ANNAPOLIS, Md. — The Maryland Supreme Court has ruled that a 2022 hearing that freed Adnan Syed from prison violated the legal rights of the victim’s family and must be redone. This latest development in the ongoing legal saga surrounding Syed, who was convicted in 2000 of killing his high school ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee, gained global attention through the popular podcast “Serial.”
The 4-3 decision comes approximately 11 months after the court heard arguments last October in a case that has been marked by legal twists and differing court rulings since Syed’s conviction.
The court concluded that in an effort to rectify what was perceived as an injustice to Syed, prosecutors and a lower court “worked an injustice” against Lee’s brother, Young Lee. The court ruled that Lee was not treated with “dignity, respect, and sensitivity,” because he was not given adequate notice of the hearing that resulted in Syed’s release.
The court decided that the appropriate remedy is “to reinstate Mr. Syed’s convictions and to remand the case to the circuit court for further proceedings.”
“Those proceedings will go forward before a different circuit court judge,” the court ruled.
The court also stated that Lee would be given proper notice of the new hearing, “sufficient to provide Mr. Lee with a reasonable opportunity to attend such a hearing in person,” and for him or his counsel to be heard.
The recent issue in this case has pitted ongoing criminal justice reform efforts against the legal rights of crime victims and their families, whose voices often clash with a growing movement advocating for the recognition and correction of systemic issues, such as historic racism, police misconduct and prosecutorial errors.
The panel of seven judges weighed the extent to which crime victims have a right to participate in hearings where a conviction could be overturned. In doing so, the court considered whether to uphold a lower appellate court ruling in 2023 in favor of the Lee family. This ruling reinstated Syed’s murder conviction a year after a judge granted a request from Baltimore prosecutors to vacate it due to flawed evidence.
Syed, 43, has maintained his innocence and has often expressed concern for Lee’s surviving relatives. The teenage girl was found strangled to death and buried in an unmarked grave in 1999. Syed was sentenced to life in prison, plus 30 years.
Syed was released from prison in September 2022, when a Baltimore judge overturned his conviction after city prosecutors discovered flaws in the evidence.
However, in March 2023, the Appellate Court of Maryland, the state’s intermediate appellate court, ordered a redo of the hearing that granted Syed his freedom and reinstated his conviction. The court stated that the victim’s family did not receive adequate notice to attend the hearing in person, violating their right under state law to be “treated with dignity and respect.”
Syed’s lawyer Erica Suter has argued that the state did fulfill its obligation by allowing Young Lee to participate in the hearing via video conference.
Syed appealed the reinstatement of his conviction, and the Lee family also appealed to the state’s highest court, arguing that crime victims should have a more substantial role in the process of overturning a conviction.
Syed has remained free as the latest set of appeals make their way through the state court system.
During oral arguments last year, his attorneys argued that the Lee family’s appeal was moot because prosecutors decided not to charge him again after his conviction was vacated. And even if her brother’s rights were violated, the attorneys argued, he hasn’t demonstrated whether the alleged violation would have altered the outcome of the hearing.
This wasn’t the first time Maryland’s highest court has taken up Syed’s protracted legal journey.
In 2019, a divided court ruled 4-3 to deny Syed a new trial. A lower court had ordered a retrial in 2016 on grounds that Syed’s attorney, Cristina Gutierrez, didn’t contact an alibi witness and provided ineffective counsel. Gutierrez died in 2004.
In November 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the decision by Maryland’s top court.
More recently, Baltimore prosecutors reexamined Syed’s files under a Maryland law targeting so-called “juvenile lifers” because he was 17 when Hae Min Lee’s body was found. Prosecutors uncovered numerous problems, including alternative suspects and the unreliable evidence presented at trial.
Instead of reconsidering his sentence, prosecutors filed a motion to vacate Syed’s conviction entirely. They later chose not to recharge him after receiving the results of DNA testing that was conducted using more modern testing techniques than initially conducted. DNA recovered from Lee’s shoes excluded Syed as a suspect, prosecutors said.
Syed’s case was chronicled in the “Serial” podcast, which debuted in 2014 and drew millions of listeners who became armchair detectives as the series analyzed the case. The show transformed the true-crime genre as it shattered podcast-streaming and downloading records, revealing little-known evidence and raising new questions about the case.