The legal battle over Adnan Syed ‘s conviction, scrutinized a decade ago in the hit podcast “Serial,” keeps twisting and turning, even after prosecutors freed him from more than 23 years in prison for a murder he still says he didn’t commit.
Baltimore prosecutors resolved one key question this week, dropping an earlier request to clear Syed’s record and instead saying his murder conviction will stand.
But they also joined his defense lawyers in asking a judge on Wednesday to reduce his sentence to the time he served. The victim’s family objected during the emotional hearing, saying he should serve out his original life sentence.
The judge said she’ll rule soon. Meanwhile, here’s what you — like the true crime enthusiasts who became obsessed with the genre after listening to the “Serial” podcast in 2014 — need to know.
How did we get here?
Syed was 17 when his high school ex-girlfriend and classmate, Hae Min Lee, was found strangled to death and buried in a makeshift grave in 1999. At trial, prosecutors said Syed killed her after becoming inconsolably jealous when the two broke up and she began dating someone else. Syed was convicted of murder and received life in prison, plus 30 years.
Syed’s appeal didn’t gain traction until the debut season of “Serial” raised doubts about cellphone tower data and other evidence. No eyewitnesses tied him to the crime, and Syed’s attorney, Cristina Gutierrez, failed to interview an alibi witness who said she was with Syed at the time Lee was killed. Gutierrez, a high-profile Baltimore-area criminal defense attorney, was disbarred in 2001 when client funds went missing. She died in 2004.
A plethora of legal activity followed in multiple courts, until Baltimore’s former top prosecutor, Marilyn Mosby, moved to vacate the conviction in 2022, allowing Syed to walk free. But Maryland’s Supreme Court then reinstated the conviction on procedural grounds, saying Lee’s family wasn’t given enough advance warning to testify in person.
Mosby’s successor, Ivan Bates, announced on the eve of Wednesday’s hearing that his office is withdrawing the motion to vacate “to preserve the credibility of our office and maintain public trust in the justice system.”
A case that became a pop culture phenomenon
Today, it’s a given that millions of people are listening to podcasts where popular hosts can be catapulted into celebrity status. But in 2014, the podcast world was still relatively new.
That’s when “Serial” dropped. The podcast was the brainchild of longtime radio producer and former Baltimore Sun reporter Sarah Koenig, who spent more than a year digging into Syed’s case and built suspense as she reported her findings in hourlong segments.
The podcast debut didn’t just cast doubt on Syed’s murder conviction; it also upended the true crime genre by portraying Syed as a sympathetic character, rather than taking a defendant’s guilt for granted.
There’s been a flood of true crime interest since Koenig’s smash hit. Experts are conflicted on the rise of online sleuths, who can expose wrongdoing, but also sow distrust of the U.S. criminal justice system.
Case highlights tension between victims’ rights and justice reform
“This is not a podcast for me. This is real life,” said Hae Min Lee’s brother Young Lee, when the conviction was vacated in 2022.
Ultimately, Lee family’s appealed to the Maryland Supreme Court, arguing crime victims should be given a larger role in the process. And Young Lee was able to speak in court on Wednesday, urging a judge to return Syed to prison for life.
Judge Jennifer Schiffer indicated that her ruling will take into account Syed’s recent accomplishments and the unimaginable suffering of the victim’s family as well as the horrific nature of the crime.
She also offered an apology to Young Lee, telling him: “I am so sorry for what you’ve been through, and all I can say is that your words are not lost on me, and my heart goes out to you.”
