Oral arguments getting underway shortly for Adnan Syed's hearing at MD Court of Appeals. His attys will ask for retrial because of the ineffective counsel they say he rec'd when he was on trial for allegedly killing HS gf Hae Min Lee in 1999.
Syed claims his trial attorney, the now-deceased Cristina Gutierrez,failed to call a key alibi witness for testimony: Asia McClain – who now goes by Asia McClain Chapman. She could have corroborated his alibi because she would have testified that she saw Syed at a local library..
..during the time prosecutors say Lee was murdered. The State of MD argues that the U.S. Constitution does not require attorneys to pursue every possible alibi presented to them.
NOW state atty saying: "This case brings into sharp relief, what presumption of reasonableness means, when we operate in a case where there is a silent record as to whether or why Gutierrez didn't contact [McClain-Chapman] for alibis." -
