Judge vacates homicide conviction of Adnan Syed of ‘Serial’

In a exceptional reversal, Adnan Syed walked out of jail Monday for the primary time since he was a youngster, having spent 23 years combating his conviction on costs that he murdered his former highschool girlfriend, a case that was chronicled within the first season of the hit podcast “Serial.”

Judge Melissa M. Phinn of Baltimore City Circuit Court vacated the conviction “in the interests of fairness and justice,” discovering that prosecutors had failed to show over proof that would have helped Syed at trial and found new proof that would have affected the end result of his case.

Prosecutors have 30 days to determine if they may search a brand new trial or drop the fees towards Syed, who was ordered to serve dwelling detention till then. Prosecutors mentioned that an investigation had pointed to 2 potential “alternative suspects,” though these people haven’t been named publicly or charged.

“At this time, we will remove the shackles from Mr. Syed,” Phinn declared after asserting her resolution. Moments later, Syed walked onto the courthouse steps, smiling as a crowd of supporters shouted and cheered. He gave a small wave and climbed right into a ready automobile, with out saying something to reporters who pressed round him.

Syed, 41, had been serving a life sentence for the strangulation of his highschool classmate and onetime girlfriend Hae Min Lee, whose physique was discovered buried in a park in Baltimore County in 1999.

Adnan Syed walks out of the Baltimore City Circuit Court after a choose overturned his conviction, in Baltimore, Md., on Sept 19, 2022.(The New York Times)

Syed, who was 17 on the time, had steadfastly maintained his innocence, and questions on whether or not he had acquired a good trial drew widespread consideration when “Serial” debuted in 2014. The podcast turned a pop-culture sensation with its detailed examination over 12 episodes of the case towards Syed, together with the peculiarities of his lawyer, who agreed to be disbarred amid complaints of wrongdoing in 2001 and died in 2004.

But it wasn’t till this month that prosecutors advisable that his conviction be vacated and that he be granted a brand new trial as a result of, they mentioned, “the state no longer has confidence in the integrity of the conviction.”

In a movement filed in Baltimore City Circuit Court on Wednesday, prosecutors mentioned {that a} almost yearlong investigation, performed with Syed’s lawyer, had uncovered data pointing to the potential involvement of two “alternative suspects,” in addition to key proof that prosecutors might need didn’t confide in Syed’s attorneys in violation of their authorized obligation. The investigation additionally recognized “significant reliability issues regarding the most critical pieces of evidence” used to convict Syed, together with cellphone tower information.

Prosecutors mentioned within the movement that they weren’t asserting that Syed was harmless. And they mentioned they might in the end determine whether or not to proceed with a brand new trial or drop the fees after they accomplished their investigation.

Lee’s household expressed concern that prosecutors had not given them enough discover concerning the transfer to vacate the conviction. During a listening to Monday, Steve Kelly, the household’s lawyer, requested Phinn to postpone a choice on the movement.

But a prosecutor mentioned the state had given correct discover, and Phinn rejected the request.

As the court docket took a recess, Kelly scrambled to name Lee’s brother, Young Lee, at work to ask him be a part of the listening to on Zoom. Syed, wearing a shirt and tie, appeared on through the dispute.

“This is not a podcast for me,” Lee mentioned, voice wavering, when he addressed the court docket about 45 minutes afterward Zoom. “This is real life — a never-ending nightmare for 20-plus years.”

He mentioned he felt “betrayed” and “blindsided” by the movement to vacate, and annoyed with the numerous turns within the case during the last 20 years. “Whenever I think it’s over, and it’s ended, it always comes back,” Lee mentioned, including: “It’s killing me and killing my mother.”

Becky Feldman, a Baltimore prosecutor, mentioned on the listening to that the investigation “acknowledged justice has been denied to Ms. Lee and her family by not assuring the correct assailant was brought to justice.”

Marilyn J. Mosby, the state’s legal professional for Baltimore City, moved to vacate Syed’s conviction as she faces federal costs that she perjured herself to acquire cash from a retirement fund and made false statements on mortgage functions to purchase two trip properties in Florida. That case is continuous. Her lawyer has known as the fees “bogus.”

It was not instantly clear what Syed deliberate to do upon his launch. At the Patuxent Institution, a state jail in Jessup, Maryland, he had been learning for a bachelor’s diploma from Georgetown University via its Prison Scholars Program.

Syed had an on-again, off-again relationship with Hae Min Lee after they had been each college students at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore County. Prosecutors had theorized that he killed her after she began relationship another person in December 1998.

Key proof implicating Syed got here from a buddy and co-defendant, Jay Wilds, who testified that he had helped Syed bury Lee’s physique.

Prosecutors additionally used cellphone billing information to corroborate Wilds’ testimony and to point out that Syed had been within the space of the park the place Lee, 18, was buried.

A jury convicted Syed in 2000 of first-degree homicide, theft, kidnapping and false imprisonment. An appeals court docket vacated Syed’s conviction in 2018, ruling that he had acquired ineffective authorized counsel, however Maryland’s highest court docket reversed that call in 2019.

Syed’s lawyer, Erica J. Suter, introduced the case to Mosby’s workplace final 12 months after Maryland adopted a legislation that allowed folks convicted of crimes as juveniles to request that their sentences be modified after they’d served 20 years in jail.

As Mosby’s workplace thought of the request, further proof emerged requiring prosecutors to conduct a extra in-depth investigation, the workplace mentioned.

Significantly, the investigation recognized two “alternative suspects” who might have been concerned collectively or individually and had been “known persons at the time of the investigation” however had been by no means dominated out, prosecutors mentioned. Both had “motive and/or propensity to commit this crime,” they wrote.

Prosecutors didn’t disclose the names of the 2 folks, and shut watchers of the case have been speculating about who they’re and whether or not they had been talked about in “Serial” or the four-part HBO documentary “The Case Against Adnan Syed,” which debuted in 2019. (In 2020, The New York Times Co. purchased Serial Productions, the corporate behind the podcast.)

Prosecutors mentioned {that a} doc they discovered of their trial file indicated that one of many folks had threatened Lee in entrance of one other particular person, saying he would make her “disappear” and “kill her.”

Prosecutors additionally discovered one other doc of their trial file wherein a distinct particular person relayed data that “can be viewed as a motive for that same suspect to harm the victim,” the movement said.

The proof may have helped Syed at trial, however it was not within the protection’s information or in any of the pleadings that prosecutors produced for the protection, the movement said.

The obvious failure to show over the information might need violated a landmark Supreme Court ruling from 1963, Brady v. Maryland, which obligates prosecutors to offer their adversaries with any proof that may very well be construed as favorable to the accused, the movement said.

The prosecutors’ investigation discovered that one of many two “alternative suspects” had been convicted of attacking a girl in her car, and that one had been convicted of partaking in serial rape and sexual assault. Mosby’s workplace additionally disclosed that Lee’s automobile had been discovered immediately behind the home of one of many suspects’ members of the family.

In the movement, prosecutors questioned the cellphone information used to position Syed close to the burial website, citing a discover on the cellphone information particularly stating that billing places for incoming calls “would not be considered reliable information for location.” Two specialists they consulted agreed with that evaluation.

“Mr. Syed’s conviction rests on the evolving narrative of an incentivized, cooperating, 19-year-old co-defendant, propped up by inaccurate and misleading cellphone location data,” Suter wrote in a court docket movement on Wednesday, referring to Wilds. “This was so in 1999, when Mr. Syed was a 17-year-old child. It remains so today.”