An expert criminal defense lawyer testified Friday that the testimony of a potential alibi witness for Adnan Syed could have been “a game changer” in his murder trial.
Syed, the subject of the podcast “Serial,” was convicted in 2000 of murdering his former girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, and sentenced to life. But David Irwin, the defense expert, said Asia Chapman, who offered to provide Syed an alibi, would have made a “wonderful witness.”
Chapman, formerly Asia McClain, testified over two days that Syed’s former defense team ignored her offer to tell prosecutors that she was talking with him at the Woodlawn Public Library about the time Lee disappeared on Jan. 13, 1999.
Syed’s current defense team is seeking a new trial, arguing that Cristina Gutierrez, Syed’s lawyer at the trial, failed to provide an adequate defense, in part because she failed to call Chapman and other potential alibi witnesses. The lawyers said a handwritten note from an aide to Gutierrez noted that Chapman saw Syed at the library.
Testifying on the third day of a post-conviction hearing, Irwin said Gutierrez had a professional duty to call Chapman and interview her as a potential alibi witness after they discovered her.
He said Chapman’s testimony could have changed the outcome of the trial.
Gutierrez died in 2004.
Earlier, defense investigator Sean Gordon testified he contacted nearly half the people on Gutierrez’ list of potential alibi witnesses and none of them said she called on them. That list did not include Chapman.
Chapman said in her first day on the stand she had told Syed in a letter that the Woodlawn library had surveillance cameras that might have recorded him being there at the time of Lee’s disappearance.
Michelle Hamiel, a former Woodlawn librarian, confirmed Friday that there were cameras at the library at the time. But, Hamiel added, the footage was recorded over each month, so it was unlikely there would still be video of Syed at the library by the time he was charged in February 1999.