Maria Cristina Gutierrez (February 28, 1951 – January 30, 2004) was an American criminal defense attorney based in Baltimore, Maryland, who represented several high-profile defendants in the 1990s and was the first Hispanic woman to be counsel of record in a case before the Supreme Court of the United States.She was the initial trial attorney for Adnan Syed, the Baltimore-area teenager who was convicted in 2000 of murdering his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee in 1999.
He was sentenced to life in prison.
The controversial murder trial and conviction gained renewed national attention in 2014 and 2015 after being the subject of the first seasons of the podcasts Serial and secondly, Undisclosed.