Ed. note:HBO has unveiled the trailerfor a new documentary on the case of Adnan Syed, who was was sentenced in 2000 to life in prison for the 1999 kidnapping and murder of his 18-year-old Baltimore high school classmate and ex-girlfriend,Hae Min Lee.
Syed’s case was the subject of the popular 2014 podcastSerial.
Below is PEOPLE’s article from March, 2018, after the appeals court upheld the overturning of Syed’s conviction, which chronicles the twists and turns of the case.
A Maryland court on Thursday uphelda judge’s 2016 ruling overturning the murder convictionofSerial‘sAdnan Syedand granting him a new trial, PEOPLE confirms.
“We are thrilled,” Syed’s attorney, Justin Brown, said at a news conference later Thursday in his Baltimore office.
The state’s attorney general can still decide to appeal to Maryland’s highest court, which could keep Syed in prison for another year to 18 months, Brown said.
If there is no appeal, the decision puts the case back to Circuit Court in Baltimore City for a new trial there.
“If the state does not appeal,” Brown said, “things could go pretty fast.”
Adnan Syed.Karl Merton Ferron/Baltimore Sun/TNS via Getty
Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh’s office said in an email to PEOPLE that “we are currently reviewing today’s decision to determine next steps.”
Syed, who was was sentenced in 2000 to life in prison for the 1999 murder of his 18-year-old Woodlawn High School classmate and ex-girlfriend,Hae Min Lee, had been behind bars for more than a decade when his case was featured in the first season of NPR’s true-crime podcastSerial, triggering widespread scrutiny of his arrest and prosecution.
Brown said he’d spoken Thursday to Syed, 36, and “he asked me to convey his gratitude from the bottom of his heart to everyone who has contributed to this case.”
For the first time ever, the podcast’s producers interviewed Syed’s high school classmate Asia McClain, who said she was with Syed during the time prosecutors claimed he had killed Lee.
Syed’s original attorney, who has since died, did not interview or call McClain as an alibi witness for his trial.
“Serialwas huge, it’s fueled these efforts and allowed us to keep fighting,” Brown said on Thursday.
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Woodward wrote that “there is a reasonable probability that McClain’s alibi testimony would have raised a reasonable doubt in the mind of at least one juror about Syed’s involvement [in] Hae’s murder, and thus ‘the result of the proceedings would have been different.’ ”
At Syed’s 2016 post-conviction hearing, his attorneys questioned the reliability of cell tower data used at his trial to place him in a park the night Lee disappeared and where her buried body was later found.
Thursday’s opinion, Brown said, reversed the circuit court on that issue.
The state has 30 days to file a petition to appeal this week’s opinion, Brown said.
“We hope they don’t do that,” he said. “We hope they come to the conclusion that this has gone on long enough and let’s take this to a jury in Baltimore City, it’s time to make some resolution and we hope the state sees it the same way we do.”
The Lee family has previously said Syed’s efforts to be freed were painful and that they believed he was her killer.
Afterthe first day of Syed’s hearing for a new trialin 2016, prosecutor General Thiru Vignarajah read aloud a statement from them.
The hearing is forcing “us to relive a nightmare we thought was behind us,” the family said.
Their statement continued: “We believe justice was done when Adnan was convicted in 2000, and we look forward to bringing this chapter to an end so we can celebrate the memory of Hae instead of celebrating the man who killed her.”
source: people.com
