Adnan Syed, the Baltimore man whose life sentence for the murder of his high school girlfriend in 1999 was the subject popular podcast Serial‘s first season, has had his conviction overturned.
Adnan Syed’s murder conviction was vacated on Monday and the 41-year-old left jail for the first time since he was a teenager after fighting his conviction for 23 years.
Judge Melissa M. Phinn of Baltimore City Circuit Court said the decision was “in the interests of fairness and justice”. She said prosecutors had failed to hand over evidence that could have helped Syed at his original trial and also found new evidence that could have affected his case.
“At this time we will remove the shackles from [Adnan] Syed,” Judge Phinn said in court.
Syed was photographed smiling outside where he was greeted by a crowd of supporters.
Prosecutors have 30 days to decide if they want to start a new trial against Syed or drop the charges. Syed will be placed under home detention until their decision is announced.
Syed was handed a life sentence at age 17 for strangling his classmate and girlfriend Hae Min Lee after her body was found buried in a park in Baltimore County in 1999.
Questions about whether he had a fair trial were the subject of Serial‘s 12-episode first season which was released in 2014, as well as a 2019 HBO documentary called The Case Against Adnan Syed.
Serial broke Apple records within months and was labelled podcasting’s “breakout”. It went on to become the most listened-to podcast of all time and a catalyst of true crime’s rise in mainstream pop culture.
Almost a decade later, prosecutors recommended his conviction be vacated and he be granted a new one because “the state no longer has confidence in the integrity of the conviction.”
Prosecutors said they, along with Syed’s lawyer, found new evidence that uncovered two “alternative suspects”. It also found key evidence may have not been disclosed to Syed’s lawyers and “significant reliability issues regarding the most critical pieces of evidence”, which if you’ll remember was the cellphone tower data that prosecutors used to show Syed was in the park location at the time Lee was buried.
Prosecutors said their investigation was ongoing and they would decide whether or not to open a new trial once it had been completed.
Lee’s family said they felt “blindsided” by the decision to vacate.
“This is not a podcast for me,” Lee’s brother Young Lee said in court.
“This is real life — a never-ending nightmare for 20-plus years.
“Whenever I think it’s over and it’s ended, it always comes back.”
Syed’s lawyer Erica J. Suter told a press conference on Monday “he said he can’t believe it’s real”.
“Today is both joyful and incredibly overwhelming.”
