It's been a while since NPR's Sarah Koenig updated the world about Adnan Syed on the hit podcast, Serial, but the convict's story is far from over.
Syed, who was convicted of murder in 2000 after his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, was found strangled and buried in a park in Baltimore, will have the chance to once again argue his innocence before a judge. According to Business Insider, a Maryland appeals court granted a new trial on Thursday to take place at a currently undetermined time.
"We are thrilled," Syed's lawyer, Justin Brown, said during a Periscope live stream on Thursday.
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Though he said he couldn't comment or "go into too much detail," he was able to offer some clarity for Syed's supporters.
"The short of it was we won on the alibi issue, and the other issue, the cell tower issue, was reversed," he explained. "At the circuit court, we had won the cell tower issue and lost the alibi issue, but it was essentially a flip-flop. The Court of Special Appeals reversed the circuit court on both issues, which it is what it is. We sort of had a feeling that this is how it would turn out and, indeed, it did. ... We're thrilled. It's been a really long wait. It's been hard, it's been stressful, obviously not just for us but for Adnan who's now been in prison for 19 years."
Brown reaffirmed his position that he believes Syed is "innocent" and said he's not going to stop fighting to get his client out of prison. He also shared that he spoke with Syed following the retrial announcement and relayed "his deep gratitude and thanks from the bottom of his heart for all those people who supported him this long."
— Justin Brown (@CJBrownLaw) March 29, 2018
Syed is currently serving a life sentence, despite a lower court's decision to toss aside his original conviction in 2016. For nearly two decades, Syed's legal team has fought for re-trial after re-trial in hopes of clearing their client's name, but it wasn't until Koenig started Serial in 2014 that people really started to pay attention.
According to official court documents, Syed was granted a re-trial after judges determined that his previous lawyer, Cristina Gutierrez (now deceased), had failed to interview a "potential alibi witness" and failed to "properly challenge the reliability of the cell tower location evidence." Still, a Baltimore judge denied Syed's request for bail in December 2016.
Since Serial hit the airwaves, others have taken interest in his story, including Discovery, which put out a special, Adnan Syed: Innocent or Guilty, and his friend, Rabia Chaudry, who penned the book, Adnan's Story: The Search for Truth and Justice After Serial.