Serial podcast: will Adnan Syed be cleared?

Adnan Syed, whose case gained notoriety from the popular podcast Serial, has had his murder conviction reinstated by a Maryland court.

Syed was released from prison last year after being convicted of murdering his former high school girlfriend Hae Min Lee in 1999.

Syed was 19 when he was found guilty of first-degree murder for strangling Lee in a car park, as well as of robbery, kidnapping and false imprisonment. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2000 but has always maintained he had nothing to do with her death.

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While his case received little coverage in the media at the time, it attracted international attention in 2014 when it was featured on the Serial podcast. The groundbreaking series was downloaded millions of times, prompting legions of listeners to scrutinise the case online.

In September 2022, a Baltimore City Circuit Court judge “vacated” Syed’s conviction, meaning he was entitled to a new trial.

The “remarkable reversal” came after Judge Melissa M. Phinn found that prosecutors had not handed over evidence that might have helped his original case, and new evidence had since been revealed, said The New York Times.

Now, however, the Appellate Court of Maryland has ordered a new hearing must happen if Syed’s conviction is to be vacated.

It ruled that the victim’s brother, Young Lee, had his right to “have been notified of and to attend the hearing” violated when the conviction was vacated in September, said the NYT. The court ordered a new hearing to be held with “enough notice” for Lee “to attend in person”. In the previous hearing, Lee was only able to attend via Zoom, with the victim’s family “arguing that they were not notified of the efforts made to release Syed”, said Sky News.

What happened to Syed after the podcast?

Syed appealed his conviction on the grounds that his previous lawyer failed to call a key alibi witness, Asia McClain, who featured heavily in the podcast series. He also questioned the reliability of mobile phone evidence used to place him at the spot where Lee’s body was found.

In June 2016, Circuit Court Judge Martin Welch granted Syed a new trial. The court found that Syed’s original trial attorney, the late Cristina Gutierrez, was ineffective by failing to cross-examine the prosecution’s cell tower expert about the reliability of location data for incoming calls. However, the State of Maryland appealed the ruling.

Syed’s lawyer filed a motion arguing that his client should be released from prison while he awaited the outcome of the appeal. This was unsuccessful.

Then in March 2018, the Court of Special Appeals ruled in Syed’s favour, granting a new trial. It concluded that McClain’s testimony might have altered the “entire evidentary picture”, but dismissed the cell tower issue.

Again, prosecutors appealed the decision for a new trial and, in March the following year, won their case in Maryland’s highest court, the Court of Appeals. The court ruled that Syed’s defence lawyer had been “deficient” in not calling a potential alibi witness to testify during the original trial but that ultimately Syed was not “prejudiced” by that deficiency.

Syed’s lawyers filed a petition to the US Supreme Court to take up his case, but the Court denied the motion to appeal.

Why was his conviction vacated?

A “nearly yearlong investigation” conducted by prosecutor and chief of the Sentencing Review Unit Becky Feldman and Syed’s lawyer Erica Suter “uncovered information pointing to the possible involvement of two ‘alternative suspects,’” said The New York Times.

During the investigation, “messy, handwritten notes by the original prosecutor” were uncovered, referring to “two tips authorities received about credible, alternate suspects, including a serial rapist”, said The Baltimore Banner.

These two potential suspects had “motive and/or propensity to commit this crime”, the prosecutor found. “Close watchers of the case have been speculating who they are and whether they were mentioned in ‘Serial’ or the four-part HBO documentary ‘The Case Against Adnan Syed’ which debuted in 2020,” said The New York Times.

Additionally, the investigation brought to light that some evidence may not have been shared with the defence lawyers by prosecutors in the 2000 trial, “in violation of their legal duty”.

During the hearing, Lee’s brother, Young Lee, told the court via a Zoom call that he had been “betrayed” and “blindsided” by the move. “Whenever I think it’s over, and it’s ended, it always comes back,” he said. “It’s killing me and killing my mother.”

What happens next?

Despite having his conviction reinstated, Syed will not be required to immediately return to prison and “for the time being, Adnan remains a free man”, his attorney Erica Suter said in a statement provided to CNN.

Syed’s defence team disagreed with the Maryland court’s decision, saying there was “no basis for re-traumatizing Adnan by returning him to the status of a convicted felon”. Suter also said that Lee’s “attendance over Zoom was sufficient” in the previous hearing.

Meanwhile, the Lee family’s attorney said the court and prosecutors had “failed repeatedly” ahead of the previous hearing. That was not only by “failing to give him adequate notice” but also by “withholding evidence from the family and not giving the brother a proper chance to be heard at the proceedings”, said CNN.

There will now be a break in proceedings after the court ordered a “60-day stay of its ruling to give both sides time to consider next steps”, said the NYT.