On Monday, a judge granted the prosecution’s request to overturn Adnan Syed’s murder conviction. Adnan Syed, the focus of the first season of the well-known podcast “Serial,” has maintained his innocence in the 1999 death of his ex-girlfriend.
Syed has been serving a life sentence after being found guilty of first-degree murder, robbery, kidnapping, and false imprisonment in connection with the death of Hae Min Lee. Baltimore prosecutors filed the request last week seeking a new trial for Syed.
Baltimore City Circuit Judge Melissa Phinn highlighted the existence of two suspects who may have been unlawfully cleared as part of the inquiry in support of her decision to resign. She also referenced evidence from the state investigation that was not properly provided to defense lawyers.
The courtroom erupted in applause and sobs upon hearing her decision. Syed was not tied, but his feet were. He was dressed for the hearing in a white button-down shirt, a black tie, and a kufi hat. Following the decision, authorities released Syed’s ankle chains, and he immediately left the courthouse amid cheers and ovations from his supporters. As he got into a car, he did not stop to speak to reporters.
“We’re not yet declaring Adnan Syed is innocent,” Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby said Monday after the judge’s ruling. “But we are declaring that in the interest of fairness and justice he is entitled to a new trial.”
To decide whether to pursue a new trial or to drop the charges against Adnan, prosecutors must wait for the results of a DNA test, which they are attempting to accelerate. However, that obligation is “separate and apart” from the inquiry into Lee’s murder, according to Mosby.
According to Becky Feldman, the head of the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office’s Sentencing Review Unit, Syed will wear an ankle monitor with tracking throughout this period.
Twenty-three years after he went to prison, “we now know what Adnan and his loved ones have always known, that Adnan’s trial was profoundly and outrageously unfair. Evidence was hidden from him, evidence that pointed to other people as the killers,” Assistant Public Defender Erica Suter, Syed’s attorney and director of the Innocence Project Clinic, said in a statement following the ruling.
The hearing was scheduled for close to eight years after the “Serial” podcast delved into his case and raised issues regarding the conviction and his legal counsel. As a result, the podcast attracted a sizable following, sparked a boom in true crime podcasts, and prompted other investigations into the incident, including the HBO docuseries “The Case Against Adnan Syed.”
Following a nearly one-year inquiry, prosecutors filed a motion to overturn Syed’s conviction. At the time, Mosby declared that although the state “lacks confidence in the integrity of the conviction” and that Syed should receive a new trial, prosecutors were “not saying, at this time, that Mr. Syed is innocent.”
The case was reopened when new information about two suspects other than Syed surfaced, including one who allegedly threatened to murder Lee and make her “disappear,” according to the prosecution. Syed’s attorneys said that until this year, neither he nor his legal team knew that such material existed.
The prosecution’s request to overturn the verdict was lauded by the defense team as making things right.
This unfair verdict cannot stand given the startling absence of reliable evidence accusing Mr. Syed and the mounting evidence incriminating other suspects, Suter said in a statement last week.
Even still, while Syed, his family, and supporters celebrated Monday’s decision, the victim’s relatives found it upsetting.
“This isn’t a podcast for me. It’s real life,” Yung Lee, the brother of Hae Min Lee, said in court, adding he felt “betrayed” by the state.
“Whenever I think it’s over, it’s ended, it always comes back,” he said.
According to their lawyer, Steve Kelly, Lee’s family is “still in shock” and is considering appealing.
“The family is principally interested in justice,” he said outside court. “For the past 22 years the world and they have been told that Adnan Syed is the murderer of their daughter and sister Hae Min Lee. Now the court and prosecutors have a different view. The family seeks truth and a just process and result.”
When she vanished in January 1999, Adnan and Lee were seniors at Baltimore County’s Woodlawn High School. Three weeks later, her strangled body was found in a municipal forest.
In a combined application for post-conviction DNA testing that Syed and the prosecution submitted in March, they noted that since the crime occurred more than 20 years ago, “DNA testing has changed and improved drastically.”
Touch DNA testing on the victim’s clothing was requested in the March petition, but it was not possible at the time of the trial. Except for the victim’s fingernail clippings, none of the objects being tested currently were examined for DNA in 2018 by the Baltimore City Police Lab, according to Mosby’s statement.
Becky Feldman, the head of the Sentencing Review Unit, and Mosby, according to Mosby, submitted the request to vacate. Syed was a minor when he was found guilty.