Serial season one may be over, but the story of the case against Adnan Syed is still unraveling. In a new development, Asia McClain—a high school classmate of victim Hae Min Lee and the man convicted of her murder, Adnan Syed—has penned a new affidavit this week giving Syed an alibi in the case. McClain is standing behind the original letter mentioned on the series, in which she claimed to be with Syed at the time of the murder. The new affidavit, which was provided to TheBlaze of all places, says that McClain realized that she “needed to step forward and make [her] story known to the court system.” Even though she told investigators the same story in a letter at the time of the trial, prosecutor Kevin Urick testified that letter shouldn’t be heard because, “She told me that she’d only written it because she was getting pressure from the family, and she basically wrote it to please them and get them off her back.”
The problem is, McClain says that never happened in her new affidavit: “I never told Urick that I recanted my story or affidavit about January 13, 1999 … I did not write the March 1999 letters or the affidavit because of pressure from Syed’s family … my only goal has always been to provide the truth about what I remembered.” The new affidavit also says that Urick told her not to be a part of an appeal back in 2010: “Urick convinced me into believing that I should not participate in any ongoing proceedings … Based on my conversation with Kevin Urick, the comments made by him and what he conveyed to me during that conversation, I determined that I wished to have no further involvement with the Syed defense team, at that time.” For his part, Urick told TheBlaze the allegations were “Absolutely false … She definitely told me that she wrote what she wrote, was to appease the family, to get them off her back.” As with a lot of elements of this case, the only thing that is clear is that someone—in this scenario, Asia McClain or the prosecutor—is lying. Syed’s defense team is currently arguing that he receive ineffective counsel, partly because the “Asia letter” was not presented as evidence …
