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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now Sarah Koenig, executive producer of the Serial series of podcasts and host of the groundbreaking first season back in 2014. As many of you will remember, it was a reexamination of a murder case in which a teenager was sentenced to life in prison for a murder of his former girlfriend that he has always claimed he did not commit.

Well, maybe you've heard that the conviction of Adnan Syed was vacated this week and he walked out of prison after 23 years. Sarah Koenig was among those in the courtroom said she didn't see it coming and released an eight years later new episode of Serial yesterday which included this sound bite of Adnan Syed's lawyer, Erica Suter, after the ruling.

Erica Suter: Today my friend and client, Adnan Syed, walks free for the first time in 23 years.

Brian Lehrer: With Serial band music in the background of course there, Sarah Koenig joins us now with her take in the new episode. I'll give you this context first. She says, "The case contains just about every chronic problem our system can cough up." Sarah, I know you're very much in demand right now as such a lead journalist who has covered this case, so thanks for making some time for us today. Welcome back to WNYC.

Sarah Koenig: Thank you so much.

Brian Lehrer: I want to make sure we recognize the victim of this murder first, Hae Min Lee. For people who do not know the basics of the murder of Hae Min Lee and the trial of Adnan Syed, who was she and why did Adnan first become a suspect?

Sarah Koenig: She was a high school senior at Woodlawn High School, a classmate of Adnan Syed, they were boyfriend and girlfriend for quite a while. They had broken up--

Brian Lehrer: We should say Woodlawn, that's Woodlawn in Maryland, not Woodlawn in the Bronx, right?

Sarah Koenig: Exactly, yes. It's just outside Baltimore City. It's in Baltimore County. 18 years old. By all accounts of everyone I've ever spoken to about her was a bubbly, energetic, smart, great athlete, just a great friend, wonderful, young 18-year-old girl. That's what I know about her. The circumstances of her murder were that she disappears after school one day. Nobody knows where she is. Her family calls the police very quickly because it's very unusual for her not to be home by a certain time.

They look and look for her. I think it takes them about six weeks, they finally discover her body buried in a shallow grave in a city park, and then Adnan is arrested, I want to say, within a few weeks of that. They look at him for several reasons. It's a little bit technical, but they first talk to some other people that they realize are connected, and then they pretty quickly turn to both Adnan and her current boyfriend at the time.

They start looking into both boyfriends. They say they got an anonymous call from somebody saying, "Look at Adnan," and that's why they initially really turned to him.

Brian Lehrer: As the prosecutors recently learned, that was not the only call they got. We'll get to that part of the story. To be clear about what happened in court this week, the conviction was vacated, but Adnan was not exonerated. What's the difference?

Sarah Koenig: What that means is that what the judge is saying is like, "Okay, the conviction, the jury's decision is now undone. We're reversing that." He is not convicted of this crime, but what she didn't do and what nobody asked for is for them to drop the charges. That would have been an exoneration.

They didn't do that because they're saying they're continuing to investigate this case and they don't know everything yet, and so they have a hold on him for 30 days. They have 30 days to either initiate a new trial, which is impossible as far as I can tell, or what's called nol pros, the charges which is to drop them.

Brian Lehrer: Many people relate to this as a true crime drama that now has a major new chapter after they became acquainted with the principals in this case. Through the original Serial in 2014, these are your fans, but I think you are focused on the more structural issues here. I mentioned in the intro that you said the case contains just about every chronic problem our criminal justice system can cough up.

Let me just read to the listeners the list that you then rattled off. Police using questionable interview methods, prosecutors keeping crucial evidence from the defense, slightly junky science, extreme prison sentences. This was a teenager sentence to life after all. Juveniles treated as adults and how grindingly difficult it is to get your case back in court once you've been convicted. How much of that were you able to discover in your original investigation in 2014?

Sarah Koenig: Let me think. All of it, I think, except for I didn't know that prosecutors, if it is true, that they withheld evidence this explosive that's potentially exculpatory. If they withheld that from the defense, that is huge. I wasn't aware of that at the time. If we're talking about larger issues here, this has come up, a lot of people are talking about it right now, which is great, and Adnan's attorney, Erica Suter, talked about it on Monday as well.

She was talking about these statistics of the 3,000 or something exonerations we've had in this country like 40-something percent have involved prosecutorial misconduct like this, Brady violations, which means withholding evidence they're supposed to turn over. She was saying in Baltimore they've had a bunch of exoneration cases in the last decade or so, maybe 10 or 11 of them. She said in 80% of those cases there was prosecutors withholding exculpatory evidence. I feel like don't get me started.

Brian Lehrer: Well, I want to get you started on a little bit more actually on that particular piece of revelation I guess. It's the thing that I found most shocking from the coverage now including your new episode of Serial yesterday. By the way, listeners, we can take a couple of phone calls from Serial listeners for Sarah Koenig 212-433-WNYC. It seemed like half of America in 2014 was hooked on the details of the Adnan Syed, Hae Min Lee story. What do you want to ask Sarah Koenig today?

212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet a question @BrianLehrer. This is where we get back to those phone calls to prosecutors. You now know that there were two calls to prosecutors I guess back in the day, this murder was in 1999, about a guy the state overlooked a suspect who threatened at one time to make Hae Min Lee disappear and that's what they failed to turn over to the defense. How much do you know about the information in that call now?

Sarah Koenig: I really don't know more than that. I can just say there were two calls. They came some months apart. He was tried twice actually. The first was in his trial and then they try him again. The first call comes before his first trial. The second call comes before his second trial. One of the calls says, "Hey, you should know this guy had a motive, this other person had a motive."

The other call seems like maybe it was more explicit saying he had a motive and had been heard to make a threat against her. I don't know if that was in passing, I don't know if that was directly to her, I don't know anything about it, but like saying he would make her disappear and he would kill her. That's all I know. They've identified two suspects actually who they're not naming.

I know who they are. I know who these individuals are. I don't know who the calls pertain to. I have a good guess, but I don't want to say something I don't know. That's what I know about the calls. They were memorialized just in somebody's handwriting. They think it was probably the lead prosecutor on the case. They can't be sure. It looks like it matches a ton of other writing in the file, so they know it's not just a random thing. They did follow up on it. It's [unintelligible 00:09:41] expensive notes. They followed up on it, and they found it to be credible.

Brian Lehrer: You do tease us in the new podcast episode by saying, and you just said it again, you know who the two possible alternative suspects are in the case, but you won't name them because they haven't been named by the justice system so it'll be unfair to them, you feel, but you do suggest that these people have unsavory things in their records that have nothing to do with this case. How far can you go with that here?

Sarah Koenig: I can say that one of them does have a criminal record that to me, as a layperson, looks much, much less concerning. That guy, he was looked at by police at the time pretty intensely. He was a very early suspect. He was cleared by polygraphs. The other guy has a very disturbing criminal record and is currently in prison for a series of sexual assaults. That's what I can say about them.

Brian Lehrer: Michael in Jersey City. You're on WNYC with Sarah Koenig from Serial. Hi, Michael.

Michael: Hi, guys. Sarah, I love all three seasons. Season 3 is my favorite actually. My question for you is if Adnan didn't commit this crime, and I feel like you already alluded to this, wouldn't it have had to have been Jay since he admitted to being involved in burying the body? Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Michael, thank you. For the listeners who don't know the details of the case, let me give a little more here, Sarah, and correct me if I'm giving incorrect context because I was wondering, too, how you best account now for Adnan's friend Jay's testimony at the time, which was so key to Adnan's conviction, basically saying he helped Adnan bury Hae Min Lee's body. You call his testimony shaggy in its credibility. How do you answer Michael's question, wouldn't it have had to have been Jay in that case, or do you have a take on why he would make up such a thing and testify to it if it never happened?

Sarah Koenig: I will say no. The answer to that is it does not have to have been Jay. Jay is not one of the two suspects the state is looking at right now. I just want to be very clear about that. As to why he tells the story he tells, I have no idea. I just don't know. I think that is a huge question for the state right now as well from the prosecutor's office. I talk to them on background and that is something they don't understand either, but no, it's not a binary like that; either Adnan or Jay, it's not like that.

Brian Lehrer: Just to button up the thought, it's a huge outstanding mystery why a teenager at the time would have claimed to have been involved in the burying of a body if that never happened.

Sarah Koenig: I want to be very, very careful about what I say. Here's what I will say. I don't know if all of what Jay said is true or false or some of it. You know what I mean? It could be a mix. It's just not clear. What I will say is I think there is a renewed look now at the detectives who investigated this case. In their motion to vacate that they filed last week, they spend a little time at the very end looking at this one detective, William Ritz, who was one of the two detectives on the case, and his subsequent bad acts in one particular case where he manipulated evidence, falsified evidence, massaged things, didn't look at other suspects when he had good reason to.

I think that that is a path the state is beginning to go down is to really look at like, wait, wait, wait-- This is one of the guys who had interrogated Jay at the time or interviewed Jay multiple times. I think they're starting to maybe go down that path of like, wait, what happened here? We point out in the show too and we had an expert come on and stuff and talk about the detective work in this case. It was clear to me, something weird was going on in those interviews for sure.

Brian Lehrer: I will say that half the callers on the board are asking some version of, what about Jay, how do you explain Jay? You just did to the best of your ability, probably the best of anybody's ability who isn't actually Jay, at this point. Steven in Washington Heights, you're on WNYC with Sarah Koenig. Hi, Steven.

Steven: Hi. My question is in the original Serial podcast, Adnan's mother suggested that there was anti-Muslim bias within the police department and prosecutor's office, and in the podcast, you said you did not see any of that. Has that changed at all with the information of prosecutorial misconduct?

Sarah Koenig: I'm trying to remember exactly what I said. I think I said in the beginning, I was like, "That doesn't seem right. Why would they just pluck this kid?" Then I look into it and there's a lot of stereotyping of how a Muslim man might behave. In the way they framed the case, there was definitely Islamophobia, I would say. I think they played on it to the jury.

Sorry, I've forgotten the second part. Oh, does the Brady, does the withholding evidence add to that? Maybe. I don't know. Part of me is like, maybe they were just like, "We've got our case. We're good. This is nonsense. We've already looked at--" You know what I mean? I don't know. I think we also don't know-- I'm not ready to say the background of these two suspects as well. Anyway, I'll stop there.

Brian Lehrer: We'll leave it there. We have time for two quick questions. One is you downplay this in the new episode, but you played a role in this, in bringing some justice even after 23 years, it's limited justice, but you downplay your own role. You said this was part of a reexamination of many cases under a recently passed law in the state of Maryland that led a lot of cases to be looked at, and then they found all this stuff with the Adnan Syed case.

Do you have any inkling that they might have just looked at it a little more carefully, they might have found stuff that maybe if they were just glossing over it a little bit more like maybe they would do with so many cases to go through, that if it wasn't for you, they might have missed it?

Sarah Koenig: This is one of the things that makes me crazy. Everything that they are saying now that they have found, and I think I say this at the end of the episode we just did, it's like they either knew it or should have known it or could have known it 20 years ago, 23 years ago. It should be upsetting to everybody is that look how much energy and how many resources were poured into this one case that, yes, becomes popularized by the show we did, and then all these people start looking at it and finding more stuff.

That's great, but when you think about the problems that we talked about in the beginning that are systemic here, this is happening in so many cases that aren't getting this attention and aren't getting these resources. I tried to fit in the show and I couldn't in the episode, but she was so powerful at the end where she just said, "Adnan is one of many."

Brian Lehrer: Adnan is one of many. I'll quote you back to yourself one more time. You said in the new episode, "Even on the day when the government publicly recognizes its own mistakes, it's hard to feel good about that because all these problems were known to prosecutors when the case was first heard and it took more than 20 years to self-correct." Sarah, last question. Serial was born as a spinoff of This American Life, as some of our listeners know, and now Serial Productions with you as executive producer is part of The New York Times Company. Just tell people what you have coming up and how you see your journalistic place in the world going forward.

Sarah Koenig: I don't know about the second thing, but I can tell what we're working on. We have a new show coming out October 13th. It's called We Were Three. It is by Nancy Updike, who is just an incredible reporter and writer. She's been with This American Life since it started back in 1995. She's just a great friend and colleague, and she's got a great show coming. Then about a month later, we are trying to put out a show. We hope it's about a month later, so mid-November sometime.

It's our first show that we're actually doing with The New York Times reporter since we joined. It's with Investigative Reporter Kim Barker. We don't have a title for it yet, but that's coming, we hope, in November. Then I'm working on a new season of Serial along with Dana Chivvis, who worked on the first couple seasons of the show with me, and it's about Guantanamo actually, which is a subject that Dana and I have been interested in for a really long time and have been reporting on on and off since 2015, actually.

We're finally making a show in part because people are finally starting to really talk about it in ways they weren't back when we were trying to report it. That's what I'm working on.

Brian Lehrer: That's a lot. You're busy. Sarah Koenig from Serial. Thanks for making us some time for us today. We really appreciate it.

Sarah Koenig: Thank you so much.

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