Sarah Koenig

Cell phone evidence was crucial to the state's case.

It underpinned Jay's testimony about what happened that night, where they went, whom they spoke to.

It glued together the timeline.

The cell phone evidence helped clear up the shagginess of Jay's story.

But Becky Feldman wrote in last week's motion that the cell phone evidence at trial, it was unreliable.

Adnan's defense team has been saying this for years, but the state only recently talked to three experts about what the cell records actually show and don't show.

And the experts all agreed you can't use the incoming call records to back up Jay's narrative.

Doesn't work like that for a host of reasons I won't bore you with.

We didn't get to the bottom of this incoming call problem back when we were reporting this story.

At the end of the motion, Becky Fellman tacked on a, by the way, final section about one of the two main detectives on the case, Bill Ritz.

He was accused of misconduct in another murder case that went to trial the same year Adnan did.

In that case, Detective Ritz was accused of manipulating evidence, fabricating evidence, not disclosing exculpatory evidence, not following up on evidence that had pointed to a different suspect.

In 2016, the guy convicted in that case was exonerated.

Ritz was one of the two detectives who repeatedly interviewed Jay Wilds.

So that's the bulk of the state's motion to vacate.

New information about two potential suspects, important evidence withheld from the defense, renewed suspicion of Jay's story, loss of confidence in the cell phone evidence.

And while the Brady violation alone is enough for the state to cry uncle.

All of it together, well, yes, overwhelming cause for concern.

Anand's case was a mess, is a mess.

That's pretty much where we were when we stopped reporting in 2014.