Those who believe in Adnan Syed's innocence rejoiced earlier this summer when a judge in Maryland ruled his murder conviction would be thrown out and that Syed was getting a new trial.
The Marlyand State Attorney's Office, however, is busy appealing that ruling as it fights to keep Syed behind bars for the rest of his life. The Baltimore Sun now reported there's some interesting new evidence that could be crucial to the state's case against Syed.
Syed's defense attorneys have been fighting to prove that the teen didn't get a fair trial because his former classmate, Asia McClain, was never called as a witness. McClain, as you probably remember from the Serial podcast that explored the case, says she saw Syed in the school's library at the same time prosecutors say he was murdering his girlfriend Hae Min Lee.
McClain even went as far as sending Syed a letter back then saying she'd seen him and offering to help with his defense.
Now, however, two more former classmates of McClain have gone on record with sworn statements to the state attorney's office saying that they clearly remember McClain saying she was going to make up a story to help Syed all those years ago.
Here's what one of the sisters said in their statement, which was released in a court filing.
"Asia (McClain) Chapman's story about seeing Adnan in the library the day Hae was killed is a lie," the letter said. "I very much remember, as does [name redacted from court filing], having a conversation with Asia in our co-op class about Asia saying she believed so much in Adnan['s] innocence that she would make up a lie to prove he couldn't have done it.
The allegations might not make much of a difference in the appeal to stop Syed's new trial—the judge has said it wasn't McClain's testimony that made him throw out the conviction, but cell phone evidence—but it will probably be a huge factor if and when Syed does go on trial again.
McClain has denied the accusations that she made anything up.
