Good evening, Baltimore. ICYMI, our longtime Baltimore reporter Donte Kirby
wrapped his tenure with Technical.ly yesterday. We wish him well and hope you'll follow his next steps. In the meantime, I'll be your main Charm City connect until we find a new Baltimore reporter — who, if you know or are someone great for the job, can apply
here.
It's hard to live in Baltimore or work in media (or both) and not acknowledge the biggest story to come out of the region these past few days: the release of Adnan Syed, one of the accidental stars of the wildly successful true crime podcast "
Serial," from incarceration yesterday after a judge overturned the conviction that put him in prison for 23 years. While he has not been found definitively innocent of the 1999 murder of his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee, prosecutors moved to drop his conviction in light of new evidence — and that's where tech comes in.
Among that possibly exculpatory evidence, according to
the Baltimore Banner, was the reliance on outdated cell phone records and an improperly rendered polygraph test. These issues call to mind, however unintentionally, ongoing debates about the effectiveness of various standard tech that authorities use to justify punitive actions.
If faulty tech is an issue in Syed's case, it begs the question: How can technology be used to produce prosecutorial outcomes that don't leave people in jail for more than two decades? Is it even possible to do so without compromising civil liberties?
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