If you listened to the Serial podcast (if you still haven’t finished it, then seriously, hurry up, no-one wants to be the last one at a party still bringing up the question of whether Adnan is innocent or not), chances are you’re aware that Adnan has a ‘last best chance’ appeal in the works.
Or does he?
While the Maryland Appeals Court hasn’t properly responded as to whether or not they think there’s grounds for the appeal, the State (bear with us, things are kind of confusing with all this legal talk, just imagine we’re Atticus Finch and everything will probably be OK) has asked the court to ‘respectfully deny’ Adnan’s application for the appeal.
Basically, what it all boils down to is that one of Adnan’s arguments for the appeal is that his ‘counsel was ineffective for failing to abide by his alleged request to solicit a plea offer from the state’. The state instead argue that that since Adnan maintained his innocence throughout he wouldn’t have needed a plea deal meaning his case against his counsel Christina Gutierrez is unfounded.
This isn’t the first bit of bad news for Adnan’s appeal process. On 6 January a post-conviction relief (appeals) application to the Baltimore City Circuit Court in 2010 was denied, and now things aren’t looking so good for this appeal with the Maryland Court Of Special Appeals.
This comes after Rabia Chaudry, the woman who first brought the case to the attention of This American Life’s Sarah Koenig, who headed up the Serial podcast, created a petition on Change.org calling for ‘A Fair Trial For Adnan’ since new information has been revealed in ‘popular media’.
According to Rabia, it ‘upends previous court rulings that Mr Syed is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the premeditated murder of [his ex-girlfriend] Hae Min Lee.’
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.