Continuing a trend of turning down Sarah Koenig’s interview requests but talking to The Intercept, the state prosecutor who was charged with the case that was explored by Serial offered his thoughts on the case in an interview that was published this afternoon. Kevin Urick is standing by his work, which lead to Adnan Syed’s conviction for the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee.
Despite the doubts raised by Koenig’s reporting, Urick tells The Intercept’s Natasha Vargas-Cooper and Ken Silverstein said that he’s not second-guessing the trial.
TI: Do you have any doubts about the outcome of the trial?
KU: No. The reason is: once you understood the cell phone records–that killed any alibi defense that Syed had. I think when you take that in conjunction with Jay’s testimony, it became a very strong case.
Urick didn’t even have doubts about other suspects.
KU: Even with Jay on the stand for five days, with the defense presenting Jay’s prior inconsistent statements–they presented all that. The problem was that the cell phone records corroborated so much of Jay’s testimony.
Urick also offered speculation on why the story provided by Jay, the prosecution’s key witness (and previous Intercept interview subject), has changed so often.
KU: 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. 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.
Read the full interview, which includes a deep dive into Koenig’s investigation of how the prosecution used cell phone records at trial.
