Kevin Urick was the prosecutor in the State of Maryland’s case against Adnan Syed for the murder of his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee – and thinks that Sarah Koenig and Serial ignored evidence of Syed’s guilt.

Kevin Urick On Serial

Urick believes that the case against Syed was relatively standard, rather than the convoluted and improbable situation that he thinks was presented in Koenig’s Serial podcast.

“The case itself I would say was pretty much a run-of-the-mill domestic violence murder,” Urick told the Intercept. “Fortunately a lot of relationships do not end in domestic violence, do not end in murder. But it happens often enough that you can identify it as a domestic violence case resulting in murder.”

Urick, 14 years after prosecuting Syed, doesn’t have any regrets about how he saw the case through. “Once you understood the cell phone records–that killed any alibi defense that Syed had,” Urick argued. “I think when you take that in conjunction with Jay’s testimony, it became a very strong case.”

“Jay’s testimony by itself, would that have been proof beyond a reasonable doubt?” Urick asked rhetorically. “Probably not. Cellphone evidence by itself? Probably not. They corroborate and feed off each other–it’s a very strong evidentiary case.”

Throughout Serial‘s 12-episode run, Koenig poked holes in the investigation into Lee’s murder, in the prosecution’s case and in Syed’s defense team’s efforts. One of the many angles Koenig pursued in her story was Jay Wilds’ suspect trustworthiness. Koenig, though finding Wilds charismatic, found it difficult to reconcile his many versions of the day on which Lee was murdered.

“People can very seldom tell the same story the same way twice. If they did, I’d be very suspicious of it because that would look like it was rehearsed,” Urick said. “So all the time, you take your witnesses as they are, you try it in the real world, we put it on, we let the jury judge credibility. Jay was on the stand for five days.”

Urick has also claimed that the first time Koenig and Serial producers made an effort to talk to him about the case was mid-December as the podcast was winding down. The podcast, which has stood by the integrity of their reporting, refuted Urick’s allegation.

“We reached out to Kevin Urick multiple times, at multiple locations, during the winter of 2014, about nine months before the podcast began airing,” Serial executive producer Julie Synder told the Intercept. “Urick did not respond to any of those interview requests.”

In the aftermath of the popular Serial podcast, Syed’s supporters are still trying to get him a new trial, citing an unfair previous trial as well as the emergence of new information that could exonerate him.

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Article by Chelsea Regan

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