The Serial podcast put the name Adnan Syed into hundreds of thousands of conversations in 2014. If you use the phrase cultural phenomenon to describe Serial, hosted by Sarah Koenig, you wouldn’t be wrong. Koenig took a close look at a case from 1999/2000: Adnan Syed was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee. Believing he was wrongfully convicted and imprisoned, friends of Syed reached out to Koenig. She dug into the files and evidence and conducted new interviews and then presented her findings week by week, narrative style, for Serial. And now, years later, Syed is getting a new trial (via CBS News).
WE WON THE APPEAL. #FreeAdnan
— Justin Brown (@CJBrownLaw) March 29, 2018
Serial‘s first season, the one about Syed, racked up millions of downloads. That attention helped Syed get his case back into the courts. In 2016, he got a post-conviction hearing that could have led to a new trial, but prosecutors blocked it. Syed’s attorney Justin Brown appealed, and he won (see the above tweet). One reason the judge appealed is because Syed’s attorney didn’t call the key witness Asia McClain during the original trial in 2000. If you’re a fan of the podcast (and I’m guess you are because why else would you be reading this), you know the McClain discoveries stirred up a lot of narrative drama.
The date for the new trial has not been set yet.
How fast did you binge the first season of Serial? Tell us in the comments.
Image: The Law Offices of C. Justin Brown Â
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