Adnan Syed

A judge on Monday vacated the conviction of Adnan Syed, whose murder case drew wide attention after it was featured on the true-crime podcast “Serial.”.

Becky Feldman, chief of the state’s attorney’s office’s Sentencing Review Unit, walked the courtroom through her “overwhelming cause for concern” about the integrity of Syed’s original trial. Syed was convicted of murder in 2000 and has been serving a life sentence. Syed was arrested in late February 1999 in the killing of Hae Min Lee, his ex-girlfriend.

A Baltimore judge on Monday ordered the release of Adnan Syed after overturning Syed's conviction for the 1999 murder of high school student Hae Min Lee — a ...

Prosecutors said they weren’t asserting that Syed is innocent, but they lacked confidence “in the integrity of the conviction” and recommended he be released on his own recognizance or bail. The 12-episode podcast won a Peabody Award and was transformative in popularizing podcasts for a wide audience. That is entitled to the defendant, as well,” she added. The investigation “revealed undisclosed and newly-developed information regarding two alternative suspects, as well as unreliable cell phone tower data,” Mosby’s office said in a news release last week. The judge also said the state must decide whether to seek a new trial date or dismiss the case within 30 days. There were gasps and applause in the crowded courtroom as the judge announced her decision.

How a true crime podcast made a local news story from Baltimore, Maryland, go international.

They also said they believed people had been misinformed by the podcast and regretted that "so few [were] willing to speak up for Hae". The show premiered in autumn 2014 and each episode tried to piece together a timeline of what happened the night Lee was killed. But a judge also denied his request for bail. Serial helped ignite the popularity of podcasts. He remained imprisoned for years as his legal team argued for a new trial and tried to appeal his conviction all the way to the Supreme Court. For nearly 25 years Syed has maintained his innocence.

BALTIMORE (AP) — A Baltimore judge on Monday ordered the release of Adnan Syed after overturning Syed's conviction for the 1999 murder of high school ...

That is entitled to the defendant, as well,” she added. The 12-episode podcast won a Peabody Award and was transformative in popularizing podcasts for a wide audience. “The file in this case was made available on several occasions to the defense.” The state’s attorney’s office had said if the motion were granted it would effectively put Syed in a new trial status, vacating his convictions, while the case remained active. But after a series of appeals, Maryland’s highest court in 2019 denied a new trial in a 4-3 opinion. But after the hearing, his lawyer Erica Suter described his reaction to the decision, saying: “He said he couldn’t believe it’s real.” The investigation “revealed undisclosed and newly-developed information regarding two alternative suspects, as well as unreliable cell phone tower data,” Mosby’s office said in a news release last week. Syed was led into the crowded courtroom in handcuffs Monday. His mother and other family representatives were in the room, as was Mosby. There were gasps and applause in the crowded courtroom as the judge announced her decision. The judge also said the state must decide whether to Phinn ruled that the state violated its legal obligation to share evidence that could have bolstered Syed’s defense.

A judge vacated his conviction and granted him a new trial due to State's failure to disclose exculpatory evidence.

Syed’s case is a stark example of how the concealment of exculpatory evidence — known as a Brady violation — leads to wrongful convictions. The court concluded that Mr. Syed, who is represented by Erica Suter of the

Judge had overturned Syed's conviction for the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee, a case that was chronicled in the hit podcast Serial.

From the day he was taken from his bed in the pre-dawn hours of 26 February 1999 until today, he has maintained his innocence and I, and my family, have believed him.” The podcast won a Peabody Award and did much to popularize the format. His mother and other family representatives were in the room, as was the state attorney, Marilyn Mosby. Chaudry also said: “Every piece of forensic evidence collected pointed to Adnan’s innocence. At his second trial, in February 2000, he was convicted of murder and Ruling that the state violated its legal obligation to share exculpatory evidence with Syed’s defense, the circuit court judge, Melissa Phinn, ordered Syed placed on home detention with GPS monitoring.

On the podcast, a team of journalists led by Sarah Koenig, the host of “Serial,” documented major problems with the case against Syed: The prosecution's ...

After, [use our bot](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/upshot/wordle-bot.html) to get better. [The Daily](https://www.nytimes.com/thedaily)” is about Adnan Syed. Huw Green thinks the term “mental health” [has become overly broad](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/20/opinion/us-mental-health-awareness.html). [expected to lower](https://theathletic.com/3607520/2022/09/19/nba-draft-age-rule-change-nbpa/) its entry age to 18 in the next collective bargaining agreement, clearing the way for high schoolers to re-enter the draft process. [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]). [has grown stronger](https://www.nytimes.com/article/tropical-storm-fiona-hurricane.html), after deluging Puerto Rico with rain. [a special episode of “Serial,” released this morning](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/20/podcasts/serial-adnan-syed.html), about the huge turn in the case. It will be years before any show approaches the record set by “Phantom.” The next-longest-running productions (as of Sept. [Wrongful conviction](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/06/briefing/wrongful-convictions-parole.html) seems to be a major problem in the U.S. [whose reporting helped free Curtis Flowers](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/16/briefing/winter-storm-adam-kinzinger-pelosi-congress.html), a Mississippi man who’d been jailed for more than 20 years, for murders he evidently did not commit. [but exacerbated others](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/20/opinion/us-mental-health-insight.html), Rachel Aviv writes. Barring some smoking-gun evidence, which we didn’t find (and it seems like no one else has either), there was no way for us to say definitively what happened.

Adnan Syed, the man who was convicted in 2000 of killing his girlfriend Hae Min Lee, has had his conviction overturned.

For example, one of the prosecutors argued during the trial that the Pakistani American and the Muslim American communities were ready to abet Adnan Syed if he were to flee to Pakistan before sentencing. And Judge Phinn ruled today that Syed deserves a new trial, and that in the meantime, he can return home. Prosecutors now have 30 days to decide whether or not they want to drop the charges against him or try him again for murder. The prosecutors also note that these other suspects have a history of violent attacks on women, including after Syed was incarcerated. In 2000, Syed was convicted of murdering his former girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, the previous year when he was 17 years old. In a Baltimore courtroom, a judge has ruled that after 22 years in prison, Adnan Syed is going home today.

A judge on Monday approved a motion to vacate the murder conviction of Adnan Syed, the subject of the first season of the popular "Serial" podcast, ...

The investigation also revealed that one suspect was convicted of attacking a woman in her vehicle, according to the statement. [HBO docuseries ](https://www.hbo.com/the-case-against-adnan-syed)“The Case Against Adnan Syed,” an attorney for Syed said his client’s DNA was not found on any of the 12 samples retrieved from the victim’s body and car. That testing was not part of the official investigation by authorities. To corroborate his account, prosecutors presented cell phone records and expert witness testimony to place Syed at the site where Lee was buried. The state is not disclosing the names of the suspects but said that, according to the trial file, one of them said, “He would make her (Ms. The March motion asked that the victim’s clothing be tested for touch DNA, which was not available at the time of trial. At the time, Mosby said prosecutors were “not asserting, at this time, that Mr. In doing so, the podcast reached a huge audience and set off a But that mandate, Mosby said, is “separate and apart” from the investigation into who killed Lee. An innocent man spends decades wrongly incarcerated, while any information or evidence that could help identify the actual perpetrator becomes increasingly difficult to pursue.” Prosecutors moved to vacate Syed’s conviction following a nearly year-long investigation, they said in a news release last week. Her ruling was met by cheers and tears in the courtroom.

“Serial” explored Syed's conviction for the murder of his high school girlfriend Hae Min Lee. Judge Melissa Phinn of the Baltimore City Circuit Court vacated ...

“They say it just kind of crumbled once they took a hard look.” 1 on Apple’s podcast chart on Tuesday, the same day a new episode released in which Koenig explains how Syed’s release came about. In 2014, “Serial,” which was hosted by journalist Sarah Koenig, helped set off both an interest in podcasts and Syed’s particular case.

When the 12-episode first season of “Serial” debuted in the fall of 2014, podcasts were a relatively new creative medium — and the true-crime audio ...

The second season of the show, a deep dive into the controversial case of U.S. In the early 2010s, there was some novelty in listening to a “binge-able” true-crime series. “Serial” emerged when the conventions of podcasting were not yet fully developed and the medium was still seen as a niche pastime. In some respects, the profusion of podcasts post-“Serial” made it tougher for Koenig and her team to catch fire on such a wide scale again. But not everyone was equally swept up in the fight for Syed's release. Koenig and others later raised questions about the evidence used by prosecutors, paving a path to this week's events. "This is not a podcast for me," he said. Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building” gently ribs podcast creators, too. In the years since, the stylistic tropes of true-crime podcasting have become all too easy to satirize. The numbers tell a tale of exponential growth: 38% people in the U.S. (The film was distributed by Focus Features, a unit of NBC News' parent company, NBCUniversal.) The state of affairs in the podcasting world parallels trends in television.

Syed is free after his 2000 first-degree murder conviction in the death of ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee was vacated.

“For more than 20 years, no one has wanted to know the truth about who killed Hae Min Lee more than her family. The state’s attorney said there are two alternate suspects in Lee’s murder and that they may have worked together. The result was “Serial,” a podcast released in 12 episodes in the fall of 2014. Circuit Court Judge Melissa Phinn in Baltimore agreed, and found during the original trial, the state failed its obligation to share information that could have helped the defense. The Lee family said they were disappointed with Monday’s hearing. Will its new season be heard above the noise?](https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/how-will-the-third-season-of-serial-fare-in-a-true-crime-saturated-industry/2018/09/17/53de64f2-b766-11e8-a2c5-3187f427e253_story.html?itid=lk_interstitial_manual_16) In 2013, lawyer Rabia Chaudry contacted Sarah Koenig, a producer with the radio program “This American Life.” Chaudry, a longtime friend of Syed, was convinced he had been wrongly convicted. It reached millions of listeners, won a Peabody Award and Syed, now 41, spent more than two decades in prison after a jury convicted him of killing his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, when the two were teenagers. [helped fuel the popularity of podcasts, especially those focused on true crime](https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/how-will-the-third-season-of-serial-fare-in-a-true-crime-saturated-industry/2018/09/17/53de64f2-b766-11e8-a2c5-3187f427e253_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_15). His story reached millions through “Serial,” a hit podcast released in 2014. A judge sentenced him to life in prison plus 30 years.

When the verdict came down, Serial tweeted immediately that its host Sarah Koenig, a former Baltimore Sun reporter who became a quasi-celebrity for dissecting ...

[Pure Chaos](https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2022/09/is-tiktok-turning-fashion-week-into-pure-chaos?itm_content=footer-recirc&itm_campaign=more-great-stories-091422)? [not the only investigative one](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/30/world/australia/chris-dawson-verdict-teachers-pet.html?searchResultPosition=2) that has brought [new, meaningful attention](https://www.npr.org/2020/09/05/910061573/after-6-trials-prosecutors-drop-charges-against-curtis-flowers) to old cases. “The chances of the state ever trying to prosecute Adnan again are remote at best,” said Koenig, who [told](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/20/briefing/adnan-syed-freed-serial-sarah-koenig.html) the Times’ David Leonhardt that she was “shocked” last week by the prosecutors’ motion and “did not see this coming at all.” [motion](https://docs-cdn-prod.news-engineering.aws.wapo.pub/publish_document/c0e45280-f784-4e81-befe-b53b948800dd/published/c0e45280-f784-4e81-befe-b53b948800dd.pdf) to vacate that Koenig in Tuesday’s episode said “burst like a firework out of the prosecutors' office,” the Baltimore City state’s attorney [said](https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/14/adnan-syed-vacate-conviction-serial/) “the state no longer has confidence in the integrity of the conviction” though stopped short of exonerating Syed. [have been](https://www.nytimes.com/article/adnan-syed-serial-timeline-serial.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article) a number of developments in Syed’s case in the years since Serial, which discovered, among other things, the existence of an alibi witness whom Syed’s original defense had failed to contact and that physical evidence gathered at the time was never tested for Syed’s DNA; an HBO show would later [reveal](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/31/arts/television/case-against-adnan-syed-dna-hbo-finale.html) that Syed’s DNA was not found on Lee’s body or belongings. [tweeted](https://twitter.com/serial/status/1571957561397739520?s=20&t=deyFONmFumokckvtEM9GSw) immediately that its host Sarah Koenig, a former Baltimore Sun reporter who became a quasi-celebrity for dissecting Syed's case over a dozen episodes in 2014, was in the courtroom. “From the outside at least, it’s hard to satisfyingly pinpoint the impact that Serial and, later, HBO’s show had on the events that led to Syed walking out of prison yesterday,” CJR’s Jon Allsop [wrote](https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/adnan_syed_conviction_overturned_serial.php?utm_source=CJR+Daily+News&utm_campaign=57188aad51-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_11_11_06_33_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_9c93f57676-57188aad51-175009357&mc_cid=57188aad51&mc_eid=9ce84e5e14) Tuesday, as “they raised and then kept huge public attention on his case in a way that can’t easily be separated from the progress of the case itself, and yet the vacating of his sentence took years, and ultimately flowed from a new law and an official procedure.” “But most of what the state put in that motion to vacate, all the actual evidence, was either known or knowable to cops and prosecutors back in 1999. “The original Serial series might be the most impactful (by a number of measures) piece of journalism of the last decade,” journalist Wesley Lowery [tweeted](https://twitter.com/WesleyLowery/status/1570164872142274561?s=20&t=bZVR0OkKNNN8KdT751sz1w) Monday, following Syed's release. "Yesterday, there was a lot of talk about fairness,” she said in the final moments of Tuesday morning's episode. But Koenig's message in the supplement of her inaugural true-crime podcast series took a more somber tone. Its subject, Adnan Syed, who for the past 23 years was serving a life sentence for the murder of his former high-school girlfriend Hae Min Lee, was released from prison Monday.

Baltimore prosecutors have a month to decide whether to retry Adnan Syed, though legal analysts — and the victim's family — said Tuesday they have no.

"Anyone who is charged in this case (in the future) is going to be able to throw a whole lot of questions up about what arguments were made before, about Mr. "It would be very hard for me to imagine they would pursue this case (again)." So on the question of raising reasonable doubt, it would be a huge challenge even if this case weren't 23 years old." "The clients are in no position right now," Kelly said. "They won't retry this case because where are they going to come up with all the evidence in the case when they've already acknowledged there are inconsistencies?" "My prediction is you'll never hear an official word from the state again because they're already on the record as, 'We think they were problems (in the case) but we're not saying he's innocent.' " "The mistakes that were made 23 years ago, which led them to pursue Mr. "The idea of retrying this case would be an incredible long shot." He's just that shocked." Syed and the evidence that they thought was suggestive of Mr. Prosecutors are considering their next move after successfully lobbying a Baltimore judge to have the 42-year-old man's murder conviction vacated. "I would never bet the house on anything but it would be an incredibly hard case to retry," said University of Baltimore

Prosecutors have found alternative suspects in the killing of Hae Min Lee, as well as unreliable evidence used against Syed at trial.

In the new episode, Koenig recaps what happened when Syed was released, noting that he did not speak publicly when he left the prison, but that there was a crowd gathered that cheered as he left the premises. The show Undisclosed investigated wrongful convictions in the United States, and devoted several episodes to Syed’s case, as well as those of people like Jamar Huggins and Joey Watkins. There was also a new law in Maryland called the Juvenile Restoration Act, which allows people who have served 20-plus years for a crime committed as a juvenile to have their sentence truncated. Syed was tried twice, with the first ending in a mistrial and the second rendering a guilty verdict. In the wake of Adnan’s release, Serial put out a new episode titled Created and hosted by journalist Sarah Koenig, Serial became a cultural phenomenon in 2014, with its first season devoted to Lee’s death and Syed’s trial.

A high school senior named Hae Min Lee disappeared one day after school in 1999, in Baltimore County, Md. A month later, her body was found in a city park.

Sarah called up one of the defense lawyers on that case to apply any insight into Adnan’s case and got much more than she had bargained for. But Adnan was convicted, and a year later his lawyer was disbarred. So Sarah and Dana take up the challenge and raise him one: They try to recreate the entire route that Jay said he and Adnan had taken on Jan. 13, 1999, Adnan Syed was a hurt and vengeful ex-boyfriend who carried out a premeditated murder. But a couple of months ago, Sarah started getting phone calls from people who had known Adnan back then. A man on his lunch break pulls off a road to pee and stumbles on her body in a city forest. The physical evidence against Adnan Syed was scant — a few underwhelming fingerprints. Her 17-year-old ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, was charged with murder, and within a year, he was sentenced to life in prison. For instance, why did he walk so far into the woods — 127 feet — to relieve himself? The high school scene, the shifting statements to the police, the prejudices, the sketchy alibis, the scant forensic evidence — everything leads back to the most basic questions: How can you know a person’s character? Sarah discovered that the trial had covered up a far more complicated story than the jury — or the public — ever got to hear. The case against him was largely based on the story of one witness, Adnan’s friend Jay, who testified that he had helped Adnan bury Hae’s body.

With some 300 million downloads, the first season broke podcast records and spawned a cottage industry of true crime podcasts. It won just about every major ...

[struck](https://www.patheos.com/blogs/splitthemoon/2014/10/lets-give-them-something-to-talk-about/) by how her views were becoming part of the narrative. [marveled](https://www.nyclu.org/en/publications/column-serial-podcast-and-disparate-impact-civil-rights-and-real-world-new-york-law) in 2015, Serial "unleashed a spirited and wide-ranging civil rights debate on the Internet," he wrote. It's quite another to get into the business of exposing a wrongful conviction," he says. The idea to delve into Syed's case originated with Rabia Chaudry, a lawyer and one of Syed's friends and supporters. [Our interactions online were being discussed](http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/10/27/rabia_chaudry_blogs_about_adnan_syed_and_recaps_the_serial_podcast_on_split.html), we were being judged and assessed, we were adding both entertainment and substantive value to the discourse. [A place to discuss Serial: The Podcast](https://www.reddit.com/r/serialpodcast/) on Reddit reached more than 72 million members. In the case of Serial, they worked in tandem. The Serial phenomenon was not just about trying to solve the crime itself. It was also about the vast community devouring each episode and then picking it apart online. Koenig was named one of Time's [Most Influential People](https://time.com/collection-post/3823276/sarah-koenig-2015-time-100/) of 2015. Barry Scheck, co-director of The Innocence Project, learned about Serial from his kids. [This American Life](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/about/our-other-shows#:~:text=Released%20in%2012%20episodes%2C%20Serial,more%20than%20300%20million%20downloads.).

"To call something the most popular podcast might seem a little like identifying the tallest leprechaun," David Carr wrote in 2014.

Fascinating to hear a Serial update on Adnan Syed’s release that’s so bare-bones, similar to the rundowns that other media are offering. [continued](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/30/serial-podcast-appeals-court-adnan-syed) to [wind](https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/when-a-post-conviction-hearing-feels-like-a-sequel-the-weirdness-of-serial-back-on-the-stand/2016/02/08/b3782c60-2a49-48f7-9480-a34dd9e07ab6_story.html) [through](https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/crime/bs-md-ci-syed-response-to-state-20160915-story.html) [the](https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/crime/bs-md-document-syed-appeals-20180329-story.html) [courts](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/08/us/adnan-syed-case-conviction.html). I explained to her that anti-Muslim sentiment was involved in framing the motive in this case, and that Muslims can pick up on it, whereas someone like her, who hasn’t experienced this kind of bigotry, doesn’t quite get it. The visuals of the courtroom itself leaves an impression and there’s no escaping the racial implications there. “You have an urban jury in Baltimore city, mostly African American, maybe people who identify with Jay [an African-American friend of Syed’s who is the state’s seemingly unreliable star witness] more than Adnan, who is represented by a community in headscarves and men in beards. The show also came in for criticism, especially from those who argued that Koenig overlooked major elements of the story involving racial prejudice, Islamophobia, social justice, and the failure of the criminal justice system. [“Only Murders in the Building,”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Only_Murders_in_the_Building) which just wrapped up its second season on Hulu, follows three Upper West Side neighbors who start a true crime podcast after their neighbor is murdered. That is as many people as watch an episode of “Louie,” the buzzed-about comedy on FX. A couple of weeks before the launch, on September 19, 2014, executive producer and host Sarah Koenig [wrote on the Serial blog](https://serialpodcast.org/posts/2014/09/introducing-serial): “Serial” has been downloaded or streamed on iTunes more than five million times — at a cost of nothing — and averages over 1.5 million listeners an episode. We hope you’ll get sucked in the way we have. Serial launched as a spinoff of This American Life, and its first episode aired in that show’s radio slot.

Adnan Syed, a recent student in Georgetown's new degree program for incarcerated students and the subject of the 2014 podcast, “Serial,” was released from ...

Georgetown’s Bachelor of Liberal Arts program is funded by a $1 million grant from the Andrew W. [Racial Justice Institute](https://rji.georgetown.edu/) pushes the frontiers of knowledge about race, equity and action. “I think that this Georgetown program is going to take me further in life, take me to places I didn’t even think were possible for me. The program expands Georgetown’s It will take most students about five years to complete the degree. “My main goal is just to continue to evolve, to continue to see what life has to offer me,” said student Rasheed Edwards.

On Monday, a judge overturned that conviction — ruling that deficiencies in how prosecutors had turned over evidence to defense attorneys could have affected ...

“Despite trying to put on a brave face publicly, I thought in all likelihood that was the end of the road.” Frosh (D) — whose office has previously defended the handling of Syed’s case in court proceedings — has disputed that, calling the allegations that prosecutors did not hand over evidence to Syed’s defense as they should have “incorrect.” The subsequent investigation uncovered new evidence that showed prosecutors had known of two other possible suspects, including one who had a motive to kill Lee, and had failed to hand over information to defense attorneys. A judge agreed, and in 2016, Brown returned to court for a hearing. In 2019 — despite “Serial,” a subsequent four-part documentary on HBO and two separate books on the case — it seemed as if Syed might, in fact, spend his remaining years behind bars. Brown said Rabia Chaudry, a close family friend of Syed’s and a legal student at the time, had previously visited McClain and asked her to sign an affidavit saying she had seen Syed at the library at the time of Lee’s slaying. He said that he was open to further investigation but that it was “really tough” for his family to know that there “could be someone out there free for killing my sister.” The series also gave new life to Syed’s legal case. “Serial,” which premiered in 2014, quickly shattered records with hundreds of millions of downloads and ushered in a new era of true-crime podcasts. When Syed’s attorney first filed for a post-conviction relief a decade after the original ruling, his attorney at the time, Justin Brown, said he struggled to reach a woman, Asia McClain, who he believed was an alibi witness who could help free his client. “She is this very hopeful, optimistic, never quit, amazing woman, and I didn’t know what to tell her,” he said. He was convicted in 2000 and sentenced to life in prison.