Adnan Syed’s legal adventures have become a soap opera. Just two years after a court overturned the conviction of the star of the Serial, the successful podcast The Supreme Court of Maryland has upheld the subsequent decision of an appeals court to reinstate the initially overturned judgment. The Supreme Court, however, notes that it must be a lower court that re-examines the case, so the end of the saga remains open.
Syed was released after 23 years in prison. The quashing of his murder conviction in September 2022 seemed to be the final chapter in his case. Even more so after prosecutors decided not to seek a new trial and dropped the charges, admitting that DNA tests showed he was not the killer of Hae Min Lee, the young woman killed in 1999 at the age of 17 when she was Adnan’s girlfriend.
The victim’s family, however, appealed the overturning of the conviction by a judge in Baltimore, Maryland. The Court of Appeals ruled in their favor. It concluded that the judge had not given the victim’s family sufficient advance notice of the hearing in which the case was to be decided. Maryland law gives victims the right to advance notice of such hearings, and that right was violated in the case of Hae Min Lee’s brother, according to an 87-page ruling issued in March of last year.
The convicted man appealed. Almost a year and a half later, a divided Maryland Supreme Court issued a ruling on Friday 187-page judgmentincluding a dissenting opinion, in which it confirms the decision of the Court of Appeals to reinstate the conviction. The decision was taken by four votes to three.
Serial revolutionized the genre of true crime and the creation of audiotapes in the United States. The annulment of the conviction was largely interpreted as a consequence of the popularity that the audio series had achieved by exposing the inconsistencies in the evidence that led to the conviction of the accused.
Now, the state Supreme Court says that in an effort to remedy a perceived injustice against Syed, prosecutors and a lower court “committed an injustice” against Lee’s brother, Young Lee. He was not treated with “dignity, respect and sensitivity,” as required by law, because he was not given reasonable advance notice of the hearing that led to Syed’s release.
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The court decides to “reinstate Mr. Syed’s convictions and remand the case” to a lower court for a second hearing to consider the possible reversal of the conviction by a different judge. The court stresses that the victim’s brother must be given reasonable notice of the new hearing, “sufficient to provide Mr. Lee with a reasonable opportunity to attend such hearing in person,” and not by teleconference, as on the previous occasion.
In 2019, the state Supreme Court also voted 4-3 to deny Syed a new trial, as ordered by a lower court in 2016, on the grounds that Syed’s attorney, Cristina Gutierrez, failed to contact a witness who could provide an alibi and provided ineffective counsel to the convicted man. In November 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review that decision.
Prosecutors, however, later decided not to seek a new trial but instead to support a complete overturn of the first. Syed, 43, who was 17 when the teenager was found strangled to death and buried in a grave in 1999, has always maintained his innocence. He has been free since his conviction was overturned and it remains to be seen whether he will remain out of jail while a new trial is heard by a new judge. Even though the victims’ families are involved in the trial, with prosecutors on their side the chances of winning again are high. Further appeals are possible, so the final chapter of the series is still a long way off.
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