways I can poke holes in what you're saying in your testimony.
Oh. And so he was starting to poke holes.
So he was, he wasn't starting to poke holes yet.
Like, he didn't get that far.
It got late and then we stopped.
And he was clearly trying to, he was sort of laying the foundation for her to not remember stuff.
Oh. It was a lot. So it was a lot.
So it was a lot. It was a lot.
It was a lot. It was a lot.
It was a lot. It was a lot.
It was a lot. It was a lot.
It was a lot. It was a lot.
It was a lot. It was a lot.
It was a lot. It was a lot.
It was a lot. It was a lot.
It was a lot. They weren't directly related to her statements.
It was like, did you play sports?
Yes, I did. I played volleyball in basketball.
Well, did you have basketball practice that day?
I don't think so. I don't, I'm not sure.
I don't think so, though.
So you had basketball practice or you didn't, you know, it was like that.
But a lot of that. Wow. Just like smile thing.
But sir, do you think they're doing this because?
Do you think they're doing this to say you remembering a different day?
I think it's possible that's where they're going.
But you think maybe that's the direction they're going in.
I think, I mean, it's a direction I go in if I was staying.
Right. Yeah. Right. So you're going back to the courthouse tomorrow?
I am. It's starting again 9.30 tomorrow morning.
All right. So you will check back in with me.
Yeah, I'll call you tomorrow.
All right. Talk to you tomorrow.
I'm going to call you tomorrow.
I'm going to call you tomorrow.
I'm going to call you tomorrow.
I'm going to call you tomorrow.
I'm going to call you tomorrow.
I'm going to call you tomorrow.
