Man at center of podcast to stay in jail, await new trial

BALTIMORE – A man whose murder conviction was recently vacated after his story was at the center of a popular podcast will remain jailed while he awaits a new trial.

Baltimore Circuit Judge Martin Welch on Wednesday denied Adnan Syed’s request to be released from jail primarily because there is a pending appeal from the prosecutor’s office.

Syed was convicted in the killing of his high school girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, and sentenced to life in prison in 2000. Syed’s case was the centerpiece for the first season of the 2014 podcast “Serial.” Syed was granted a new trial last summer because his original trial attorney failed to cross-examine a state witness who presented possibly unreliable cell tower data linking Syed to Lee’s burial site.

A woman who is expected to be a witness in Syed’s new trial, Asia McClain Chapman, now lives in Spokane. She says she saw Syed in the library at the time of the murder. Her affidavit was among the evidence presented in Syed’s request for a new trial.