Baltimore prosecutors filed the motion last week seeking a new trial for Syed, who has been sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of first-degree murder, robbery, kidnapping and false imprisonment in connection with Hae Min’s murder Lee.
In explaining her decision to recuse herself, Baltimore City Circuit Judge Melissa Phinn cited material from the state investigation that was not properly turned over to defense attorneys, as well as the existence of two suspects who may have been unduly clarified as part of the investigation.
His decision was met with cheers and tears in the courtroom. Syed, who attended the hearing wearing a white button-down shirt, a dark tie and a kufi cap, was not handcuffed, but his feet were. After the sentencing, officials uncuffed his ankles, and Syed walked out of the courthouse shortly after to cheers and applause from supporters. He didn’t stop to talk to reporters as he got into a vehicle.
“We’re still not declaring Adnan Syed innocent,” Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby said Monday after the judge’s ruling. “But we are declaring that in the interest of justice and fairness he is entitled to a new trial.”
Prosecutors have 30 days to decide whether to pursue a new trial, and are awaiting DNA analysis they are trying to expedite to determine whether Adnan’s case has been dismissed or the case is scheduled for trial . But that warrant, Mosby said, is “separate and apart” from the investigation into who killed Lee.
In the meantime, Syed will wear an ankle monitor with monitoring, according to Becky Feldman, chief of the Sentencing Review Unit of the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office.
Twenty-three years after entering prison, “we now know what Adnan and his loved ones have always known, that Adnan’s trial was deeply and outrageously unfair. Evidence was withheld from him, evidence that they were targeting other people as killers.” Assistant Public Defender Erica Suter, Syed’s attorney and director of the Innocence Project Clinic, said in a statement after the sentencing.
The hearing comes nearly eight years after the “Serial” podcast delved into his case, raising questions about the conviction and his legal representation. In doing so, the podcast reached a large audience and led to a boom in true crime podcasts, as well as additional examinations of the case, including the HBO docuseries “The Case Against Adnan Syed.”
Prosecutors moved to overturn Syed’s conviction after a nearly year-long investigation, they said in a news release last week. At the time, Mosby said prosecutors were “not making the case, at this point, that Mr. Syed is innocent,” but that the state “lacks confidence in the integrity of the conviction” and that Syed should receive a new trial
The reinvestigation of the case revealed evidence of the possible involvement of two different suspects from Syed, including one person who said he would make Lee “disappear” and “kill her,” prosecutors said. Syed’s lawyers said he and his legal team were unaware the information existed until this year.
Defense attorneys hailed the prosecution’s motion to overturn the conviction as correcting a mistake.
“Given the staggering lack of reliable evidence implicating Mr. Syed, along with mounting evidence pointing to other suspects, this wrongful conviction cannot stand,” Suter said in a statement last week.
Maryland Public Defender Natasha Dartigue, in a press release, called the case “a true example of how justice delayed is justice denied. An innocent man spends decades wrongfully imprisoned, while any information or evidence that could help to identify the real perpetrator becomes increasingly difficult to pursue.
What we know about the case
Adnan and Lee were juniors at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore County in January 1999 when she disappeared. His strangled body was discovered in a forest in the city three weeks later.
Syed and prosecutors filed a joint motion for post-conviction DNA testing in March, saying that since the crime took place more than two decades ago, “DNA evidence has changed and improved dramatically.” .
The March motion called for the victim’s clothing to be tested for touch DNA, which was not available at the time of trial. The items now being tested were not previously tested in 2018, when the Baltimore City Police Laboratory tested several items for DNA, with the exception of the victim’s nail clippings. Mosby’s statement said.
Mosby said the motion to vacate was filed along with the head of the sentencing review unit, Becky Feldman. Syed was a young man when he was convicted.
The alternate suspects were people known at the time of the original investigation “and were not properly ruled out or disclosed to the defense,” according to Mosby’s statement.
The state is not releasing the names of the suspects but said that, according to the court record, one of them said: “I was going to make her (Ms. Lee) disappear. I was going to kill her.”
The investigation also revealed that one suspect was convicted of assaulting a woman in his vehicle, the release said. The second suspect was convicted of participating in serial rape and sexual assault, according to the statement.
Some of the information was available at the time of the trial, the statement said, and some came to light later. It is not clear when these assaults took place.
Lee’s car was located “directly behind the home of one of the suspect’s family members,” the statement said.
Syed’s lawyers brought the case to the attention of the sentencing review unit in April 2021.
Syed’s lawyers “identified significant reliability issues with respect to the evidence most critical to the trial,” Mosby said.
In the 2019 HBO documentary series “The Case Against Adnan Syed,” a lawyer for Syed said his client’s DNA was not found in any of the 12 samples recovered from the victim’s body and car. This evidence was not part of the authorities’ official investigation. HBO, like CNN, is a unit of Warner Bros. Discovery.
During the trial, prosecutors relied on the testimony of a friend, Jay Wilds, who said he helped Syed dig a hole for Lee’s body. To corroborate his account, prosecutors presented cell phone records and expert witnesses to place Syed at the site where Lee was buried.
CNN’s Lauren Koenig reported from Baltimore, while Dakin Andone and Eric Levenson wrote this story in New York. CNN’s Amy Simonson, Ray Sanchez and Sonia Moghe contributed to this report.