Serial - the podcast *spoilers*

Does she also have some gold to sell us?

There are a few holes in the alibi.

The affidavit is pretty damning.

not really

Urich discouraged a witness from testifying and then lied under oath about what she said to him?

the thing about Adnan's family pressuring her? good luck getting a new trial with that.

The whole thing is bizarre: Adnan's defense team tries to contact Asia, so she calls the guy who prosecuted Adnan, who persaudes her that Adnan is guilty.

like why wouldn't he?

though I guess it's cool that right wing websites have moved on from Benghazi to a new obsession

I'm confused, when did Ulrich testify under oath? Was that related to the appeal?

Urick, sorry

so now asia says she never received pressure from adnan's family or chaudry, and that she never recanted her affadavit - and urick says she's lying. what would asia have to gain from lying?

ok, if she didn't recant her testimony then why couldn't Adnan's team use her? Is she saying that Urick forged her name on documents or something?

The whole issue is why Adnan's team didn't use her. That is why they are claiming ineffectual counsel.

Urick testified during the appeal trial that she called him and told him that she only wrote those letters because Adnans family pressured her, something she now says that she never said, and that she has notes from the phonecall backing this up.

Of course, the ironic thing is that Asias alibi actually isn't an alibi at all. It just would have worked that way because the prosecution botched the timeline so badly.

Sidenote, but I love the fact that Urick is the one name we consistently misspell. I'm not during it with intent, I just constantly think it's with an h.

The whole issue is why Adnan's team didn't use her. That is why they are claiming ineffectual counsel.

Adnan's first lawyer never contacted her at all. When he went for an appeal, his new legal went looking for Asia, who at that point contacted Urick. Urick says that she then recanted her affidavit in writing. Adnan's new team could not use her.

If she never recanted then Adnan should have been able to use her. A lot of this is not so believable. It seems like she went from being willing to help, to not wanting to be bothered, to suddenly being part of a nationwide phenom.

Where does Urick say that she recanted in writing?

Also, don't really get what's unbelievable about what you say at all?

Rabia claiming this amounts to "witness tampering" by Urick is really off the rails. She is supposed to be a lawyer.

or "obstructing a witness" or whatever she called it.

But multiple articles refer to Urick "testifying" -- when did he testify?

xxxpost
It's unbelievable to me that Urick made up Asia's recanting, invented a reason (pressure from Adnan's family) and Adnan's defense team seemingly took his word for it and stopped trying to contact Asia, even though she never signed anything recanting her affidavit. Maybe I have something wrong here. Maybe Adnan's second lawyer was bad too.

I'm sure Urick didn't want her to testify, but how could he tamper with her exactly. By telling her that Adnan was guilty? By convincing her that she didn't see what she said she did?

also wasn't there something about her boyfriend not wanting her to get involved?

Ok, this clears some things up:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/blog/bs-md-adnan-syed-alibi-20150120-story.html#page=1

man alive: Urick testified at the appeal. There was a clip from it in Serial episode 1. Also, consistently going off the rails is kinda the most lawyerlike thing in the world, imo ;)

Keyes: Adnan's defense team only knew what Urick had to say at trial, so it could never be said that they 'took his word for it'. At that point it was already too late. They tried to find her, they found her, she didn't want to talk to them. And she never knew that her testimony tore apart the prosecutions case. In her letters, she says that if she'd stayed with Adnan, perhaps none of it all would have happened. Seeing as her testimony doesn't disprove that Adnan did it, there is no reason as to why she should believe him innocent?

The fact remains that Christina Guttierez chose not to call Asia McClain at trial. That was before Urick allegedly discouraged her from testifying, which happened only during the appeal process. The only question for appeal is whether Christina Guttierez provided ineffective assistance by failing to call Asia McClain. The appellate court found it to be a strategic decision. I'm not sure how the new affidavit would impact that finding.

but how did she make the decision not to call her as a witness when she never even contacted/spoke to her?

Well, the appellate court ruled partly based on Uricks testimony - and got several other things wrong. As far as I understand, the question for the state court is whether or not the original appelate decision was faulty, and this does seem to help that case. Though I can't say I have high hopes.

but how did she make the decision not to call her as a witness when she never even contacted/spoke to her?
--just1n3

She could make the decision that because Asia's alibi didn't cover entire period where crime was committed that it wasn't likely to contribute to a strong defense.

Reading Rabia's writing about Urick is positively surreal. You'd swear she was talking about a deranged person not a seemingly lucid and logical prosecutor.

Asia's version of events is straight weird. I mean of course Urick is going to say they got the right guy. Also it's odd that on two separate occasions she's basically said "I'm done talking" only to come back again.

Rabia is pretty much a propagandist

rabia took Asias first affidavit herself. Was she representing Adnan at the time? Otherwise it's a bit odd.

I can def. buy that Asia was feeling pressure from Adnan's family if that's the case

Well she says that's not the case. But it's pretty peripheral, Urick's impressions of why Asia didn't testify and whether they were wrong.

Asia went and talked to Adnans family day after arrest, and wrote first letter same day, second the day after. When are they supposed to have pressured her?

The affidavit with Rabia was taken after Adnan was convicted, has nothing to do with Asia's original letters.

Yeah after trial, before appeal.

Urick said Asia told him she had written the affidavit, post-conviction, to get Adnan's family off her back. If Rabia was the one taking the affidavit then that does not seem like a wild tale.

did Urick even claim that she was claiming the affidavit wasn't true? It sounds more like she was trying to make it go away so she wouldn't have to testify at an appeals trial

Well, to TheIntercept Urick says it's about the letters and that he testified to that. He is almost as untrustworthy as Jay.

Or Rabia.

I don't think he knew whether she was talking about letters or an affidavit: "She definitely told me that she wrote what she wrote, was to appease the family, to get them off her back … that's what I recall, the gist of the conversation, that she wrote something to get the family off her back, which can be interpreted that she was getting pressure."

He says the letters but it's pretty obvious he means the first affidavit, which was 2000, or else he's just getting mixed up. I feel like you're missing the point that this is a guy being interviewed about testimony he gave (I think) three years ago about events that in turn happened fifteen years ago. He has presumably not been obsessively rereviewing every detail of the case since then. So him getting the send date of the letters wrong would not make him "untrustworthy"

I don't think he would have even known about the letters when he spoke to her. It's not like Adnan shared them with the prosecution.

it is a bit comical that Slate and other sites have headlines like "Serial Witness Reverses Her Testimony" when SK mentioned in the last episode that Asia stands by her affidavit

Isn't the post-conviction hearing 2012? Rabia's indicating that the she/the family hasn't contacted Asia for 15 years but when did the PI contact her? Somehow that doesn't count towards the 15 years??!??!

Rabia has a link to Urick's testimony. It's unequivocally clear that he's talking about the affidavit, not the letters.

This is the denial of post-conviction relief:
http://www.courts.state.md.us/cosappeals/pdfs/syed/baltcityccmemorandumopinion.pdf

The decision on the McClain issue does not appear to rely in any way on Urick's testimony about the matter, so I'm not sure what difference it makes.

But calling what Urick said "perjury" is really irresponsible. Perjury has to involve knowingly false statements. The kinds of things we're talking about may just be characterizations and impressions. For example, Asia calls Urick, she says "I'm trying to decide if I should testify. I don't know. The family really wants me to. They really pressed me to give that affidavit back in 2000 too. I just want to do the right thing. Is there much evidence against Adnan?"

Urick could hear that as "the family is pressuring her to testify, she did the affidavit just to get them off their backs" whereas she might not characterize it that way. That's not the same thing as perjury, just as saying "I don't think you should bother testifying, it's a very strong case against Adnan, there's a lot of evidence" would not necessarily be "witness tampering" or "obstruction of justice," assuming that's even what he said, since this is very much a one person's word/recollection of a conversation against another's.

I think a lot of the confusion stems from the fact that the appeal was about the letters and not the afidavit, so if Urick only testified about the afidavit, it wasn't relevant to the case and shouldn't have been allowed. So I can see why everyone, including Urick himself, of course, seems to think he testified about what the case was about.

Considering Urick is a guy who relied on coached witness statements from a witness he then got a pro bono lawyer, and who bullshitted TheIntercept all throughout his interview, I think it's way more likely that he knew exactly what he was testifying to, and exactly what he was implying.

Yeah or none of that bullshit you just said is true.