The Track Coach Whom Cristina Gutierrez Failed to Contact in the Adnan Syed Case

I’ve written a few posts about Woodlawn’s track practice on January 13, 1999. For instance, in this post, I addressed the question of whether track practice started at 3:30 P.M. Later, in this post, I noted how Adnan’s defense team failed to contact his track teammate Will despite having every reason to believe that he could have had information that would have completely destroyed the State’s case. But what if there were another person connected to the track team whom the defense erroneously failed to contact?

I’ve posted before that there are several versions of a defense memo containing a list of the Woodlawn indoor track team in 1999. Here’s another version of that memo:

The names of two of the three track coaches listed at the bottom should be familiar. Coach Sye was the head track coach in 1999; he’s the one who recalls talking to Adnan during track practice on the rare warm January day in 1999. Coach Russell was an assistant track coach who was mentioned a few times in this post by Susan Simpson.

Both Coach Sye and Coach Russell were subpoenaed. Coach Sye testified as a witness for the defense; Coach Russell was not called as a witness. I’m not sure whether Coach Russell simply lacked useful information or whether he was never properly subpoenaed, like Krista. Here’s a memo from the defense files.

That leaves the third coach: Mark Pryor, the first coach listed in the above memo. As far as I can tell, he might have been the coach for field events at Woodlawn in 1999 and/or an assistant coach who took over as head coach in 2003. The conspicuous box around Coach Pryor’s name and the placement of his name before the other coaches makes it seem like he was viewed as pretty important and someone whom the defense was interested in contacting.

And yet…there’s no other mention of Coach Pryor in the defense files. No indication that he was ever contacted. He was certainly never subpoenaed and never testified as a witness at trial.

Now, it’s certainly possible that Coach Pryor would have had nothing meaningful to say if contacted. It’s also possible that he might have said something that hurt Adnan’s case. That said, given that Coach Sye seemed to recall seeing Adnan at practice on January 13th, there seems to be a decent chance that Coach Pryor would have had a similar recollection. But, based upon another failure by Adnan’s trial attorney, we’ll likely never know.

-CM