You know I was completely blind-sided by the “review fee.” Everyone I spoke to and read about, all the info I compiled. I realize now was about the litigation fee. And you know what sucks? My transcripts are full of crap. It is 6300 pages of nothing, with a little bit of substance.… It’s frustrating, cause that’s what is driving the price up so much.…
I think I found this one lawyer, his name is Justin Brown. He was the point man at Larry Nathan’s firm, specializing in Post-Conviction Petitions. About 2 months ago he started his own firm. I know 2 guys who have dealt with him—their appeals are still pending. They spoke highly of him, and they felt that he was very thorough in his research and preparation. One thing he said was that when he started his own firm, he would charge less because he wouldn’t have as much overhead as the bigger firms. He responded to my initial request with a questionnaire which I mailed back last week.… The thing is that, at trial and my appeal, we had big firms and look where that got me, mashaAllah. They treated me like a case #, and I truly feel it was all about $$ to them. Maybe I need a lawyer that believes in my innocence.…
I really hope now is my time, it’s just been getting to me. I just want some Daylight, inshaAllah.
Adnan had heard from other inmates about a number of attorneys who specialized in PCR petitions. Some were big names and came with big fees. He knew he had to hire someone who was very, very good at this (often measured by how much they charged) because it was his last shot.
He had spent the last five years studying the law, poring through his case files and keeping up on recent Maryland court decisions. He already had a good sense of what issues would be most important.
He sent me a list of attorneys he was interested in so I could check them out. He was particularly curious about one who had just recently started his own law firm, breaking away from a larger firm.
C. Justin Brown was based in Baltimore, and Adnan asked if I would be willing to meet with him at some point. I said sure. At this time I was no longer living in the area; in 2006 I had remarried and moved to Connecticut.
Irfan had turned out to be rather persistent. It took a few years before I felt ready to get remarried and when I did I told him, “Look, I know you’re young, but I’m not that young and if you want to get married, it’s now or never. I don’t know how your family is going to take an older, divorced, single mother (the perfect trifecta to give any potential Pakistani mother-in-law heart palpitations) and if anyone in your family, or my family, objects to this, I’m out. You have thirty days to give me your answer.”
I was thirty-one, my daughter was eight, I had been alone for four years, and I had no time to waste.
Within the month he had spoken to his parents and within another month two vans crammed full of his family, extended and nuclear, arrived from Toronto. They brought sweets, roses, and an engagement ring.
On December 9, 2005, I married Irfan in Toronto, with my daughter present (unthinkable in Pakistani culture), and together we moved to Hartford, Connecticut, where he began a master’s degree in Christian-Muslim Relations at the Hartford Seminary.
It was a relief to start a new life in a new place, though it meant leaving behind my immigration practice in Virginia. I didn’t mind, and was energized by the interfaith community that surrounded the seminary.
As my new husband studied, I got busy setting up my immigration law practice and also immediately got involved in a local nonprofit focused on charity and interfaith outreach, the Muslim Coalition of Connecticut (MCCT).
In the years leading up to 2009, when we began preparing for the post-conviction appeal, my life had been transformed by that move and by the political landscape of America. After 9/11, anti-Muslim sentiment grew each year, and counterterror policies steadily encroached on our civil liberties. The widespread surveillance of mosques and Muslim student associations by local and federal agencies was common knowledge.
I found myself representing about a dozen immigrants who were being leaned on by federal law enforcement to become informants inside their mosques; this was not happening in response to any imminent threats, instead it was a sweeping fishing expedition in Muslim communities nationwide. My clients were being backed into a corner through extreme coercion; if they didn’t cooperate they were threatened with deportation or having their immigration cases denied.
Publicly, I worked through the MCCT to better relations between local communities and law enforcement. The fact that this work was being undermined by troubling surveillance and infiltration policies—coupled with news of horribly bigoted anti-Muslim training in the FBI, Pentagon, and local jurisdictions—was deeply frustrating. But it also created an opportunity for change, which I began to think about while, from hundreds of miles away, keeping an eye on the upcoming PCR.
On a trip to Baltimore I went to meet Justin; Saad joined me. Justin was enthusiastic, polite, and smart. He had not only read through Adnan’s court filings but had actually traveled hours to meet him, and he believed Adnan was innocent. I’d already done some research and knew he was a former war reporter in Bosnia during the horrendous ethnic cleansing in the early 1990s. I liked that he had been exposed to a world outside of the law, because many lawyers I knew became cynical and jaded over their years practicing in silos, and that he also presumably had experience with Muslim communities.
I had a good feeling about Justin, and I had a good feeling about our issues. After all, we had Asia in the bag. I told Adnan over the phone that I liked the guy, and Adnan did too, so after some fee negotiation, Justin Brown was hired to represent Adnan in his PCR petition with the Circuit Court of Baltimore.
* * *
The first order of business was to find Asia McClain. She no longer lived in the Baltimore area but Justin had a private investigator on the case, and she located Asia on the other side of the country.
Justin had already attempted to reach her by letter to let her know we were looking to speak to her about her 1999 letters and 2000 affidavit, but he had heard nothing back. So his PI eventually went to her home. A man answered the door, and the PI explained who she was and asked him to pass along her card to Asia. When she didn’t hear back, she tried again. This time the same man told her to leave them alone, and Justin never heard from Asia.
This was terrible, literally the worst thing that could happen after all these years. Why was Asia stonewalling us? We desperately needed her for the PCR; otherwise all we had were those three documents and my testimony about what she had told me, which didn’t count for much as hearsay. Adnan had waited so many years for this, and we had all banked on the moment when Asia could finally testify for him. There were a lot of tears, prayers, and shock as we realized that we had lost Asia, the most vital aspect of this appeal.
Justin had to make a strategic decision. He could definitely subpoena her and force her to come all the way to Baltimore to testify. But she could end up being a hostile witness, he said, hostile meaning hurtful to the case. Adnan remembered her as a really nice girl, but he didn’t know her that well, and many years had passed since. Anything was possible if we forced her to testify.
Justin conferred with Adnan and decided it was best to move forward with the letters and affidavit and not call Asia. The documents alone sufficed, he believed, to prove that Gutierrez failed in a basic duty to call an alibi witness, prima facie ineffective assistance of counsel. And he was raising another strong legal issue: Gutierrez had failed, despite Adnan twice asking her, to approach the State to see if they would offer a plea deal.
There was strong legal precedent in Adnan’s favor on this; numerous courts had ruled that when a client asked, his or her attorney must at least find out if the State would negotiate a plea. It doesn’t matter if the client, upon being offered, would have said no. It also doesn’t matter if clients maintained their innocence; there is no dearth of literature on innocent people taking plea deals, and even innocent people expressing remorse before a parole board. The system incentivizes this convoluted and
unjust dynamic, where nearly 95 percent of criminal cases are pled out.
To prove to the court that Adnan had indeed asked Gutierrez for a plea, Justin submitted Adnan to a polygraph test, which he passed.
On May 28, 2010, Justin filed the petition for post-conviction relief with the Baltimore City Circuit Court, just making the ten-year deadline. It would be more than two years, with multiple continuances and motions, until the hearing date was scheduled.
* * *
We had a wonderful life and community in Connecticut but after five years we needed to move. Irfan had immense trouble finding work in chaplaincy, at least work that could sustain a family, and had begun working in IT consulting. But all of the consulting jobs he got were far from home. After trying for three years, we finally had a beautiful baby girl, bringing my beautiful daughter count to two. Since the little one was born, I was only working part-time and juggling taking care of the house, the girls, my work, and my activism, all while Irfan was working out of town.
After six years in Connecticut, during which time I barely saw Adnan, I moved back to Maryland in August of 2011, roughly a year before the PCR hearing.
Once back, I began transitioning out of legal practice and into national security work. My experiences—making me aware of law enforcement coercing immigrant clients into unconscionable situations, even coercing Imams to spy on their congregations—weighed heavily on my heart. I spent my first year back in the D.C. area studying national security policy, with a particular focus on a framework the White House called “CVE,” or Countering Violent Extremism. The idea behind CVE was to engage and include the Muslim community on issues of violent extremism and create a space outside of counterterror operations for prevention of recruitment by terrorists, particularly online. The problem was that CVE totally ignored the greatest extremist threat to the homeland as articulated by the FBI itself: homegrown, right-wing, sovereign-citizen militia groups.
In January of 2012 I founded the Safe Nation Collaborative, a firm focused on training law enforcement on how to work with Muslim communities respectfully and providing accurate information about Islam and Muslims. We (myself and a team of trainers) also delivered community trainings on violent extremism, because this was an issue we couldn’t and shouldn’t ignore even though it’s a miniscule problem among American Muslims. More importantly for them, extremist recruiters target our kids in particular, online, while parents have no idea what’s going on.
As the hearing date approached in October 2012, Justin told me I would have to testify about how I got the affidavit from Asia. I wasn’t too worried. My credentials and credibility were strong, I had already worked with hundreds of law enforcement officers and even conducted an FBI training, I was a Truman National Security Fellow, and my legal career was unblemished. I felt confident the court would believe my testimony.
Adnan was also going to testify, but as luck would have it, he suddenly found himself in a bit of a bind once the hearing dates were finalized.
7/13/12
Dear Justin,
Please thank Melissa for faxing the letter to the prison about the postponement. I received my copy as well.
I’m writing you because I have a problem with the Oct. court dates. I don’t know if you remember but about 18 months ago I had asked you to write a letter to the prison regarding my foot injury. I had not received any medical attention at the time, but upon receipt of your letter I was evaluated. Subsequently it was determined that I would need surgery. But as it was not life threatening I was placed on the medical waiting list. I’m constantly in a lot of pain, I don’t take the painkillers they prescribe because of the adverse side effects. I don’t want to destroy my liver just so my foot feels better. I’ve been waiting 18 months now …
Anyway about a week ago, I found out my surgery is scheduled for the same day as the first hearing in Oct. This presents 2 problems:
#1 if I miss the surgery (due to court) I immediately go back to the bottom of the list. They do not stagger patients. So I would have to wait another 18-24 months.
#2 The only reason I know my surgery date is because a nurse was nice enough to tell me. The problem w/that is that inmates aren’t supposed to know their surgery dates in case someone plans an ingenius you-know-what. The great irony of that policy is I know my court date months in advance, and it’s the exact same trip/method. Leave Cumberland → Hagerstown layover → Jessup. Whenever I go to court, half the guys on the bus are medical trips … The point is that you/I couldn’t try to reschedule […] because their first concern would be, “Whoa, how did inmate Syed know about his surgery date??”
[…] I’ve given this a lot of thought, cause I know you have a very busy schedule and you have witnesses lined up to testify, etc for what its worth. I was gonna tough it out. But it is a very painful injury & in the end I’d rather wait a few more months for another court date than to wait another 15–24 months for another surgery date.
If you could get a postponement w/out telling the Judge about the surgery, could you please do it? […] But if you can’t get a postponement, or if you feel it’ll be detrimental to the case, then it is what it is, and I’ll just have to tough it out.
The hearing date wasn’t postponed, though, and Adnan just had to forgo his surgery. Justin still had to put Adnan on the stand, in spite of his condition, to testify about Gutierrez’s failure to take action after telling her about both Asia and the plea. I was a little worried; he had never testified before, he was in pain, and I heard Kathleen Murphy, the same prosecutor from the first trial, was going to be arguing for the State in the PCR—she would fight hard to keep her conviction. It turned out Adnan was not the one I needed to worry about.
The first day of the hearing a small group of us—Aunty Shamim, Yusuf, Saad, Irfan, a few community friends, and myself—arrived at the courthouse.
A mild-looking and mild-mannered judge, Martin Welch, presided.
Adnan shuffled in, constrained in five-point shackles. Having never seen him like this, I choked up. We were all a bit taken aback.
Justin had let me know that I’d be called as a witness that day, and I said ok, I had all my prayers in order and was ready. But first he called Kevin Urick.
He questioned Urick about the plea deal, who testified that he had never been approached by Gutierrez about a plea. What we didn’t expect was that he would bring up Asia.
We were surprised to hear that Asia had called Urick, and then shocked at what she had to say to him.
Urick testified, “She was concerned, because she was being asked questions about an affidavit she had written back at the time of the trial. She told me she had only written it because she was getting pressure from the family. And basically wrote it to please them and get them off her back.”
Adnan:
Although I experienced a great deal of worry and frustration when I was arrested, I expected that everything would work out. I thought people would see I had no reason to kill Hae, and certainly there could be no evidence to say I did. I had complete faith that I would never be held responsible for a crime I did not commit. But by the end of that year, the exact opposite happened. It seemed everyone thought I had reason to kill Hae, and that there was hard evidence to prove I did.
To be convicted and sentenced to prison for Hae’s murder was one thing. But it was even worse to feel that the whole world believed I was a liar and a manipulative person. Because I did not kill Hae; there was nothing for me to feel bad about. I was angry and sad, but there was no internal conflict taking place. To be accused of being an evil person, however, was a whole other thing. Because I did lie to my parents about different things. And while I never manipulated my parents into giving me money or material things, I did manipulate them into thinking I was not messing around with girls and stuff which I was not supposed to do. So with Hae’s murder, I had no culpability; but as far as the State saying I was a bad person? Well, maybe they were right … It was a really tough time for me, emotionally.
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When I arrived at prison, I decided that I was going to try and better myself; specifically, strive to become a better Muslim. And you know Islam has some pretty strict tenets, if you take it literally. No cursing, listening to music, watching TV, taking pictures, dealing with the opposite sex, etc. For several months, I did my best to adhere to what I thought was right. And I felt as if I was making some progress, but I was also a bit miserable at the same time. I still had a desire to do certain things, and I had never been a very disciplined person. So I began veering back and forth; it was a real struggle. I would do good for a couple of days, but then fall back into old habits. It became an emotional roller-coaster I could not handle. So I decided to just give up. I told myself that I was who I was, and that I did not possess the fortitude necessary to better myself.
There was only one issue of contention that I could resolve in my life. And that was the desire I have to never be accused of being a liar and manipulative again. I knew I had lied to my parents about things. But on the other hand, it was never with evil intentions. And I never really had a reason to lie to other people. Sure, my friends’ parents didn’t know we were doing things, but I never attempted to make it seem as if I was someone that I was not. So I did not really know how to avoid being perceived as manipulative when I felt like I was not ever being manipulative in the first place. I came to the conclusion that the only way I could protect myself from ever being accused of being manipulative again was if I never interacted with people from the outside world. I mean people from the street, school, the mosque, etc. Because if I never wrote or called anyone, then no one could ever accuse me of having evil intentions. So that was the deal I made with myself. I decided I would not write to or call anyone except my parent’s home or Rabia and Saad and their family. It was a brutally simple understanding; no one could ever accuse me of ulterior motives for an interaction, if there never was any interaction. So I stuck to that for all these years. I decided to just live in prison, and that would be enough. I would mind my own business, not request anything from anybody. Initially, I worried how I would deal with someone reaching out to me; however, that turned out to be an unnecessary concern.
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