Maryland’s highest court has denied a new trial for a man whose murder conviction was chronicled in the hit podcast “Serial.”
In an opinion Friday, the Court of Appeals agreed with a lower court that Adnan Syed’s legal counsel was deficient in failing to investigate an alibi witness, but it disagreed that the deficiency prejudiced the case. The court says Syed waived his ineffective counsel claim.
The court reversed the Court of Special Appeals’ judgment, sending it back to that court with directions to reverse the Baltimore Circuit Court judgment granting a new trial.
Syed is serving a life sentence after he was convicted in 2000 of strangling his ex-girlfriend and burying her body in a Baltimore park.
Syed’s case was at the center of the “Serial” podcast’s first season.
