Classmates Say Serial Witness Said She Would Lie

An alibi witness for a man whose murder conviction was re-examined in the popular Serial podcast told two classmates more than 16 years ago she would lie to help him, the Maryland attorney general's office wrote in court filings Monday. Officials wrote that two sisters who were classmates of the witness at Woodlawn High School approached the AG's office this summer, after a judge ordered a new trial for Adnan Syed, the AP reports. The sisters gave sworn statements saying they got into a 1999 argument with the witness, Asia McClain, who has said she saw Syed at the Woodlawn library about the same time Hae Min Lee was murdered and buried in a shallow grave in a Baltimore park that year.

Syed was convicted in 2000 of murdering Lee, his former high school girlfriend. He was sentenced to life in prison. "I very much remember, as does (my sister) having a conversation with Asia in our co op class about Asia saying she believed so much in Adnan's innocence she would make up a lie to prove he couldn't have done it," one of the classmates wrote in the email. The attorney general's office is asking that the sisters' affidavits be used in court if McClain's alibi claim is introduced. In a statement Monday, McClain's attorney said they "question the timing of these bizarre, and wholly factually untrue, allegations," the Baltimore Sun reports. (More Serial stories.)