SIO354: Serial's Adnan Syed Conviction Reinstated. What Happened?

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:16 Thomas: And welcome to Serious Inquiries Only, this is is episode 354. I'm Thomas, and I'm joined by Matt Cameron. Matt, how are you doing today?

0:00:23 Matt: Thomas, I'm excited to talk about what I think is one of the most interesting legal stories I've seen in years. Are

0:00:27 Thomas: Wow, me Too, am excited to do my best to not talk. I will try as hard as I possibly can for two reasons. For one, I will just start yelling. And then for another, I am also under the weather and under the influence of medication that, so, is I am going to try to just listen to you. That is actually good. It,

0:00:45 Matt: You saying you have something to say about this case?

0:00:47 Thomas: I may have something to say, but you know what? I'm just a guy, right? But you, you you remind people your experience relevant to this story, your

0:00:48 Matt: Okay. Well, sure. Among other things, for the last 18 years, I've been doing criminal defense work. I actually specialize in crimeigration, which is trying to undo immigration consequences of criminal offenses, but that means I spend a lot of time working in the criminal system. So I'm very familiar, and certainly a lot of the themes we're talking about. And I should mention as well that my primary life partner and best friend of 20 years was a prosecutor for about 15 years. And so we spend a ton of time talking about this stuff, and she works on a lot of murder appeals, so I feel like by osmosis I've picked up quite a lot as well.

0:01:22 Thomas: I bet. Sounds like can't argue with those credentials. So you're more than just a guide. Okay. So then I guess we'll get your view on this whole Adnan thing, huh? No. Okay. We're going to talk about the development. People saw this. A lot of people shared it with me. What most people who haven't delved into this have seen was Adnan's conviction was overturned back when it, you know, was when we were in Scotland and I couldn't stop thinking about it. And I kind of took away a day of my vacation with Lydia because I was just obsessed with how wrong everybody was on this. Anyway, so that happened. And then all of a sudden, you know, the other day we hear, well, it's back. And is back because of something like, oh, they didn't take the victim's family into account for that's what I think most people people will have thought it was gone as no murder conviction. And then all of a sudden it's back. That seems weird. Like, isn't there some double jeopardy thing there? You can just put a murder conviction back. What is happening with this?

0:01:26 Matt: I hope so. It is super weird, there but is no double jeopardy issue for reasons we're going to get to. Yeah, it actually is. I promise there's a lot more to this. I actually thought when I first saw this story, this wasn't even worth doing a whole episode on because, you know, I figured this is a formality, it's a technicality, he's just going to go back, they'll resentence him, it'll be fine.

0:02:29 Matt: But no, no, there's like five hours worth of material here, Thomas.

0:02:16 Thomas: Okay. Yeah. Okay. Okay. That's what I thought too. Oh, good.

0:02:32 Matt: We're not going to do five hours, but there's lot to talk about. It's an incredibly fascinating intersection of so many different things that are going on in criminal justice policy right now. But at the the same time, I do want to start before we talk about anything else, and I think we're in agreement on this. Victim, Hayman Lee, she was killed as a teenager.

She was 18 in high school, and her brother has been very active in this case, and he's actually the reason that this outcome came out the way it did. Something in court. He said a number of things that really struck me, but he said I've been thinking about a lot as I've been reviewing this case over the last few days. Isn't a podcast for me. It's real life. And I think that's important to remember as we talk about this.

It's a great podcast episode, it's a fascinating case for me to look at, but this is somebody's sister and this was somebody's child and they lost someone that was beautiful and special to them.

That's actually why we're here is because the victim's rights, the rights of the victim representative in this case of course, in criminal proceedings, there's been a lot of back and forth about this in the last few years about exactly where victims' rights rub up against defendants' rights and rub up up against the state's rights, because those are possibly, if you think about it, very separate interests. Victim, state, and defendant might actually all have separate things to say and separate interests in any given case.

0:03:44 Thomas: And here's what sucks about this for me as someone who, again, I'm not going to hide. People already know this. I at all the evidence at the time of this murder conviction was taken back or whatever. Sorry, my terminology is going to be terrible today because my brain is just really not working. But I just obsessed and read everything. I read the court decisions. I actually read court documents. That's how much this bothered me, Matt. That Is how much. And what me nuts about this is in any other case, I am all about completely the opposite end. Absolutely, victim, victim family should be taken into account, of course. But, I worry that too much we do that in this country and we use that in in order to make punishment more and more extreme, to make forgiveness less and less common and to, you know, and to just, we just over punish in this country. So like, that's where I am coming from normally.

And I just want to say too, like it's been what, 20, however many years, 23 years or whatever it was since it happened. Like if, if this had been okay, yeah, he did it. He served his time. I'd be long past, you him in jail or anything. Like it's just, I think we punish people too much.

I don't know what your views are on this, but this is mainly, you know, political question or whatever, but I, I think we punish people to too long, too harshly and all that. But in a case like this, where it feels like, the you victim's family never got the satisfaction of the truth or like feeling like the person really, you know, sorry for what they did and all that stuff.

It puts, me in this weird position where it's like, man, don't want to still be punishing someone decades later, but they never, they they never admitted to it. Like they never properly atoned for it.

0:04:02 Matt: I Agree with all that. And there are a lot of places where victim's rights advocacy rubs up against defendant's rights. And I am, of course, pro-defendant. For the most part, I'm looking at things from a defense side. And this challenged a lot for me, because I'm also a budding abolitionist and trying to figure that out for myself and

0:05:22 Thomas: Yeah. We've established though, not for Trump. Like we've, we're, we, we got you firmly. He's just the last one.

0:05:25 Matt: For Trump, I'm ready for Trump to go to prison

0:05:28 Thomas: We'll, we'll everybody else.

0:05:28 Matt: Sure. Still.

0:05:30 Thomas: The last one out will be him.

0:05:32 Matt: That's a real testament, principles there, Donald Trump, but, uh, yeah, no, so for the most part though, I mean, the the really painful thing about this one is that it was just kind of a fun puzzle box for a lot of us, including you know, everybody who listened to this podcast, which was kind of the original podcast, the one that got your mom listening to podcasts, podcasts. It's something that we all kind of played along at home, and we thought we had like this kind of contained universe that we were being given of evidence, and people were kind of debating around that evidence, when of course there was actually an entire jury trial with very, very long boxes of transcripts that you could read, and all the evidence that we didn't see and hear from. Because, of course, with any given journalistic enterprise, you've got to pick your evidence. You've got to pick what you present.

0:05:41 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:06:09 Thomas: Well then you're going to buy a story, especially when you're doing an audio medium, you're going to bias toward people you can hear, you know? And So, and, and Jay decided not to participate and the victim can't participate, so that's going to skew who you can hear. Yeah.

0:06:15 Matt: Right, right. And on top of that, there's not a lot of business, and, uh, we got the right guy podcasts, right? That's not really a thing. Nobody wants to listen to much of that.

0:06:27 Thomas: We should Start, Matt, let's start that one. Not even, let's started right now that, um, no mystery here, this person did it, they did, they just did, I don't know, just, yeah.

0:06:31 Matt: We Got Just Caught, rightfully convicted, yeah.

0:06:39 Thomas: I

0:06:42 Matt: Yeah, it turns out that's, that is the really inconvenient thing about murders is somebody always did them, you know, that's unless a bear ate you or something, like there's... there's always a person involved if you've died under mysterious circumstances, so we do have to find out who that person is, and certainly the family is owed that finality. And the finality is a real theme throughout this case, because it's been up and down so many times with so many different questions raised.

And so let's get into the history. I think it's important to just run this down, because the timeline on this, I wouldn't usually get into timelines in an appeal, but it is a fascinating timeline, and it has a lot to say about where things went and where we are now.

So Marilyn Mosby is the district attorney in Baltimore City, and she was up for re-election, uh, otherwise she was up for re-election in July 2022, last year, and ordered a complete review at the suggestion of a prosecutor who's working in basically the sentencing reduction or wrongful convictions unit under her, uh, complete reveal of this case because they were approached by the defense in I don't size lawyers who asked them if they could review for the possibility of under the Juvenile Restoration Act, which would essentially kind of get to what you were just talking about, the idea that this man served his time, he committed this offense when he was a minor, and he killed a minor, but law allows anybody who served 20 years already to seek a sentencing reduction, so you

0:07:54 Matt: Know, worst case yeah, it makes sense, right, I mean, brains aren't fully developed, which is juvenile, your 17 year old brain is very different than your 37 year old brain, so yeah

0:07:54 Thomas: Agree with that yeah yeah absolutely who knows how how many murders I committed back then. No, I probably zero, but right.

0:08:06 Matt: Well, Let's hope, uh, it, that, that's how this all kicked off was because they were seeking this, the sentencing. So this is actually something that could have happened in the alternative, is he could have just been released naturally because his, he'd done his 20 years, but, uh, Becky Feldman and Marilyn Mosby's office started reviewing this and decided that she came up with a couple of things that had not been turned over in the original case, and that, that, of course, would be a Brady violation. I'm sure we're somewhat familiar with Brady, but essentially just evidence that was suppressed, that the prosecution withheld, essentially, that would have made a difference.

0:08:38 Thomas: Cause in criminal law or whatever proceedings you have, the state has like the obligation to share any evidence that might, you know, help the other side. Right. Unlike, unlike civil where I don't think you have that same obligation.

0:08:47 Matt: Right, and you want to hide as much as you can. Yeah, and there's serious consequences if you don't. And I'm all about, I mean, obviously, any given Brady violation, if it's a real Brady violation that should be the end of the trial, the endoftheconviction. That's easy.

0:08:55 Thomas: Right? Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I think I said that at the time too. And I, this was a Brady violation, then yeah, sure. He should get out on that anyway. Like I, that's all fine. I'd still doesn't change the truth of the matter that he definitely did. Anyway.

0:09:07 Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Well, we really should, just before we go any further, separate out factual guilt, which I think we both agree is very strong here from the legal questions, which is what we're talking about in this appeal and is a lower brain thing we have to do, but I'm just going to be referring to these things, but in the back of our minds, I think we both understand the facts are pretty overwhelming, um, this is really sketchy yep and

0:09:17 Thomas: Yes. Yeah. And at least 17 % of the listening audience will maybe agree with us. So that's where we'll Swiss

0:09:35 Matt: The rest might have already destroyed their podcasting devices. But yeah but Uh, just give us a chance, just give, going with this, the Brady evidence that the state's attorney believes they found were a couple of handwritten notes. And these were call summaries, basically, that a prosecutor had, someone who was reporting information on the case, not too long before the trial started, actually. And the note is, I consider this note, especially now that I've seen the whole thing. Now, the whole think is actually available, and we'll post a link to it. But it was actually shared by the man who wrote it because he was so concerned about the way it was being used,

0:09:38 Thomas: Yeah, they've already smashed their iPod touch.

0:10:13 Thomas: Hmm.

0:10:14 Matt: Because taken out of context, it sounds pretty bad when you're, when you've got someone saying that he would make a teenage girl disappear, he would kill her, that's not a direct quote, but that's, that was what the man wrote down, the prosecutor, from what he was being told, was that there was somebody out there who was saying that he wouldn't kill her and that he was going to make him and later disappear and he would killer, yeah.

0:10:28 Thomas: Right. Right. And This, okay, so now I'm remembering, so this was a note that there was another suspect, like, this is like, allegedly, there's some mystery suspect who had said this about Hayman Lee.

0:10:41 Matt: And then when you look at the actual note, and I'm going to read a bit of it into the record here, because I honestly, you're gonna, I'm gonna say this a number of times throughout this episode here, but I think this, this was botched beyond on beyond all belief by by the prosecution and were trying to do a good thing, but they really, I, okay, let me just give you the idea here, um.

0:10:42 Thomas: Yeah.

0:10:53 Thomas: 100. Because Think by the way, I think when I looked in, when this happened, when this was announced, I don't think this was available because I looked everywhere. I, I don't think I've seen this. I think we were still waiting. Oh, man. Okay. I'm excited for this.

0:11:05 Matt: It wasn't yeah this came out in November, a couple months after. And it was never, it wasn't included in the court's decision because it wasn't officially on the record, but the Attorney General's brief referenced it, so I had to go and find it. But essentially, you, what you think about this. Prior to murder, Redacted was upset that the woman was creating so many problems for Adnan. He told her that he would make her disappear, he would kill her. Now, that's a new paragraph, he told her. Now, the prosecutor put a footnote on the transcription, because the original note is so hard to read that he produced a transcription along with the original so you can compare them, and he put a footnote and said, he refers back to and replaces the proper noun, Adnan, it's antecedent, so essentially, when he's saying he told her he would make her disappear, this is someone quoting

0:11:11 Thomas: Okay. Hmm. Okay.

0:11:50 Thomas: This is someone saying Adnan said that he...

0:11:51 Matt: Adnan. Yes. This is not a pretty issue, I mean, this, this is, it's inculpatory.

0:11:53 Thomas: Oh, my God. Holy shit. That's...

0:12:00 Matt: It's really a problem.

0:12:00 Thomas: Are you kidding me?

0:12:01 Matt: No, it was really weird.

0:12:01 Thomas: Is insane. This is... Like, this is... I'm telling you, this whole thing was designed to fuck with me, Matt. It was designed because it's so obvious. And then we get this Mosby person, I think it was, who... And I remember that was Andrew's theory at the time. And it makes sense, like had a lot of political incentive to try to like make news and just did the most ridiculous thing. It made it it made it seem like for everybody, anybody watching, it people the strong impression that there's some exonerating evidence.

0:12:20 Matt: Yep. Yeah.

0:12:30 Thomas: I don't blame people for thinking that because, again, the heuristics are, well, prosecutors or whoever, they never take back a conviction. They want people to be in jail forever. Like, what, they went back on their thing? That must be pretty strong evidence. And then a lot of people too were like, yeah, the the prosecution who worked, uh, convict Adnan at the time was like, oh yeah, we made a mistake, you know, all this stuff. And it's like, I don't, don't, I think that happened, did that happen, yeah.

0:12:42 Matt: Exactly.

0:12:52 Matt: No, that's just, and they never used the word exonerated. They never even said he was innocent. They just came forward and said they couldn't stand by the integrity of the conviction, which if there were real, pretty evidence, that would be true. You can't. But this is what they got. This statement, he told her he would make her disappear, he would kill her. This is the only thing that's actually really new in the motion that they brought last year. And this is what their allegedly Brady evidence was. Now, at best, this is incredibly ambiguous. Now, you could say, and this is fair to say, that the man who wrote the note, the prosecutor now, has some incentive to say that this was not Brady evidence, that this actually was totally by the book, and it was fine. He also claims it was turned over to the defense, but that's neither here nor there. We can't really prove that, because the defense attorney's been dead a long time.

0:13:01 Thomas: Yeah. Sure. Yeah.

0:13:30 Thomas: How does that work, actually? I mean, I don't want to sidetrack you, but, like, get forget everything else, else can you, like, an, uh, an appeal on a Brady violation and then it's like, well, we, we can't, we don't know what was turned over, but we think, how would you, how would that work?

0:13:43 Matt: I mean, the defense file is presumably long gone. I don't know. But That's the only way you'd know, is if it's actually in her file, but the attorney general's office made the point that this was made available many times, that the file was made able during the appellate process, so who knows, um, but Now, I don't want to, be very careful how we talk about this, we're not going to name any other people because there are no official other suspects in this case, and that's part of the issue with this motion, um, redacted in this note, is it looks like we know who that is, and I Don't want to talk any more about it, but it was essentially somebody who had been counseling Adon in his relationship, and so redacted was upset the woman was causing so many problems for Adnan, he told her he would make her disappear, that makes no sense if it's your, like, spiritual advisor, you know, relationship advisor saying, I'm gonna go kill her.

0:13:43 Thomas: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Oh. Really? Yeah.

0:14:23 Thomas: Well. In order for this to be exonerating, it would have to be someone who was so mad on Adnan's behalf that he was going to kill Hay for Adnan?

0:14:25 Matt: Yeah.

0:14:36 Matt: Yes. Just by himself, just go off and do this, an adult, mind you, getting so mad about a teenage breakup that he's gonna jeopardize his own, it's, it's insane. It's actually off the rails. Honestly, I had to stand up and walk around the room when I realized that this was the Brady evidence, that this is what they're actually working with, because

0:14:37 Thomas: Yeah. Yikes. Yeah. Is that what did? Because I remember there's also the absolutely terrible DNA, whatever. So it wasn't, was it?

0:14:59 Matt: Yes. Yeah, there's a reason. That's not mentioned, for a good reason.

0:15:03 Thomas: Sorry. Where are we now? I've lost it. Is this in the original getting rid of the conviction or whatever? Whatever.

0:15:08 Matt: Yeah. We're talking about the motion to vacate, which they didn't have. So they had done DNA. They mentioned the original motion to vaccate, which frankly isn't that great, that the DNA test was inconclusive. And that makes sense, because DNA was done completely differently back then. I don't even know how much they did at the time, but we can get a lot more out of samples now.

0:15:09 Thomas: Emotional vacay.

0:15:26 Matt: But that evidence was not being preserved in a way that it was going to be DNA tested necessarily. And the only thing they were able to get conclusive DNA out of at all, it sounded like, were her shoes, which is not the first place I'd look for a murderer's DNA.

0:15:18 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, so that was my memory of this. So, because what we first got was, man, how did this go? Because I remember there was something where they announced, like, if if we either find that it's not a match or that it is inconclusive, we are going to let him go, right? Wasn't it something like that?

0:15:52 Matt: The court has some things to say about that in a footnote. They have some pretty salty footnotes all the way through this. But yeah, She said that she intended to certify, find that he was innocent unless his DNA was found on the items, right? So

0:15:56 Thomas: God, I bet. Yes. Yeah and And so that was what drove me nuts. I went, I, telling you, Matt, I went through so much trying to find what fucking pair of shoes this was. And I'll talk about someday because it's actually not, maybe it'll be clear now, like maybe they've released more, but back at the time when this first came out, it wasn't clear because there was a pair of shoes. I don't know whose it was. She had two pairs of shoes because she had like a, I donno, she had some for, I have fucking blanking on it, but I don't know, a practice or something. She had some, whatever, in her car, she Had another pair of shoes. It didn't tell me which pair of shoes there were. It was impossible to figure out. And in the end, the exonerating evidence for Adnan was his DNA wasn't on a pair of shoes.

0:16:02 Matt: Yeah, But

0:16:38 Thomas: Was just imagine for any other case, any other case, if you had a suspect and they're like, well, his DNA was not on these shoes that may have just been in, by the way, in the back of the car that she'd taken off to change for the next thing she was doing. His DNA wasn'T on those shoes. Well, free to go completely.

0:16:38 Matt: I Can't call that exonerating.

0:16:56 Thomas: Completely, there's no way a murderer's DNA could not be on shoes that are in the car that might not even been the ones she was wearing, by the way.

0:17:03 Matt: It's It's insulting to the idea of exoneration, frankly. Uh, And as somebody, I mean, a part of my career, I have worked with no number of people who have been actually wrongfully convicted, and it is, it's really a kind of a nightmare for everybody involved to deal with someone who's wrongfully convicted, because, you know, for sure they're not supposed to be there. And I work obviously very hard in all of my cases, but there's something, there's an extra push when somebody is just begging you to do something because they're sitting there for no reason. Exoneration in my mind is we tested this and there's someone else's DNA on here that we can match to the scene that we could have been there.

It's not that there's just potentially maybe some other DNA, there might be some other suspects. One of the nutty things about this motion that they mention that there are a couple of suspects, suspects, but they haven't done anything about it. They're allegedly in the middle of investigating, but they filed this motion while they're in the middle of an investigation, whether it may or may not be subsects. I mean, it's just, and what they mentioned about the suspects is certainly not very compelling. And it really makes you think they don't care about the finality of this at all. But just to get back to the history very quickly. So they're reviewing this two months before the primary. She's under indictment at the

0:17:05 Thomas: Really is, right?

0:17:20 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.

0:18:06 Matt: Time because she's committed a number of, or allegedly committed, excuse me, a number of covet related, uh, financial crimes. And so she's coincidentally or not digging into the most famous murder in Maryland two months before her primary. She loses that primary in July of 2022, and the motion to vacate is filed in September 14th of 2022. So this is from of months after she loses her primary. My theory on this, just for what it's worth, is that you've got somebody who's under indictment who's on their way out, basically in disgrace, grace, and just as kind of a last blaze of glory, this is her opportunity to reopen the podcast murder, the one that everybody's heard of.

0:18:39 Matt: And I mean, I think it really is that cynical. I'm sorry to have to say that, and I'm sure Twitter's not going to be happy with me, but I really think that's my read on it, because the way this was done, and let's get into the actual day-to-day and how this happened in September, because I've never heard of anything like this. I do a lot of post -conviction work. And post - conviction work is slow, it's methodical, it takes a long time. Just getting a hearing on a post - conviction motion can take months. And And it's something that everybody involved takes very seriously, because you're talking maybe potentially about overturning a jury verdict, something that a jury worked very hard after hearing a lot of evidence. And sometimes jury verdicts are wrong.

I'm not saying this, I've certainly seen it. You have to be able to come correct and prove that if you're going to step up and do that. So, so that makes this all the stranger when you have the prosecution looking to overturn a jury verdict, and they make this decision on, I believe, the 12th, yes, on the 12 th of September 2022. Now, they do call Young Lee, I'm going to mention a few times, that's hayley him and Lee's brother, and he's the representative of the family at this point. And Becky Feldman calls him and says, look, we're going to file this motion to vacate, here's a little bit of what's in it, calls again the next day, reviews it a little little bit more. He says later he doesn't really understand what this is about, but

0:18:39 Thomas: Yeah, yes. Mm-hmm, mm.

0:19:52 Matt: This is on the 12th of September. She goes in and files it two days later, on the 14th of September, a motion to vacate in a murder case after giving the victim just that much notice. We're up to, I believe, Wednesday now. That was a Monday. Then on Friday, she goes in for a lobby conference, which is an off -the -record in -chambers meeting with the judge where we don't know what happened, lets him know after that, and this is where it really gets wild, after this meeting on a Friday day with the judge, they schedule a hearing on this motion for them that Monday, the next business day. So we're talking essentially about a week between the time that the victim was found out, victim's representative.

0:20:26 Thomas: Matt, let me tell you from recent experience, legal system usually takes a really fucking long time to do anything. Thing.

0:20:30 Matt: Yeah. Yeah, you'd know. You would know. Imagine, I mean, this is a murder conviction. And this is the kind of thing, okay, again, Again, if they actually had come up with the DNA of a known serial killer on those shoes, then I'd understand that. That makes sense.

0:20:43 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, totally. That had no explanation for how it was there at all. Yeah a hundred percent. That'd be awesome. I'd be like this is you're a hero.

0:20:50 Matt: Right. It through.

0:20:53 Thomas: Yeah and

0:20:53 Matt: And that, you push, you get the Monday hearing, you get it done as soon as possible. But when all you have is this weak tea.

0:21:00 Thomas: Let's be real, that wouldn't happen. Like in your average case, if it weren't Adnan, you'd have somebody you to rights who definitely did it, who wasn't in jail, and then you know Scalia would tell you, like, yeah, it doesn't matter. Who cares? That's what would really happen if this weren't a famous podcast case. Yeah.

0:21:02 Matt: No. Right. Yeah. Right. But it's power of the podcast. Absolutely. Absolutely. So again, imagine being in the situation where your sister has been strangled to death. That is how she died. It's a terrible thing in this very brutal personal way. You've been living with it the last 23 years, basically believing that the right guy's in prison, right? And then you get a call out of nowhere from this prosecutor who's been looking into this, who says, "I'm going to file a motion in a couple of days here. Just want to let you know that we're going to be completely vacating everything that you thought was true," and he's probably going to get it out. Oh, sure, yeah, the

0:21:44 Thomas: God. Well, that's stating it very lightly, Matt. Imagine having to live through this podcast phenomenon where every person in the world thinks somehow the murderer didn't do it, and then the one thing maybe you could hang on to was like, well, at least the justice system fucking for once got it right. Nope, now that's been taken away.

0:21:58 Matt: Jury got it. Yeah, no, I, I've actually, I've tried to think about what that would be like, to have everybody in the world know about your sister's murder and about the level of detail

0:22:03 Thomas: It's it's impossible. Yeah. I'll be honest, that's, that's why I get so mad about it. Like, I get so upset. I know it's just one case, you, as you say, we all get obsessed with it, but it bothers me so much that so many people are convinced of something that isn't true. And imagine having to live through that as a, as the victim's family, like, it, that is just mind, that is truly, you know, Twilight Zone, Black Mirror, ask crap like, to just have to try to live with that. Yeah.

0:22:07 Matt: No, And it's, it's something that I really hope listeners are thinking about as they're thinking about this, because we got to get outside of the puzzle box mentality, and I, the true crime industry has really done terrible things for victims. Um, is not a game, and I will say the prosecutors here were treating it like a game, because they file this motion and then they ask for a hearing that Monday, after, after having this conference with the judge on Friday. This is what you're saying here is, essentially, we know what the outcome is going to be, there's no reason to have a real hearing. And remember that both parties agree, this is unusual, that both the prosecution and the defense agreed that the judgment should be vacated, that he should be released, but that's not a guarantee. The statute that they're working under here just says that the judge may, uh, the conviction upon motion. We have to hear something. We have to see that there's a reason to. I mean, there's always a chance that both parties have lost their minds, which did kind of happen here, I think.

0:23:13 Matt: So you have to have a judge actually sign off on this. So would expect at that point that maybe, I don't know, for example, you might include a copy of the note. That would be something you might want to show the judge. They didn't do that.

0:23:12 Thomas: Apparently, yeah, well, again, and this is blowing my mind again, it's just based on this note, because you, they, they talked about the DNA, but as far as we're concerned, paperwork, legal appeal, whatever wise, it's just on the basis of this note and it being a Brady violation.

0:23:36 Matt: Yeah, they also rehash a lot of other stuff that's already been covered in his prior appeals that they think is still relevant, and basis of the motion is actually kind of fuzzy. It's hard to tell because they have the right to bring it under this statute. And I should mention, this statute was actually passed because Maryland law enforcement was so corrupt that there's a bunch of really bad convictions. And so this is a very special statute that was passed in part to allow the prosecution to bring these motions for this purpose. So I'm very sympathetic to that. That's something that's important. -301.1 in Maryland allows the court to may vacate the judgment on grounds of one, newly discovered evidence, which would have made a difference, or two, the state's attorney has received new information, which calls into question the justice of the conviction. Neither of these things are really that, because this is not newly discovered evidence. This is something that they had since January 2000, and there's no real clear here for Brady violation.

It's a little complicated, but it's not really clear, even though they're relying on the second prong here, kind of shoehorning this all in. So this is in conflict with the Victim's Notice Statute, which requires that When this kind of motion goes to a hearing, that before that hearing, the victim or victim's representative shall be notified that they have a right to attend, etc., etc. And notably, in 2013, they amended that statute to say that if the victims aren't properly notified, that there there should be a remedy. It doesn't

0:23:41 Thomas: Sure. Right. Hmm.

0:24:51 Matt: Say what that remedy is, and we'll get to that, but there should be some way to fix it because we can't just have a right without a remedy, it's pretty classic legal stuff. So the reason I mention all of this is because, again, have this man in California who wants to attend a hearing in Maryland, and he tells the prosecutor he wants to attend, and she lets him know that he can attend by Zoom, which is, this is, it gets really interesting, this an issue I've been dealing with a lot in my practice about when is somebody actually present? And how much does Zoom count for presence? Rather than travel from California last minute, which is very hard to do, as you would know, to come from California, Baltimore, he chooses to appear by Zoom because that's all he can do.

0:24:52 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

0:25:24 Matt: And it's incredibly last minute. He's actually at work when the hearing is going on. He rushes home, and he has 30 minutes basically to put together something to say. He hasn't had time to think about it. And I want to read in just a bit of what he does say, because I thought it was pretty touching, and I think it's here. This is from Young Lee. Your And every day when I think it's over, when I look and think it over, or it's ended, it's over, it always comes back. And it's not just me. It's killing me and my mother. It is really tough just to go through this again and again and again. I believe in the justice system, the court, the state. I believe they did a fine job of prosecuting Mr. Syed. And I believe the judge did make the right decision.

But just going through it again, it is living a nightmare over and and over again. It's tough. And I'm not. Like I said before, I trust the court system. I trust the justice system. It was kind of blindsided. I always thought the state was on my side, you know. But I just don't know where I hear there's a motion to vacate judgment. I thought honestly, I felt honestly betrayed. I keep thinking to myself, why is the state doing this?

And I am not against an investigation or anything of that sort that Ms. Feldman is doing. I am not against it at all. The motion to vaccate judgment, it's really tough for me to swallow, especially because I am NOT an expert in legal matters or law or anything like that. But I ask you just to make the right decision that you see this motion.

I feel it's unfair, especially for my family, just to live through it all and knowing that there's somebody out there just free of killing my sister. It's tough. He goes on just a little more, but I really wanted to make sure to get those words in there because that's what he was able to come up with on very short notice.

0:25:27 Thomas: Wow. Holy crap.

0:26:45 Thomas: Yeah.

0:26:45 Matt: And I think that's very affecting. You can imagine, you know, the rawness of that, because he's just trying to do his best having just found out this is going to happen. And this whole case really shows why notice is so important for these things, because he actually did have time to get his own lawyer who's representing him. The first thing his lawyer did at this hearing on this Monday the 19th, ask for seven days. That's all. Just a seven -day continuance so this man can actually fly out and attend because they're all appearing in person. He's making the point my client should be able to appear in person too.

And will tell you that if they had just granted those seven days, I think we wouldn't be talking about this. I think this would have actually worked out for Adnan. But they had to rush it because they were on a schedule and they had a press conference planned that day, and they weren't about to cancel their press conference, and they weren'T about to cancel their plans. I mean, it really is that craven. You can tell from the opinion it's that obvious. They make a real point of saying that it's very unusual that he would just be released immediately to his press conference. They put on a GPS bracelet and didn't even set it up because they're in such a hurry. They just let him out. Never happens.

0:27:04 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Holy shit.

0:27:41 Thomas: And this, and this is the recent this is a judge saying, this isn't somebody like with an ax to grind or something. This is like just the appeals court being like, what the fuck?

0:27:48 Matt: Yeah. Just straight up, this, it's clearly unusual. Then they don't really even comment on it, they just mention it. And this is an 85-page decision from the, from the appeals court, because they know how much attention this case is getting, and They are really supposed to be looking at one question, which is, was it appropriate for the trial judge not to continue, knew the case, and just to allow this very quick Zoom appearance, is that enough participation? That was the only thing they're supposed to be reviewing. But in this 85-page decision, they're essentially going through and explaining exactly why they think Adnan said is guilty, and they're going through it and explaining exactly what they want to happen, which I'll talk about.

0:28:01 Thomas: Yeah.

0:28:23 Thomas: It's almost like they're like, look, we were on vacation in Scotland, and this shit happens, and we couldn't, we just couldn't put it down. I know we're not supposed to be thinking about this right now. Yeah, it's

0:28:28 Matt: Yeah, they got the same bug you did. It just got in their heads.

0:28:32 Thomas: It's Fucking makes you insane. You really, okay.

0:28:36 Matt: Yeah, uh, but one very notable thing from that hearing was that the court ruled, specifically, just get your head around this, there's no requirement that the notice to the victim's representative be reasonable, so it can Just be notice. You could give them like five minutes notice, apparently, which would be completely unreasonable, and So because it just says notice in the statute, they're like, well, whatever, he was given notice, he can appear, and it's 2023, 2022, he, he can appear by Zoom, right? And that's enough. That is an open question, again, when everybody else isn't appearing by Zoom. They wrap up this thing, they have their press conference, and then there is an interesting little war between the Attorney General's office and the State's Attorney's office, because the State Attorney has just rushed this thing through, they are essentially saying that the Attorney General's office and the prosecutor who is now there, who was working at the State Attorney's office before, withheld this evidence. So the Attorney General makes a very unusual statement against the State Attorney. Among

0:28:48 Thomas: What? Wow, wow.

0:29:28 Thomas: Wow.

0:29:28 Matt: Other serious, serious problems with the motion to vacate, the allegations relating to Brady violations are incorrect, neither the State's Attorney Mosby nor anyone from our office bothered to consult with either the assistant State's attorney who prosecuted the case or anyone in my office regarding these alleged violations, the file in this case was made available on several occasions to the defense. So that's Quite a statement, to say that your fellow government, you know, public servant did not bother to consult you, that's just putting it all out in the open, um and And you never asked even the guy who wrote it what it meant, which is pretty important in this case, because it's extremely ambiguous. You'd think you'd want to know what he was working with. Responded, I think Attorney General Brian Frosch needs to speak with his office willful decision to sit on exculpatory evidence for the last seven years. This is just heating up, basically.

0:29:54 Thomas: So They're saying, we did, we did provide this, there is no Brady violation because this note was, was available. Yeah. Okay. Sure.

0:30:17 Matt: And She has to defend this. But now this is a real, why are you hitting yourself, moment here. Inability to uphold this fundamental obligation denied Mr. Syed his right to a fair trial, and now forces a family to relive an unimaginable nightmare because of his unconscionable misdeeds. It's quite a statement. His unconsionable misdeed is of having a file, basically. Going to get weirder, because we've just had a fly -by -night hearing, essentially, after a quick off -the -record meeting. We've had this Monday hearing, absolute last notice, and is a very strange procedural posture, because the case has been vacated, and that means it's back on the trial docket, which means they have 30 days to figure out if they're going to file an appeal, uh, or excuse me, if they're going to file a nullpros, which was Canceling the case, basically just killing it, or if they're actually going to go through with another trial, which

0:30:17 Thomas: Okay. Right. Or

0:31:05 Matt: Is going to be very hard to do 23 years later, but possible, so

0:31:07 Thomas: You know, if they're gonna go after one, one of the many other, uh That Definitely, yeah.

0:31:10 Matt: The real Killers. Yeah. Yeah. So this is a really strange thing. I mean, it's unusual. So many of these things have just never really happened before, and just a combination of circumstances.

0:31:12 Thomas: Yeah. Well. Right away, forget everything else, it's, it's a hell of a decision, just no matter what, to be like, all right, are we gonna try to re-prosecute someone from a decades old thing, like, I don't Know, our witness is still alive, are they still gonna talk to us, are this, you know, could That even be A A Real trial is that, you know, like forget that it's Adnan, say it's anybody else, like I don't know how well you could conduct a trial with those constraints. Mm.

0:31:29 Matt: Sure, it is really hard to do.

0:31:44 Matt: I do a lot of post -conviction work to try to dispose of cases from the late 90s, early 2000s, around this era, and they are much more of an uphill battle because the court knows that if they reopen this case, they are killing it. That is the end of the case. He is going to be essentially acquitted. That is what is going to happen. Young Lee appeals the decision. Now, this is a very strange thing if you think about the standing here, because he's not a party to the case. He's a victim's representative. But the statute allows this, allows the victim to step in and have standing in certain cases if the victim's rights have been trampled on. So when a right secured to the victim, I should say, is denied. So he files along with the appeal, he files a stay request, essentially saying, I want you to make sure that you don't let her null -prost this in the meantime, because But a nullpros, nullpros, he essentially is just dropping the case. That's the colloquial for that.

0:31:48 Thomas: -hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

0:32:27 Thomas: And Then it's like, then it is done, right? Is that like final, final, can't

0:32:31 Matt: Would be. Well, that's an open question here, too. I'll get to that.

0:32:31 Thomas: Oh. Okay. Yeah. That's True, who the hell knows with this, yeah.

0:32:36 Matt: It should be, but this is, again, we're just off the rails into another territory here. So he's requesting a stay because he suspects that she's going to nullprost the case, and that would effectively kill his appeal. That's on the 29th of September. The 5th of December, he reiterates this to the appeals court, and he says, seriously, I really want this to stay, because I think she's about to null -pros it, because they've been talking about this DNA. She essentially made this statement about how if we don't find his DNA on these shoes or anything else we're testing, then we're going to actually null -pros it.

0:32:37 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:33:01 Thomas: It's What?

0:33:06 Matt: No, it gets even crazier, because on, was on the 5th. On the 7th, they get the DNA test back, and on the 11th, she files this null -pros. Now, the Attorney General's office filed a brief in this case, which, which is pretty angry. It's hard, no other way to put it. It's pretty out there. They really are making their points and they want to be heard.

And they're making this in response to a motion to remove the Attorney General's office from the case, because they expressed some opinions about this, some of the stuff I read you before. And I just want to read you from this brief, because this is something really to consider. Just one more way the victim was not heard here. It is unclear how early in the morning Ms. Mosby called Mr. Lee's attorney, but at most, Mr. Mosby gave counsel only an hour or two to notify his client the charges against the man whom he believed strangled his sister were going to be dismissed. Given that Mr. Lee lives in California, Mr. Lee's attorney would have had to deliver this news at six in the morning. That same press conference, when asked about the victim's appeal, Ms. Mosby said, I've utilized my power and discretion to dismiss the case. There is no more appeal. It's moot.

When told the victim, his family learned of the dismissal in the media and pressed about her office's treatment of the Lee family, she attacked his attorney. I think it's unfortunate, you know, that you have certain attorneys that try to exploit families. So I think that's what's happening in this case.

0:34:16 Matt: Police.

0:34:16 Thomas: A Fucking wow, yeah.

0:34:17 Matt: It's bad. It gets worse. Then she said, why would I wait just so that I could appease someone who doesn't appear to be, and I'm not talking about the family, I'm talking about the attorney, doesn't appears to be appeased. Yeah, that's really bad. That's condescending. It's saying essentially that, what's wrong with you? Why can't you just accept this? And I've never been in this situation. I hope I never am. I don't know how I would respond if I had a loved one who was killed. I do not know what it would do to me. But you can tell all these people are in pain and that they want answers and they want finality on it.

This is not the right way to respond to them, apart from anything else, just to this very condescending kind of like, well, I guess some people just never be happy. Basically what She's saying, she's filed this null pros and the appeals court has to decide whether or not her basically killing the case in the middle of their appeal should moot it, should keep the case from going forward on appeal. And they find that it shouldn't. And they find that because they say that this entire motion to vacate, the way it was handled, was so bad that it was void ad inicio, essentially, right? It was void from the beginning.

0:34:44 Thomas: Yeah.

0:34:54 Thomas: That

0:35:16 Matt: So, if you...

0:35:16 Thomas: My Favorite Harry Potter Law crossover. Lord have an issue, yeah.

0:35:17 Matt: Totally. It really does sound like one. And so, because of that, that's why there's no double jeopardy, because they're saying if the original decision was wrong, then the null pros was wrong. Then, essentially this this conviction should have stood from the beginning, and that's why they reinstated

0:35:22 Thomas: Yeah.

0:35:35 Thomas: We're just going to like pretend nothing happened because this was so fucking stupid. Is that okay?

0:35:36 Matt: It. Yeah, basically, that's the one. Remember, the nullpros is not an acquittal. I want to make that point. A nullpros is a nullpros. It's just saying, for whatever reason, we can't go forward on this case.

0:35:44 Thomas: Right, right, right. Yeah. Yeah, we don't think we could do it. That doesn't mean someone mean someone's not guilty. How would you prove, you know, decades later, it's going to be really hard. Is that even worthwhile? Also, again, considering he has served a lot of time, is that something that's really in anyone's interest? So So that's far from exoneration.

0:36:04 Matt: And I've seen the word exonerated used a lot here, and it's giving me that same kind of feeling you've been talking about, Because to me, exoneration has a very, very specific meaning, and it's not this, so

0:36:08 Thomas: Yeah. Mean it's not that someone's DNA wasn't on a pair of shoes? That's not exonération? Because we all know if you murder someone, it's 100% chance that your DNA is on every pair of shoes that's there. Like the ones that she's wearing, the ones they're in the car. And if you don't find it, you've logically proven there's no way.

0:36:17 Matt: Basically, Yeah, Some Kind Of Spitting serial killer, I guess. He just spits On everything. I don't know, but um, yeah, now there's more in the major motion vacate as well. I'm really glossing over, but effectively, and Sarah Candidate said as much in her follow-up episode that she did, uh, only really new thing that's presented in this entire motion is that one statement, which it turns out is probably inculpatory, so Yeah. Nullpros entered under the circumstances of this case violated Mr. Lee's right to be treated with dignity and respect. That's quite a finding from the court. It gives the state a mechanism to insulate a defective proceeding from appellate review. So they're saying essentially, don't recognize the nullpros, not having it. Then the question turns to the actual thing before the court, which is whether it was sufficient to allow him to appear by Zoom.

And they said essentially that they can't require somebody to appear remotely if everybody else gets to appear in person, that that's not fair. Now, there's not a lot of guidance to go on because it's a reasonably new statute, and the statute itself just says the word notice, but is what the court did here, and what indisputably was or should have been an evidentiary hearing. That should have ben is in parentheses, and that is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

That is what the court did here and what indisputably was or should have been an evidentiary hearing. I just want to read that again. So that is some serious shade, saying what should, should

0:36:33 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yikes. Yeah.

0:37:40 Matt: Have been. And again, I cannot stress again how unusual this is. In a motion to vacate, even if it's being brought by the state, no evidence was presented. They just summarized what they'd seen, and they didn't put anybody in the stand. They didn't introduce any documents on the record. They didn't have any big bombshell that was actually revealed. They just said, "We don't want this to happen anymore." And that's not enough. So they get this 85-page decision back from the appeals court because of that. And I have to say, I agree with it after reading it carefully. Uh, did not expect the roller coaster ride I was on when I started this decision, but there's really a lot going on, no?

0:37:40 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:38:14 Thomas: What's weird to me is it sounds like, letter of the law, to me or I would have thought that there's just nothing anyone could do here. Because, like, you've got the people who apparently are vested with this power who are just like, yeah, we're just letting them out. And then I don't, but I'm kind of confused as to how this could even happen because, yes, you have to provide notice, but they technically did and et cetera, et cetera. I was really expecting this just to be a technicality that would be, you in a second and it would all go back to him adding on being free. But it's sounding from what you're saying that they do. Is there some legal reason they have the power to like, well, we're going to take a look at how stupid this all was while we're here. Is that some is you know what I mean? Like, OK, that's yeah, that'S kind of what I was thinking.

0:38:57 Matt: It's dicta. It's basically 83 pages of this is dicta, uh, you know, essentially, you know, It's, which, you know, as you know, is just kind of commentary. It's just kind of here's some things that we noticed out of all of this, but they're sending an extremely clear message to the lower court, and they're saying essentially, if you don't do a proper hearing, if, you know, if this comes back in front of us, we expect that we're going to have seen that you're going to do something that looks like the law, and not just this kind of fly-by-night thing you were doing.

0:39:06 Thomas: Yeah. OK.

0:39:23 Matt: And so the what's next part of this is a lot more interesting than I thought it was going To be. So I'm going to read you the actual order, the thing that they're telling the lower court to do. "Therefore, we vacate the circuit court's order vacating Mr. Saez's conviction and sentence, which results in the reinstatement of the original convictions and sentence. Remand for a new, legally compliant, transparent hearing on the motion to vacate, where Mr. Lee is given notice of the hearing sufficient to allow him to attend in person, evidence supporting the motion to vacate is presented, and the court states its reasons in support of its decision," which they also didn't do, so just a complete do -over now why does that matter? Because essentially they could present the same motion well

0:39:27 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Right. Well,

0:40:02 Matt: It's not the same, she's gone it's the same people so she is gone and Becky Feldman, the prosecutor who's really spearheading this, is also gone because Ivan Bates has taken over and he has experience as both a defense attorney attorney, and a prosecutor. He seems somewhat more moderate. And he has said that he would not appeal it if the motion to vacate were granted again. But that's all he said.

0:40:02 Thomas: Is Mosby gone though, she's gone Okay.

0:40:22 Thomas: Interesting.

0:40:23 Matt: So he doesn't have any obligation whatsoever to bring that same motion. And in fact, I don't think he will. I don't think he can after this order.

0:40:24 Thomas: Well, Yeah, because you'd have to put your name to it, right? I mean, that would be you being like, "All right, I'm gonna do the same stupid thing they did for some reason." Wow.

0:40:31 Matt: Right. And now it's all going to be out in the open. And this note, if that's what you're willing to rely on, yeah, no. So So I think

0:40:38 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Attention on it, yeah. Oh, shit. Yeah. I see what you mean, wow.

0:40:45 Matt: That Adnan Syed might really be facing an actual reconviction, like straight up. I think this might be final. Because they didn't give the guy seven days to show up in court, all and they had to do was listen. Just listen to the guy when he said, I'd like to be heard. I'd love to hear from you. I'd really like to have a chance to actually sit down and think about this before you plunge on, right?

0:40:49 Thomas: That's crazy, right, and to, I think I want make something clear, because, because it's not the case that, like, let's say we thought Adnan was innocent. It's not the case that this means, like, oh, well, because of this technicality, that means the innocent person will have to rot in prison forever. If he was really innocent, and there was good evidence to do this, then you would expect the person who replaced Mosby, and everybody you just talked about, would just do it again, right? And then they would be like, "Okay, we'll do it correctly, we'll give the notice, we will provide the actual evidence," because it is an evidentiary hearing, And then it'll be fine, right?

0:41:37 Thomas: I just want to make very clear that people listening don't think, like, "Oh, so he really is innocent, but he's only going to stay... you know, the conviction only stand because of some minor technicality." It's like, no, it's... the in broad strokes, let me know if I have this right: Mosby and whoever did a really stupid, shitty thing, and then there was a bit of a grounds to appeal it based on this notice thing, and that's sort of like the... the... don't want to say "excuse," but like, that... that's like the grounds on which to say, "Hey, you need to go redo this," essentially, and do it right. But the real reason that he might stay convicted is "you didn't do it," because it's bullshit, like, if you had a thing to do correctly, you could just... they could just redo it. Okay.

0:41:33 Matt: Sure. You would think, but that would require evidence.

0:42:15 Matt: I have to think if this were DNA evidence that were absolutely getting us to another suspect, this might have gone a little differently.

0:42:20 Thomas: Yeah. Well, they just redo it.

0:42:22 Matt: They could have a flash hearing. It could be very quick and easy. But I think that everybody involved has to be very concerned at this point that the doesn't want to look stupid and the defense very much wants this thing to be upheld. Already been reversed. It's complicated because, again, we have to listen to victims, but we have to make sure that they don't interfere with the process either. And that the due process is complete with everybody.

And I do want to give the counterpoint, which is in the amicus brief filed by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. And I think they make a very good point, and it's something I've been thinking about as well. I'll start with, this is actually in the appeal from Syed's lawyer. Victims do not prosecute charges. They do not decide which witnesses to call. They do NOT cross -examine those witnesses.

Giving Appellant what he wants will not just result in the re -imprisonment of Syed for a crime he did not commit. It, it will wreak havoc on our criminal justice system. So that's from the defense side, saying essentially that if every victim was allowed to participate

0:42:23 Thomas: Sure. Hmm.

0:43:14 Matt: To this degree, then we'd have a giant wrench in everything. But I find this to be a little more compelling from the NACDL. "Vacator, which is what we call it when you vacate a case, is a limited proceeding where a victim's allocution has no bearing on the key issue of whether newly discovered evidence calls into question the integrity of the conviction. By contrast, sentencing is a holistic inquiry. The victim's right to be heard has long been recognized as an important part of that inquiry." So essentially saying that there's a time and a place for victims to be hurt, and it's not necessarily at a motion to vacate hearing. And I have to agree with that, because a motion to vacay is being brought on legal or factual grounds that don't have anything to do with the victim usually.

0:43:16 Thomas: Sure, yeah. Right?

0:43:50 Matt: It's not really the time to hear from their opinion, and I have agree with it. But at the same time, he was asking to be heard, and the court actually did find against him to this degree, and said you don't actually have a right to be heard. You have a right to being there. But the judge in this case was kind enough, and I think appropriately, allowed you to be heard for a few minutes to make sure that your position was on the record. But that's not a strict legal requirement. It's just that you were denied your chance to be there in person. So I do have to agree that there is a time and place for victims to be hurt, and that is at sentencing for the most part.

0:43:53 Thomas: Yeah.

0:44:11 Thomas: Interesting.

0:44:21 Thomas: Mm -hmm.

0:44:22 Matt: Any other time that there's a victim impact, it's going to be available. But I don't know. This is such a mess. There's no no other way to say it and I I can't disagree with this outcome at all when you look at the whole picture, and I wouldn't have disagreed if they'd just given him the juvenile protection act reduction if they just allowed him, not you know, as we talked about up front, but this- this really goes to something I've been thinking about a lot with progressive prosecutors, because of course there's been this movement for the last few years to get people who are defense-minded into the prosecution, and I don't- I'm not opposed to that as a defense-oriented person myself.

It was very strange to have somebody like Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, for example, who is a lifetime defense attorney and comes at it from that. All the judges in Philadelphia hate Larry Krasner because he's a lifetime defense attorney, and now he's treating the prosecution kind of from that perspective, right? He's doing it from a place of justice, from a place of defendants' rights, and I think that's appropriate. I don't have a problem with it. That attitude and that way of doing things in this case, I think, is actually what botched it. Was coming at it from that side and

0:44:27 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, it really is. Yeah yeah.

0:44:39 Thomas: Mm hmm. Of course.

0:45:21 Thomas: Hmm yeah.

0:45:22 Matt: These people. Now, Marilyn Mosby was a career prosecutor, that's all she'd ever done. But Becky Feldman, who led this, uh, was coming from the defense side as well. And you know, there's that famous quote from Audre Lorde, I want to use this with caution, um, you know, but it gets misused me a lot, I don't want to misuse it myself, but you know, of course she talked about how the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house, and I think that's something to consider when you're talking about progressive prosecutors, because I've always been very skeptical of the progressive prosecutor movement.

I think that what we need is a completely new job that we can call a prosecutor, but trying to fit these people, trying to shoehorn them into the existing job, which in many ways is unjust and people to do things that maybe they shouldn't have to.

I'm not sure how else to phrase this, and I'm still sort of thinking through this take, but there is something to be said here for the fact that this could have been done right if if they had actually taken the time, and if they'd approached it as prosecutors. Don't know. I'm probably going to get roasted for several different things I've said here, but

0:46:18 Matt: That's where I'm coming from.

0:46:18 Thomas: Well so many clear cases of bullshit and wrongful convictions and racism and everything in the system. And then you're left with, okay, but what do we do that still preserves, if not Adnan, just set that all aside because it's such a controversy, but just preserves like, okay, we've got an actual rape. Donald Trump. We've got someone who's an actual sexual assaulting people.

0:46:41 Matt: Sure.

0:46:41 Thomas: Like, you know, it's like, we still need to preserve the system that handles that somehow. And, you know, there's a lot of different answers to it. Justice and all that. I read a book on this. And one thing that really I affected me, that, that stuck with me about it, was when they had some sort of these trial runs of like restorative justice or whatever, and there was one, uh, convicted criminal involved in the process who said that, like, having to actually work with the victim's family or talk to them in depth was so much harder than any day of like prison that they actually, uh, went through. And it was just- it was really fascinating to me because it's like, yeah, well, that makes sense. You know, like it's the way that we offload these things is kind of weird. Like the justice is so far away from, you more like personal approach that you might've had way, way, away back in the day.

But then again, obviously there's also so many downsides to that- gets out of hand when victims are driving it too much, when it's too victim oriented, then you get- you could get really harsh punishments, you could get really, you stirring up, you kinds of stuff. So it's like, I don't know where that balance is, but within the- all I'll say is, working within the system we are in, there is no reason that this conviction should have been overturned. That's all I say. I don't

0:47:13 Matt: Sure? Sure. Yeah,

0:47:54 Thomas: T know if you want, if you wanna overturn it, you for some other reasons, extra judicial reason, I might be in favor of that just because he served so much time. I get it. But the system as it stands, I mean, this was just, this This was somebody doing a really cynical political ploy, right? I mean, this is just crazy.

0:48:10 Matt: I can't see it another way, and I wish I could. I want to. I badly do, but It really tried to approach this objectively as I can. Just- just so much going on with progressive prosecutors, with victims' rights versus defendants' rights, with- you- you should be giving when you're about to completely undo a case that a- a jury did, and also just the effect of a podcast, the effect of one piece of extremely popular media on one murder case, because I don't think any of this would have happened without it.

0:48:36 Thomas: Oh, God, no. Yeah.

0:48:37 Matt: Wouldn't be talking about it.

0:48:38 Thomas: Yeah, I don't know. But then what do you feel about that? Again, this separate case, like think about in general, because again, you know better than I, like how many instances of real miscarriages of justice there are that never get any sort of real hearing. You think there just should be way more podcasts? I never know how to feel when someone's like, well, without the podcast, they never would have done it. And it's like yeah, no, that's true. But what do we do? Should we make more podcasts or how do we overhaul this so that you don't need? A podcast in order to draw this kind of attention.

0:49:11 Matt: Would be great if we could do these in a way that doesn't cook people's brains. I would really like that because, yeah, no, I don't think it is because you Look at Reddit or any given forum on this stuff and it's just wild.

People come up with all of these nutty theories and and they feel like they're participating in the case same thing happened with the that Moscow, Idaho murder, that terrible thing with the kids in Moscow that you go online and people, oh man, there was a big one in our house, um, but people go online and they start talking about this like they know what's going on or they know these people or they have, you know, an alternate theory that involves some minor player that they saw in the documentary that they want to talk about, you know, I mean even the motion to vacate reference the the HBO a documentary, which I thought was, uh, uncomfortable, it's weird, uh, be that on point, but yeah, I don't know, I important to get light on these things, but I guess to me having already seen what happens when someone is actually wrongfully convicted, when someone is factually innocent has to go through the system, get convicted, due time, seeing what that does to somebody, I've watched it destroy lives, even a very very minor case, and in fact it's much more likely in a minor case when nobody cares, and you know, district court you get six, six months in jail, nobody cares, but that could absolutely destroy your life, your business, your reputation, everything else, and I've seen what that does and that's the kind of thing I think we need podcasts on, not necessarily somebody

0:49:16 Thomas: Not possible. I think I know this one.

0:49:45 Thomas: Right. Yeah. Yeah,

0:50:24 Matt: Where it's this questionable, um, that

0:50:24 Thomas: You know what? That's why they did season three of Serial, where they actually just sat in that courthouse and like talked to everybody. I loved that season. I thought that was the best season. I want to do that. I would do that, we should do that that should actually be the podcast, because one thing that disturbs me so much, just, and from that podcast, and very uncomfortable with just judges and like, they're just these, you know, they, oftentimes it seems like they're these egomaniacal fucking, they're going to be everybody's dad and like lecture everybody on it. And just every interaction in that season three of Serial with judges, it's just, it's so uncomfortable to me. I don't know what the alternative is, but there's a lot of things like that, that I think the average person like me just does not see because we haven't interacted with it, but we don't, we don't see how these judges are interacting with, you young black kids can of crimes and stuff. Like it's just, it's gross. Like there's so much of it that's gross day in, day out that I just think we have no exposure to.

0:50:34 Matt: Was great yeah you should that's a fun thing to do now I think all the time, I mean, I had a real awakening, um, in Lawrence District Court about 10 years ago, looking around, and Lawrence is a disadvantaged community in many ways. And I'm looking around the courtroom and I realize that everybody sitting behind the bar, everybody waiting for court is not white. And we've got a white judge, white prosecutors, white court officers, white attorneys on both sides, and white clerks, white probation officers, and all these people of color waiting to be judged. And that I agree. That was really true to life to me. That felt like hanging around a courthouse, which I do a lot. I'd love to hear more of that kind of media of just every day, here's how the law grinds people down. Here's what it does to people. Here is just a regular small -time case. Because the murder cases are sexy and interesting, but the stuff that really ruins people's lives can often be at the smallest scale.

0:51:37 Thomas: Yeah.

0:52:04 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Um, do you want to offer any kind of predictions or, or are there, is there a timeline line, at least people can be keeping an eye out for? When will we know, you know, if you're predicting that maybe this conviction will just kind of stand, when will we know that?

0:52:18 Matt: It's going to be a while, because he's certainly going to appeal. So he can appeal this to the Supreme Court of Maryland, which I'm sure he will. I don't know why he wouldn't. And assuming that they agree with this court, it, which I have to think they would, it'll be sent back for the full hearing that's been demanded, and that will be news when that happens, because who knows what happens at that point. I really don't even want to predict what's going to happen there. We do know is it will be a full hearing, and it'll been everything that it wasn't before. So that's at least something to look forward to.

0:52:20 Thomas: Okay. Yeah. Yeah, right. But they, yeah. But is there a chance so that you talked about this, this new guy that's in there that's going to be possibly making that decision? I he could just still do it, right? But just come up with some other grounds or maybe, you You know, who knows if there's like the popular kind of outcry about this. Maybe he would, I don't know, make a similar decision or could he could he do it based on reasoning of like, all right, it's been he's this guy's been in prison long enough. Or is there specific like requirements that he has to fulfill in doing this this thing? Oh,

0:53:17 Matt: No, he has to, because right Right now, this is a conviction from a jury verdict, and you can't just null -cross that. You have to get it reopened first, which is what happened before. So he's got to come in with something that looks like a very thorough case at this point. It's what he's been demanded to do. So I don't see it with the evidence that's here. I don't see it with the sort of cloud of suspicion and everything else that's been put around by, you industry that sprung up around this case. Nothing has compelled me to think that the fundamental facts of this case don't still support a guilty finding. But he deserves a new trial, and that certainly would be the thing that I think would be most appropriate, but we'll see.

0:53:29 Thomas: OK. Oh, oh, wait, what? He would get a new trial.

0:53:54 Matt: Well, That's one option, that's one possibility, once it's vacated, well, this original trial was bad, it wasn't a good trial, uh, so, yeah, in

0:53:56 Thomas: So why do you say he deserves a new trail then? Right. Right. OK. Yeah, no, I agree with that. I just don't Know how you would even do it. I guess, like you said a moment ago, saying you're going to have to have a new trial is equivalent to saying, all right, I guess we're not doing this then, right? A lot of the time.

0:54:11 Matt: A small case, you know, a lot of the stuff I work on, because I don't do big criminal defense stuff, uh, the state's not going to bother, it'd just be too much work. But something like this, where they really, they want to maintain it, who knows. I mean, I mean, again, I'm not going to predict. I don't know the people involved. I don't know that much about the politics down there. But just seeing what we've got so far, all I know is they're going to have to put on a hearing if it gets to that.

0:54:13 Thomas: Yeah, right. Yeah. All right. And you're saying it could be a while because of the appeals and all that. Well, we'll keep an eye out. Thanks for the breakdown. Yeah. Wow. That is not what I expected at all. I really, I saw the headline. I was like, yeah, okay, well, I'm sure we'll just dot the T's and cross the I's or whatever the hell and it'll be done. But okay, we'll keep an eye on that, and someday I will release my 1800-part series on why it's so fucking obvious that Adnan did it.

0:54:33 Matt: Right. Me neither.

0:54:55 Matt: And in the meantime, I'll post this all in the show notes so you can get some links.

0:54:57 Thomas: All Right, thanks again, Matt, and thanks everybody for listening. Definitely support the show at patreon.com/seriouspod, and uh, I'm enjoying this, I, I think, uh, I think this, this format is weird and interesting, but it's like two shows a week, two different things. I love it. So thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.