Sarah Koenig

So the day after this new law comes into effect, on October 2nd, 2021, Adnan's current attorney, Erica Souter, delivers his case over to the Baltimore City State's attorney's office for them to look at.

Because, if you remember, Adnan was only 17 when he was arrested for killing Hayman Lee, his classmate and former girlfriend.

This request goes to Becky Feldman, chief of the sentencing review unit for the prosecutor's office.

One of the factors she has to weigh in deciding whether to support a sentence reduction under this new law is the facts of the crime.

So Becky Feldman starts reading.

And pretty soon, she's bothered.

Something isn't right with the case.

She's having a hard time answering what should be a simple question.

What's Adnan Syed's level of culpability in this crime?

Becky Feldman is pretty new to the prosecutor's office, pretty new to being a prosecutor.

She'd been high up at the public defender's office for years.

Her sense of alarm was cultivated on the defense side.

A sentence review isn't supposed to be a reinvestigation of a case, but that's what starts rolling.

By March, Becky's office, joined by Adnan's lawyer, asks a judge to order new high-tech DNA testing.

That takes a while to work through the system.

So while they wait, Becky and Erica Suter work together, pulling threads.

Becky's office consults cell phone experts, a polygraph expert.

She's all up inside Google Maps and land records.

The state's massive case file is over at the attorney general's office a few blocks away.

Becky starts hoofing it over there in June.