Baltimore judge Melissa Phinn announced that Adnan Syed (41), the subject of the popular true crime podcast Serial, will have his conviction vacated.
The order came down after years of looking over the evidence and finding that there really wasn’t strong enough evidence to have him behind bars in the first place.
On top of that, it was decided that even if a new trial was desired, the State doesn’t have the juice for it in the way of new evidence. In short, the murder charge against Adnan Syed was overturned and he’s to go free after over 20 years.
Murder Conviction of Adnan Syed Overturned After Over 20 Years
The short form of Syed’s case is that he was found guilty of murdering his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee in February 2000. Lee had gone missing in January 1999 and was found strangled to death the following month.
Syed had become a suspect in the murder and was put on trial at the end of 1999. The December 1999 trial ended with a mistrial and prosecutors ran it back a few months later in February where Adnan Syed received life plus 30 years.
Over the years, Syed maintained his innocence and after a couple of failed appeals, he was able to tell his side of the events via Serial in 2014. Later, a podcast hosted by a lawyer and childhood friend of Syed called Undisclosed: The State vs. Adnan Syed also explored the case.
Both podcasts piqued interest in the case and not long afterward the Innocence Project stepped in to run the DNA evidence. In 2018, it was revealed that Syed wasn’t a match for any of the DNA present.
While Lee’s family maintains that Adnan Syed killed their daughter, there was a turn towards the conviction. Judge Phinn pointed to a Brady violation in regards to the sharing of evidence by the State. It was decided that the State could not have found new evidence with “due diligence “ for a new trial.
Prosecutors made sure to point out that even though Syed was freed that doesn’t mean he’s innocent:
“To be clear, the State is not asserting at this time that Defendant is innocent. However, for all the reasons set forth below, the State no longer has confidence in the integrity of the conviction.”
As it stands, Adnan Syed will have to wear a GPS tracker while prosecutors have 30 days to decide if the State wants to run the trial again or simply drop it.
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