Christopher Nieto, left, and attorney Justin Brown, right, speak to the media during a press conference in Baltimore, Md., Thursday, March, 29, 2018. A Maryland appeals court upheld a ruling granting... (Associated Press) 
 
 Christopher Nieto, left, and attorney Justin Brown, right, speak to the media during a press conference in Baltimore, Md., Thursday, March, 29, 2018. A Maryland appeals court upheld a ruling granting a new trial for his client, Adnan Syed, who was convicted in 2000 of killing Hae Min Lee and burying... (Associated Press) 
 
 BALTIMORE (AP) — A Maryland appeals court on Thursday upheld a ruling granting a new trial to a man whose conviction in the murder of his high school sweetheart became the subject of the popular podcast "Serial." 
 
 Adnan Syed was convicted in 2000 of killing Hae Min Lee and burying her body in a shallow grave in a Baltimore park. He was 17 at the time. 
 
 Syed's story was widely publicized in the 2014 "Serial" podcast, which cast doubt on his guilt and inspired armchair investigators to unearth new information. 
 
 The show attracted millions of listeners and shattered records for the number of times a podcast has been streamed or downloaded. 
 
 A lower court judge vacated Syed's conviction in 2016. Prosecutors appealed to the Maryland Court of Special Appeals, the state's intermediate appeals court. 
 
 Syed's lawyer, C. Justin Brown, said he is ready for a new trial. 
 
 "If the state is so confident in their case, and if they're so confident that Syed is guilty, they should just try the case. We're ready to try the case," Brown said. 
 
 Prosecutors declined to comment or to say whether they will appeal the ruling to the state's highest court. 
 
 "We are currently reviewing today's decision to determine next steps," Raquel Coombs, a spokeswoman for the Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh, said in an email. 
 
 In a 2-1 decision, the three-judge appeals court panel agreed with Brown that his trial lawyer was ineffective for failing to investigate a potential alibi witness who said she saw Syed at a public library in the town of Woodlawn, Maryland, around the time the state claimed Syed killed Hae. 
 
 The panel said in its written decision that if testimony from Asia McClain had been presented to the jury, it would have "directly contradicted the State's theory of when Syed had the opportunity and did murder Hae," and could have created reasonable doubt in at least one juror's mind and led to a different outcome. 
 
 "In considering the totality of the evidence at Syed's trial with the potential impact of McClain's alibi testimony, this Court holds that there is a reasonable probability that, but for trial counsel's deficient performance, the result of Syed's trial would have been different," Chief Judge Patrick Woodward wrote for the majority. 
 
 During a hearing in June, Thiru Vignarajah, a special assistant attorney general arguing on behalf of the state, said it was reasonable not to seek out McClain because Syed's lawyer was focused on an alibi placing him at Woodlawn High School, not the library. 
 
 "It's the kind of thing that the defense attorney would have to make a judgment about," he said. 
 
 In a dissenting opinion, Judge Kathryn Grill Graeff disagreed with the majority, saying Syed had failed to overcome the presumption that his trial lawyer's failure to contact McClain was based on reasonable trial strategy. Graeff said she would have reversed the lower court's ruling granting Syed a new trial. 
 
 Syed has been behind bars since his arrest in February 1999. 
 
 Brown said that after Syed learned the court had upheld the ruling granting him a new trial, he wanted to "convey his deep gratitude and thanks from the bottom of his heart for all those people who have supported him this long and all those people who have believed in him." 
 
 Brown said "Serial" had an enormous impact on the case, generating attention that helped Syed's defense team locate McClain and bring her to Baltimore for a post-conviction hearing. 
 
 "And 'Serial' has also helped to build this groundswell of support for us and for Adnan and for the case, and that has really fueled these efforts and allowed us to keep fighting on the way that we have," Brown said. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press writer Denise Lavoie contributed to this report from Richmond. ||||| Maryland’s second-highest court ruled Thursday that “Serial” podcast subject Adnan Syed should receive a new trial in the killing of Woodlawn High School classmate Hae Min Lee. 
 
 The Court of Special Appeals’ opinion upheld a lower court’s decision to overturn Syed’s 2000 conviction in the case, sending it back to Circuit Court for a retrial there. 
 
 The opinion, which found Syed’s previous counsel had failed him in deciding not to call a key alibi witness at his trial two decades ago, could be appealed to the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court. That would mean many more months before Syed finds out whether his conviction will remain or if he will get a new trial. 
 
 Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh’s office, which represents the state in the case, said that it is “currently reviewing today’s decision to determine next steps,” including whether to appeal. It has 30 days to do so. 
 
 Producer Sarah Koenig on Baltimore-set 'Serial,' a global podcast hit » 
 
 C. Justin Brown, Syed’s attorney, called the higher court’s opinion “incredible.” 
 
 “It’s been a really long wait, and that’s been hard and it’s been stressful, obviously not just for us but for Adnan, who’s now been in prison for 19 years, going on 20 years,” Brown said. “I firmly believe that he is innocent, and our goal is to get him out of prison.” 
 
 Brown said he spoke to Syed after the opinion came down, and that Syed asked him “to convey his deep gratitude and thanks from the bottom of his heart for all those people who supported him this long, and all those people who have believed in him” — including his family and those who have championed his cause since his case was spotlighted by “Serial.” 
 
 Syed was convicted in 2000 and sentenced to life in prison for the killing of his former girlfriend, Woodlawn High School classmate Lee, whose body was found in Leakin Park. 
 
 Syed maintained his innocence, and his case attracted international attention in 2014 when it was featured on the “Serial” podcast, which was downloaded millions of times and prompted legions of listeners to scrutinize the case online. 
 
 Brown said Thursday that he would be discussing with Syed whether to file a motion requesting Syed’s release from prison pending his new trial. A similar motion failed after the lower court overturned Syed’s conviction. 
 
 Lee’s family could not be reached for comment on Thursday, though they expressed frustration when Syed was first granted a new trial in 2016. 
 
 “We do not speak as often or as loudly as those who support Adnan Syed, but we care just as much about this case. We continue to grieve,” the family said in a statement at the time. “We continue to believe justice was done when Mr. Syed was convicted of killing Hae.” 
 
 In the court’s opinion Thursday, Chief Judge Patrick L. Woodward wrote that a “deficient performance” by Syed’s attorney during his initial trial — namely, her failure to call a witness named Asia McClain — “prejudiced Syed’s defense.” 
 
 Woodward was joined in his opinion by Judge Alexander Wright Jr., while Judge Kathryn Graeff wrote a dissenting opinion. 
 
 Syed was granted a post-conviction hearing in February 2016, during which his new attorneys argued that his original counsel had failed to call McClain — now McClain Chapman — as an alibi witness. They also questioned the reliability of cellphone evidence used to place Syed at the spot where Lee's body was found. 
 
 Four months later, retired Judge Martin Welch, who had denied Syed's previous request for a new trial, vacated his conviction and ordered a new trial. The judge said questions about the cellphone tower evidence should have been raised by Syed's original team. 
 
 Read more: The story behind the 'Serial' podcast » 
 
 The state appealed the lower court judge’s ruling. Syed's attorneys then filed a separate conditional appeal, asking the court to look at the alibi issue. 
 
 In the opinion Thursday, the court upheld the lower court’s decision to vacate Syed’s conviction, but on different grounds. 
 
 The higher court rejected the argument that the mishandling of cellphone tower evidence was grounds for a new trial, as the lower court had found. But it accepted the argument that Syed’s defense should have called McClain Chapman to the stand as an alibi witness, something the lower court had not accepted. 
 
 “It was essentially a flip-flop” of the lower court’s decision, but in Syed’s favor nonetheless, Brown said. 
 
 Woodward found that, “there is a reasonable probability that McClain’s alibi testimony would have raised a reasonable doubt in the mind of at least one juror about Syed’s involvement [in] Hae’s murder, and thus ‘the result of the proceedings would have been different.’” 
 
 The Court of Special Appeals had considered the case during a hearing last June. 
 
 There, judges had focused more on the alibi witness angle, questioning attorneys for Syed and the state attorney general's office about what weight they should give to McClain Chapman, who claimed to have seen Syed at the Woodlawn library when prosecutors said Lee was killed. 
 
 "How can you possibly evaluate an alibi witness without speaking to her?" Woodward asked during the state's presentation by Thiru Vignarajah, a special assistant attorney general. 
 
 Vignarajah referred questions to Frosh’s office on Thursday. 
 
 The judges asked Brown, Syed's current attorney, whether there was any case law that would establish that Syed’s attorney, the late M. Cristina Gutierrez, provided ineffective counsel to Syed because she did not speak to McClain. 
 
 Graeff asked Brown whether it is a defense attorney's responsibility to speak to any possible alibi witness — to which Brown said yes.
– Serial subject Adnan Syed moved a step closer to a new trial Thursday when Maryland's Court of Special Appeals upheld a 2016 decision to overturn his murder conviction from 2000 and grant him a retrial. Prosecutors, who objected when a lower court vacated the conviction, haven't said whether they'll appeal the decision from the state's second-highest court to its highest court, the Court of Appeals, reports the AP. The case of Syed, who was 17 years old when he was convicted of killing ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee, came to national attention with the 2014 Serial podcast, which cast doubt on the conviction. The appeals court panel decided 2-1 that Syed's lawyer in 2000 failed him by neglecting to investigate an alibi witness who said she saw him in a library around the time Lee was murdered. Syed's attorney, C. Justin Brown, tells the Baltimore Sun that the court's decision is "incredible." "It's been a really long wait, and that's been hard and it's been stressful, obviously not just for us but for Adnan, who's now been in prison for 19 years, going on 20 years," he says. "I firmly believe that he is innocent, and our goal is to get him out of prison." Syed has been in custody since his February 1999 arrest. A judge denied a request to release him on bail after the conviction was first overturned, and Brown says he plans to talk to Syed about filing a fresh request.