ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Adnan Syed’s homicide conviction nonetheless stands after Maryland’s highest court docket Friday ordered a redo of the listening to that freed him. The court docket dominated that the sooner continuing violated the rights of the sufferer’s household, marking the most recent improvement in a authorized saga that gained widespread consideration by the hit podcast “Serial.”
The 4-3 ruling upheld an appellate court docket determination that reinstated Syed’s conviction final yr. It comes about 11 months after the court docket heard arguments in a case that has been fraught with authorized twists and divided court docket rulings since Syed was convicted in 2000 of killing his highschool ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee.
The justices mentioned that Syed, who was launched from jail in 2022, can stay free because the case heads to a brand new decrease court docket choose to once more contemplate whether or not his conviction needs to be tossed.
The court docket weighed the extent to which victims can take part in hearings the place a conviction may very well be vacated. Nearly all of judges concluded that, in an effort to treatment what they deemed an injustice to Syed, prosecutors and a decrease court docket “labored an injustice” in opposition to Lee’s brother. The court docket dominated that Younger Lee was not handled with “dignity, respect, and sensitivity,” as required beneath Maryland regulation, as a result of he wasn’t given cheap discover of the listening to that freed Syed.
The court docket mentioned these shortfalls could be corrected main as much as the brand new listening to.
However the actual subsequent steps stay unclear, partly as a result of Baltimore elected a brand new high prosecutor in 2022, which might change how that workplace handles the case. State’s Lawyer Ivan Bates mentioned his workplace is reviewing the ruling and declined to instantly remark additional.
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Michele Hotten argued the problem was moot as a result of the underlying prices not exist.
“This case exists as a procedural zombie,” Hotten wrote. “It has been reanimated, regardless of its expiration. The doctrine of mootness was designed to stop such judicial necromancy.”
The sprawling case has most not too long ago pitted prison justice reform efforts in opposition to the authorized rights of crime victims and their households, whose voices are sometimes at odds with a rising motion to acknowledge and proper systemic points, together with historic racism, police misconduct and prosecutorial missteps.
David Sanford, an lawyer who represents the sufferer’s household, mentioned the ruling “acknowledges what Hae Min Lee’s household has argued: Crime victims have a proper to be heard in court docket.”
Erica Suter, Syed’s lawyer, mentioned in a press release that the court docket reached a choice “we couldn’t disagree with extra.”
“Wrongful convictions devastate the wrongly accused, their household, and the household of the sufferer,” Suter mentioned. “Reinstating Adnan’s wrongful conviction doesn’t present Hae Min Lee’s household with justice or closure, and it takes an amazing quantity of emotional toll on Adnan’s household, who already misplaced a son and brother for greater than 20 years.”
Syed, 43, has maintained his innocence and has typically expressed concern for Lee’s surviving kinfolk. The teenage woman was discovered strangled to dying and buried in an unmarked grave in 1999. Syed was sentenced to life in jail, plus 30 years.
He was launched from jail in September 2022 when a Baltimore choose overturned his conviction in response to a request from Baltimore prosecutors who mentioned they discovered flaws within the proof.
Nonetheless, in March 2023, the Appellate Courtroom of Maryland, the state’s intermediate appellate court docket, ordered a redo of the listening to that received Syed his freedom and reinstated his conviction. The court docket mentioned the sufferer’s household didn’t obtain ample discover to attend the listening to in individual.
Suter, Syed’s lawyer, has argued that the state did meet its obligation by permitting Younger Lee to take part within the listening to through video convention.
Syed appealed his conviction’s reinstatement, and the Lee household additionally appealed to the Maryland Supreme Courtroom, arguing crime victims needs to be given a bigger function within the course of.
Syed has remained free as the most recent appeals wound their manner by the state court docket system.
Throughout oral arguments final yr, his attorneys argued the Lee household’s attraction was moot as a result of prosecutors determined to not cost him once more after his conviction was vacated. And even when her brother’s rights have been violated, the attorneys argued, he hasn’t demonstrated whether or not the alleged violation would have modified the end result of the listening to.
This wasn’t the primary time Maryland’s highest court docket has taken up Syed’s protracted authorized odyssey.
In 2019, a divided court docket dominated 4-3 to disclaim Syed a brand new trial. A decrease court docket had ordered a retrial in 2016 on grounds that Syed’s lawyer, Cristina Gutierrez, didn’t contact an alibi witness and supplied ineffective counsel. Gutierrez died in 2004. In November 2019, the U.S. Supreme Courtroom declined to assessment the choice by Maryland’s high court docket.
Extra not too long ago, Baltimore prosecutors reexamined Syed’s information beneath a Maryland regulation concentrating on so-called “juvenile lifers” as a result of he was 17 when Hae Min Lee’s physique was discovered. Prosecutors uncovered quite a few issues, together with different suspects and the unreliable proof offered at trial.
As an alternative of reconsidering his sentence, prosecutors filed a movement to vacate Syed’s conviction totally. They later selected to not recharge him after receiving the outcomes of DNA testing that was performed utilizing extra fashionable testing methods than initially performed. DNA recovered from Lee’s sneakers excluded Syed as a suspect, prosecutors mentioned.
Syed’s case was chronicled within the “Serial” podcast, which debuted in 2014 and drew tens of millions of listeners who grew to become armchair detectives because the collection analyzed the case. The present, hosted by veteran radio producer Sarah Koenig, reworked the true-crime style because it shattered podcast-streaming and downloading information, revealing little-known proof and elevating new questions in regards to the case.