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.

[2] She served as trial counsel for Adnan Syed, the Baltimore-area teenager who was convicted in 2000 of murdering his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee and was sentenced to life in prison.

The brothers said that the officers used excessive force in arresting them at a party at the Red Roof Inn in Jessup, Maryland in January 1990, 5 months prior to Bowie's death and weeks before they were to face police in court.

[9] Gutierrez represented a female Baltimore police officer who was accused of first-degree murder after shooting her husband six times.

Gutierrez developed a "battered spouse syndrome" defense and her client was convicted only of the lesser second-degree murder charge.

[10] Gutierrez also represented Jacqueline Bouknight, a Baltimore woman who had been held in contempt of court for not revealing the whereabouts of her son to state social services officials.

[14] On February 9, 1999, the body of Hae Min Lee (Korean: 이해민), an 18-year-old student at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore, Maryland, was found in Leakin Park.

After a six-week second trial, Syed was found guilty of Lee's murder on February 25, 2000[17] and sentenced to life in prison, although he continued to maintain his innocence.

Brown says that Gutierrez failed to interview several alibi witnesses, including Asia McClain, who was with Syed at the time Lee was killed.

[21][22][23] On November 6, 2015, "Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Martin Welch ordered that Syed's post-conviction proceedings would be re-opened 'in the interests of justice for all parties.'"

[24] Following a February 2016 hearing, during which Asia McClain and colleagues and friends of Gutierrez testified, Judge Welch granted Syed's request for a new trial on June 30, 2016, ruling that Gutierrez "rendered ineffective assistance when she failed to cross-examine the state's expert regarding the reliability of cell tower location evidence", and vacated Syed's conviction.

In light of the voluntary disbarment, the state's Attorney Grievance Commission dropped investigations into about a dozen client complaints that they had paid for work which Gutierrez had not completed.