Prosecutors drop charges against Adnan Syed in 1999 murder of ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee
Baltimore prosecutors dropped charges against Adnan Syed on Tuesday, who was freed from prison last month after spending more than 22 years behind bars fighting a murder conviction at the center of the hit podcast “Serial.”
Syed was sentenced to life behind bars in 2000 for the murder of Hae Min Lee, his former girlfriend, but has maintained his innocence in the decades since. He was freed on Sept. 19 by City Circuit Court Judge Melissa Phin, who concluded trial prosecutors failed to turn over evidence indicating someone else could have been behind Lee’s slaying.
“Although my administration was not responsible for neither the pain inflicted upon Hae Min Lee’s family, nor was my administration responsible for the wrongful conviction of Mr. Syed, as a representative of the institution, it is my responsibility to acknowledge and to apologize to the family of Hae Min Lee and Adnan Syed,” said Marilyn Mosby, the state’s attorney for the city of Baltimore.
“Justice is never denied, but justice be done,” Mosby added. “Today, justice is done.”
After his release last month, Syed, now 41, was placed on home detention with GPS location monitoring.
Adnan Syed, center right, leaves the courthouse after a hearing on Sept. 19, 2022, in Baltimore. A judge has ordered the release of Syed on Tuesday, Oct. 11 after overturning his conviction for a 1999 murder that was chronicled in the hit podcast "Serial." (Jerry Jackson/)
The Baltimore state’s attorney’s office on Tuesday declined to prosecute the case further, citing DNA test results that “excluded Mr. Syed from the DNA recovered from the evidence.” As a result, the Circuit Court dropped all criminal charges against him, triggering the dismissal of the criminal case in its entirety, according to the public defender’s office.
“Finally, Adnan Syed is able to live as a free man. The DNA results confirmed what we have already known and what underlies all of the current proceedings: that Adnan is innocent and lost 23 years of his life serving time for a crime he did not commit,” Syed’s attorney Erica Suter said in a statement.
“While the proceedings are not completely over, this is an important step for Adnan, who has been on house arrest since the motion to vacate was first granted last month,” she added. “He still needs some time to process everything that has happened and we ask that you provide him and his family with that space.”
Adnan Syed, center, leaves the Cummings Courthouse on Sept. 19, 2022, in Baltimore. A judge has ordered the release of Syed on Tuesday, Oct. 11 after overturning his conviction for a 1999 murder that was chronicled in the hit podcast "Serial." (Brian Witte/)
Lee and Syed dated while they were students at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore County. They broke up just weeks before her body was found in a park in Baltimore in January 1999. According to her autopsy, she died of manual strangulation. She was just 18 years old.
The case was thrust back into the spotlight years later after it became the subject of the well-known podcast “Serial,” which raised doubts about some of the evidence, including cellphone tower data.
A reinvestigation in the matter later revealed evidence indicating the involvement of two alternate suspects, who may have been involved individually or together, the state’s attorney’s office said.
Lee’s family has already expressed intent to appeal the decision to vacate Syed’s murder conviction. Lawyers for Lee’s brother, Young Lee, filed a notice of appeal “based on violations of his family’s right to meaningfully participate in the September 19, 2022 hearing on the motion to vacate Adnan Syed’s conviction,” his attorney, Steven Kelly, told CNN last month.
Young Lee argued he was not given enough notice to attend the legal proceedings last month, which were ultimately delayed, so that he may appear via Zoom.
With News Wire Services
