In a case that gave rise to the popular true crime podcast Serial, a judge has overturned a Baltimore man’s murder conviction.
When Adnan Syed was given a life sentence in prison for the 1999 burying of his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee’s body in the woods, he was 19 years old.
His conviction was challenged last week by the prosecution, who claimed that two “alternative suspects” had been identified after a year-long assessment of the case.
Syed will be given home detention after being freed.
After roughly 23 years in prison, his shackles were removed in court on Monday. He is now 41.
Judge Melissa Phinn of the Baltimore Circuit Court said that she was overturning his sentence in the spirit of fairness and justice,” noting that the state had withheld information that would have aided his defense throughout the trial.
What you need to know regarding Adnan Syed and Serial
The ruling does not prove Syed’s innocence. A new trial has been mandated by the judge.
2000 saw Syed’s premeditated murder, kidnapping, robbery, and false imprisonment convictions by a jury.
He was accused of strangling Lee, a classmate from Woodlawn High School, then concealing her corpse in Baltimore’s Leakin Park with the assistance of a buddy, according to the prosecution. They made use of location data from mobile phones, which has now been shown to be incorrect.
Syed has attempted to appeal numerous times over the past 20 years, and each time has been unsuccessful, most recently in 2019.
The 2014 podcast Serial brought the case to the attention of a global audience and questioned Syed’s guilt. And over 340 million people have downloaded episodes of the show. Additionally, the case has inspired numerous works, including a 2019 HBO documentary series.
Syed “deserves a new trial, according to the Baltimore State’s Attorney’s Office, which examined the case with Syed’s most recent defense lawyer over the course of the past year.
Prosecutors named two new prospective accused who were known to officers since the 1999 murder and claimed they lacked trust in the integrity of the conviction.
Although neither accused has been identified, authorities claimed they both had histories of violence against women, involving convictions that took place after Syed’s trial. One defendant was exonerated from the Lee’s death inquiry after failing a lie detector test, a procedure that is no longer often used in US courts.
According to lead prosecutor Marilyn Mosby, outside the court, “Our prosecutors have been sworn to not just vigorously argue on behalf of crime victims, but where the evidence exists to exonerate individuals that have been wrongly accused and convicted.
She was cut off by raucous applause as Syed made his way from the building through a crowd of onlookers and photographers.
Every day, only when I think it was over or over, it comes back. Young Lee cried out, It’s killing me.
I’m not a podcast listener. This has been actual life for more than 20 years; it is an unending nightmare.
The Lees had already been “kept out of the judicial process,” according to Steve Kelly, the family’s victim’s rights attorney, and they were quite dissatisfied with how they had been managed.
Information was all they sought, according to Mr. Kelly. They want to know more than anyone else if it is true that someone else killed their daughter.
The podcast’s producer, Serial Productions, tweeted that a new episode on the most recent developments in the legal case would be available on Tuesday.
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