Adnan Syed's Lawyer Is Trying to Get Him Out on Bail

Lawyers for Adnan Syed, the focus of the first season of the Serial podcast, have filed a motion to get the 35-year-old convicted murderer out on bail after a Maryland judge granted him a new trial back in June, the New York Times reports.

Syed has served 16 years of a life sentence after being convicted in 2000 of killing his high school girlfriend, Hae Min Lee. His new lawyer, C. Justin Brown, claims that the new evidence that's helped grant him a new trial should be considered in his bail application, including faulty cellphone tower data, poor legal representation, and the credibility of witness Jay Wilds.

"We feel that we have met the burden that we have to, and we can show that he is not dangerous and he is not a risk of flight," Brown told the Times Monday.

Back in June, Baltimore City Circuit Court judge Martin P. Welch granted Syed a new trial after his legal team produced new evidence and argued in post-conviction hearings that Syed's original defense attorney, Maria Cristina Gutierrez, had been negligent. Welch ultimately decided that there was "a substantial possibility that the result of the trial was fundamentally unreliable," according to his memo.

Although bail motions are pretty standard procedures, Brown isn't sure the Maryland attorney general's office will even respond to the request, so the whole thing might just be a Hail Mary attempt to get Syed out for a short time.

"Usually, there's not a response," Brown told the Times. "But this is not the normal case, so who knows."

Read: Adnan from 'Serial' Is Hoping to Get Out of Jail on a Cellphone-Related Technicality

Photo via Mike Pearl