Confessions of a Serial Alibi (13 page)

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE 2016 POST-CONVICTION HEARING

November 6th, 2015, is the day I found out about the motion to re-open Adnan Syed’s post-conviction proceedings. Ever since my earlier January 2015 affidavit I was aware of the possibility of such an outcome. However, when I received the email from Gary Proctor telling me that it was official, the reality came with a wave of mixed emotions. In the email, Gary informed me that I would soon need to visit the east coast. Later that day, as I read a copy of the official motion, I began to understand that the post-conviction relief request had more parts to it than just requesting my testimony. I came to understand that the defense was beginning to call into question the reliability of the 1999 cell phone records used to convict Syed in 2000. I’d be lying to say that information didn’t make me feel somewhat less stressed because at least the post-conviction wasn’t all about me.

Unfortunately, with the stress level that I was functioning at, the decrease was pitifully minute. I was elated at the prospects of getting the truth to the court, however the scrutiny of all the media attention was definitely not something that I looked forward to. I can remember asking both my husband and my lawyer how bad they thought it was going to be. My lawyer responding by saying something like, “All’s well that ends with someone not peering in through your bushes…If it happens, it happens. You can’t really stop that kind of thing nowadays.”

I remember constantly telling my husband to make sure that our blinds in the living room were closed because of concern that a weird person could be skulking around our home trying to catch a photo or two. On a funny note I can recall telling a friend about that concern and having him joke about me going to the grocery store in high heels, wearing a big hat and huge sunglasses, as to “not be getting caught out there like Britney Spears.” In any case, the invasive nature of the media was a big concern to my husband and me.

I can recall fearing the prospect of the media getting wind of our arrival date/time and invading our privacy both at the airport and/or where we would be staying once in Baltimore. We didn’t know what to expect. To make matters worse, the Paris terrorist attacks happened and I started getting weird cryptic Facebook messages from strangers about helping out a Muslim. All the while I was accompanied by the fear of Jay Wilds (his involvement scares me) being in Baltimore and possibly in attendance at the hearing. As the arrival date began to get closer and closer, I affectionately started referring to the post-conviction hearing as “The Freak Show.” People on the Internet were referring to my upcoming testimony as the second coming of Christ for SERIAL disciples. The idea of being paraded around as some sort of “white whale” was not appealing to me in the slightest. Everybody said to ignore it all. “Just put on your blinders,” one friend said. “How do you do that when it’s hitting you from all angles?” I replied.

That’s not to say that my only concerns were for my own wellbeing either. In the days that followed I worried a lot about the impact all of this was having on the Lee family and their friends. I wondered if they hated me for coming forward. For giving the man that they perceive as being Hae’s murderer a slight window of hope. Once again I started to feel the tug of two family’s convictions pulling at me and weighing on my heart. Not only did the families weigh on me. Adnan and Hae weighed on me as well. What if Adnan was the killer and somehow I was a ploy? What if Adnan was innocent and this was indeed setting things right? Then again what if I wasn’t? Was Hae rolling in her grave or was she cheering me on? I tried to block those thoughts from my head, but try as I may I could not. In addition, my Ulcerative Colitis was in full swing, probably due to all of my stress, and I had recently found out that I was pregnant.

Earlier that year I had lost two babies and the prospect of all the ongoing stress associated with traveling and the hearing itself was not welcomed at all. After miscarrying two babies, my spirit had been severely shattered and I had become paranoid and convinced that everything I did was going to cause a third miscarriage. Hell, at the time I was so frightful that I couldn’t even discuss my fears with my husband because I was too afraid that just talking about it was bad luck. I stopped going to the gym, I stopped going most places; I just stayed home and worried. As you can imagine the thought of a lingering undetermined travel date only added to my worry. In the weeks that followed my lawyer and I would discuss my pregnancy in terms of when I would be available to testify and when I would not. We would talk about Justin Brown and Thiru Vignarajah. We would talk about current events and weather systems that could possibly affect the scheduling of the hearing. Gary would assure me that it would all work out. “They hate closing court. Even if schools are closed and federal court is closed a lot of time the Baltimore city circuit court is still open,” he said.

Initially we thought that perhaps the hearing would happen in March of the next year, but we were unsure. All we knew for sure was that it couldn’t be between mid-April and the second week of July (because of my pregnancy). As time passed I became more aware that the hearing was going down sooner rather than later. When it came to finding out the actual hearing date, I think I found out via the Internet before I found out from my attorney. It was December 15th, 2015, and being the person that I am, I had previously set up a Google alert for any news containing my name. That day I received an email with a link to a news article in which the scheduled hearing date had been disclosed. After sending Gary a quick text, he was able to confirm and soon after, I started to receive emails about travel arrangements. Before I knew it my flight was booked, and I was making arrangements for dog sitting. Unfortunately, the hearing dates soon proved to be inconsistent. Eleven days later I received another text from Gary stating that the hearing dates had been moved up a few days from their original schedule. Normally this would not have been a big deal, but the Alaska Airlines plane tickets were non-refundable. Luckily I was able to investigate their ticket change policy and they did permit for a one-time-only ticket change on non-refundable tickets. The only thing left to do at that point was to prepare for my first (and probably most important) court testimony ever.

Once all the travel arrangements were set in stone, I became more comfortable with the premise of testifying and being cross-examined. The only court experience that I had was when I received a ticket for expired license plate tags. I had to go before a judge to show my updated license plate information. That court appearance resulted in me getting out of my legal pickle so I chalk that up to being a success. This experience, however, was going to be something totally different. The only thing I had to compare what this experience could be like was television. No matter what people say, television is where reality goes to die nowadays. That being the case, I had no clue what to expect. To what degree would the defense try and sell me down the road on this whole alibi thing? How mean would Vignarajah actually be to me? I had already had one bad experience with a prosecutor, so the idea of speaking with another was intimidating. Even so, I knew in my heart that I couldn’t hold my reservations about the whole Urick incident against Vignarajah and I didn’t. Ironically though, Vignarajah apparently never had a desire to speak with me because my personal invitation to him was ignored. Since this information was unforeseen in those moments, Gary and I deemed it a better focus of my time to go over the previous documents that I had presented to the court so that my recollection of writing them and their content would be fresh in my mind. Considering that it had been almost sixteen years since my first affidavit was written, I saw the value in this task.

While going over these documents I soon realized that my age was beginning to show in the sense that I would misspeak years when referring to certain events. Nothing important, but still not something that I wanted to screw up in court. We all know what it’s like at the first of the year when it’s the New Year and you’re still writing last year’s date on your checks. Those kinds of mistakes, nothing major. Nevertheless, I continued to be very hard on myself. Gary told me over and over again to relax, that court was going to be boring and nothing like the movies. He assured me that Vignarajah was not going to yell and scream at me while I was on the stand. I admit, looking back I was an absolute train wreck. The rational part of my brain trusted Gary’s courtroom knowledge and experience, but there was a definite irrational side to my brain that was obviously a little out of control.

Being that I was raised in Baltimore I still have a lot of personal connections there. Many of my friends are well-paid professionals and some are even stewards of the court. In my various conversations with my friends in Baltimore, Thiru Vignarajah had been described to me in a not-so-flattering light. I’m not the type to hold grudges against people, especially those that I don’t have personal relationships with, but I was worried. I had been told that he was wicked smart and that he was often willing to win his cases at any cost. I had been told that he appeared to lack a moral compass when it came to his courtroom tactics. I had been told about the www.projectveritas.com scandal and warned that he was the type to smile in your face while stabbing you in the back. Needless to say, I became scared of him, or better yet, the idea of somebody who was how he had been described to me.

The Defense

I’ll never forget the first time I met Justin Brown. To say the least, he’s very different than what I expected back in 2010. Before speaking to him in 2016, I had always imagined him to be this smooth-tongued, conniving defense attorney. Along with the help of Kevin Urick, I had made the wrongful assumption that someone of his professional standing must have possessed a low, or no, standard of morality. After all, he does represent some of society’s worst criminals for a living. In short, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that he was down to earth, very soft-spoken (when not in court) and not very intimidating at all (in a good way). I found him to be extremely patient and respectful of my family and my time. I admit, a lot of his candor toward my husband and myself may have been in light of my recent commitment to writing a new affidavit and my participation in general. Notwithstanding those facts, I got the feeling that he had a healthy sense of humor and was generally a nice person. I think the first time we met he just mainly wanted to put eyes on me. He had spent such a long time seeking out the testimony of the elusive Asia McClain and to put it plainly, I think he just needed to see me with his own eyes. I can’t say that I blame him.

The experience was very bizarre for me as well. Immediately, the first thing I did was apologize to him about not reaching back out to him in 2010. By that time, Justin had already read my new (2015) affidavit and was already aware of the original post-conviction hearing back-story (Urick). He graciously accepted my apology and we agreed to move forward. He explained the date of my testimony and the fact that my husband would be listed on the witness list. He explained that he wanted me to be aware of this fact because most likely all the witnesses involved would be under a sequestration. As I’m sure you all know, a sequestration basically means that one witness cannot be present in the courtroom while another is testifying. It also means that witnesses are not supposed to read or watch anything pertaining to the statements of other witnesses and that they also cannot discuss the case in general for fear of influencing changes in one another’s testimony.

In all honesty I’d have to say this was the hardest part of the entire post-conviction hearing process. My husband is my best friend and a major support system in my life. The fact that I had to endure a day and a half of testifying and cross-examination all by myself royally sucked. To make matters worse, I wasn’t even allowed to discuss details of the hearing with him (or anyone else for that matter) until after the hearing was concluded. My husband and I agreed to follow the rules of the sequestration, should it be put into place by Vignarajah. Justin then informed me that he was able to obtain my Sprint phone records and I was elated. Up to that point, I had tried unsuccessfully for about a year to obtain my own phone records, only to come up empty-handed. Justin was able to get a subpoena and obtain the records within a span of two or three days.

After he handed me the records I proceeded to flip through the pages until I came to page three of thirty-six. On that page in plain sight was my call to Kevin Urick dated April 11th, 2010, and right there in plain sight was a call duration time of thirty-four minutes. I have to admit, in that moment I felt vindicated. For more than a year I had felt certain that the representation of my phone call with Kevin Urick had been greatly distorted from the truth. I had also been aware that the length of the actual phone call had been greatly undercut and extremely underestimated. For the first time in over a year I finally had proof! I can remember thinking that if only for my own peace of mind, I was so happy to finally have proof!

As we continued our conversation everything else felt null in terms of my excitement. Justin asked me a variety of questions concerning my involvement in the case. He asked me if I was indeed the Asia McClain that saw Adnan Syed in the library on January 13th, 1999. I thought it would be funny to mess with him, so I replied, “No.” We all laughed but you could tell that, as he took a huge breath of relief, the joke had momentarily panicked him. The split-second expression on his face was indeed quite priceless. I explained my story of January 13th to Justin and how it corresponded with my affidavit from early 2000. He asked me about my letters to Adnan dated March 1st and 2nd of 1999 and I explained them to him the same way I explained them earlier in this book. He asked me if I had ever been asked or felt pressured by Adnan or the Syed family to write anything; I responded by telling him that I had not. Mr. Brown then asked my husband and me if we were aware that an individual had attempted to serve me a subpoena back in 2010 and we were shocked. We explained that I had become a stay-at-home wife the year before in June and that at no point had anyone ever (to our knowledge) come to our home trying to serve me. We also explained that a few months later we moved out of state and perhaps that was the reason we were unreachable for service. After that, I asked Mr. Brown if Kevin Urick was going to testify at the hearing and he informed me that Kevin Urick was listed as a witness, but that he did not know if the State would call him to testify. Nonetheless, he assured me not to worry about it, because he felt as though he was well-prepared for a multitude of possible scenarios.