Conviction of Adnan Syed from ‘Serial’ podcast should be reinstated, Maryland Supreme Court says

By Tierney Sneed and Devan Cole, CNN

(CNN) — The Maryland Supreme Court ruled Friday that the conviction of Adnan Syed should be reinstated because of procedural errors in how Syed’s conviction had been wiped away in 2022.

The ruling is the latest twist in the legal saga made famous by the podcast “Serial,” which examined the investigation that led to the 2000 conviction of Syed for the murder of Hae Min Lee.

On Friday, the state’s highest court agreed with an appeals court decision that said the rights of Lee’s family were violated because her brother Young Lee received inadequate notice of a 2022 hearing on the state’s efforts to vacate the case and was not afforded opportunities to fully participate in the hearing.

“In an effort to remedy what they perceived to be an injustice to Mr. Syed, the prosecutor and the circuit court worked an injustice against Mr. Lee by failing to treat him with dignity, respect, and sensitivity and, in particular, by violating Mr. Lee’s rights as a crime victim’s representative to reasonable notice of the Vacatur Hearing, the right to attend the hearing in person, and the right to be heard on the merits of the Vacatur Motion,” the Maryland Supreme Court said in the 4-3 decision.

The ruling will restart the efforts to clear away Syed’s conviction from the point that the 2022 motion to vacate the conviction was filed by Maryland state’s attorney’s office.

At the time, prosecutors said that they had uncovered evidence related to one of the other suspects in the case.

The reinvestigation of the case revealed evidence about the possible involvement of two suspects other than Syed, including a person who said they would make Lee “disappear” and that “he would kill her,” prosecutors previously said.

Syed’s attorneys said he and his legal team were unaware that information existed until 2022.

Syed’s conviction gained renewed — and widespread — attention nearly 10 years ago after the “Serial” podcast dug into his case, raising questions about the conviction and his legal representation. In doing so, the podcast reached a huge audience and set off a true-crime podcasting boom as well as further examinations of the case, including the HBO docuseries, “The Case Against Adnan Syed.”

In two separate dissents, three members of the Maryland Supreme Court expressed disagreement with the majority’s decision to reinstate the conviction.

Writing in one, Judge Michele Hotten said that under Maryland law, Young Lee “had no right to be heard at the vacatur hearing.”

”The circuit court is not statutorily required to hear from a victim or victim’s representative during vacatur proceedings because those proceedings no longer concern punishing the criminal defendant; rather, those proceedings concern the very basis of the criminal defendant’s guilt — conviction,” she wrote in the dissent

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CNN’s Christina Maxouris, Sara Smart, Dakin Andone and Eric Levenson contributed to this report.