A divided Maryland Supreme Court reinstated the murder conviction of Adnan Syed, but ordered a new procedural hearing where the state is likely to move to vacate his conviction. File photo by Bennett Leckrone.
The Maryland Supreme Court on Friday reinstated Adnan Syed’s conviction for the 1999 murder of a former girlfriend and ordered lower courts to hold new hearings on the evidence that freed him in 2022.
A divided Supreme Court on Friday did not question the evidence that freed Syed, but it did say prosecutors moved too quickly to drop the charges against him. The family of the victim, Hae Min Lee, said they were denied their rights by not being given enough notice for Hae Min’s brother, Young Lee, to participate in the “vacatur” proceedings, the hearings that freed Syed.
A majority of the Maryland Supreme Court agreed.
“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,” said the majority opinion written by Justice Jonathan Biran.
Biran wrote that the state violated “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.”
David Sanford, an attorney representing the Lee family, welcomed the ruling that he said “reaffirms crime victims’ rights” as enshrined in the Maryland State Constitution.
“Significantly, the Lee family will now have the right to address the meris of the vacatur motion after the prosecution and the defense have made their presentation in support of that motion,” Sanford said in a social media post. “If there is compelling evidence to support vacating the conviction of Adnan Syed, we will be the first to agree … the burden remains on the prosecution and the defense to make their case.”
Erica Suter, the assistant public defender representing Syed, respectfully disagreed.
A file photo of Adnan Syed, who spent 22 years in prison for the murder of Hae Min Lee, before the charges were dropped in 2022. Courtesy photo.
“Today a nearly evenly split Supreme Court of Maryland reached a result that we could not disagree with more,” Suter said in a statement. “However, we must respect the Court’s decision, and so we look to Adnan’s future. Despite its decision, the Court states that it is not sending Adnan back to prison.”
She said that reinstating Syed’s conviction “does not provide Hae Min Lee’s family with justice or closure, and it takes tremendous toll on Adnan’s family who already lost a son and a brother for more than two decades” — the time Syed spent in prison for the murder.
The case came to national attention when it was featured in the true crime podcast “Serial,” which questioned Syed’s conviction in the murder of Lee, whose body was discovered at Leakin Park in Baltimore City on Feb. 9, 1999.
Syed was released in September 2022 after it was discovered that prosecutors at his trial may have withheld evidence, and DNA testing that was not available in 2000 excluded him as a suspect. The Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office moved to vacate his conviction and then declined to try him again.
But Young Lee, who was living in California, said he was only learned on Sept. 16, 2022, a Friday, that the vacatur hearing would be held in Baltimore on the following Monday, Sept. 19. Lee was given an opportunity to virtually attend the hearing via Zoom.
Steven Kelly, Lee’s attorney at the time, attempted to postpone the hearing so that Lee would be able to provide the testimony in person, but was denied. The hearing continued and the circuit court judge vacated Syed’s conviction. He was released on his own recognizance while prosecutors decided whether to try him again. Instead, they dropped all charges on Oct. 11.
“There was no real regard for the family in this and that’s what’s hurtful to them,” Kelly said Friday.
The Lee family appealed that decision on grounds that their victim’s rights had been violated, and the Appellate Court of Maryland agreed, reinstating Syed’s conviction and ordering a new vacatur hearing. That decision was upheld Friday by the Supreme Court.
The high court ordered that the “parties and Mr. Lee will begin where they were immediately after the State’s Attorney filed the motion to vacate.”
In a pair of dissents over what one justice called a “procedural zombie” of a case, a three-justice minority of the seven-member court said the majority exceeded its authority with the ruling by creating law instead of interpreting it.
“The Majority creates a victim’s constitutional ‘right to be heard’ that was not argued or briefed by the parties and is inconsistent with the plain language of Article 47 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights,” Justice Brynja Booth wrote in dissent. “The Majority also re-writes the victims’ rights statutes to provide a right where the Legislature has declined to provide one. Respectfully, it is not our role to act as a superlegislature when we think our policies are better.”
But Kelly said the ruling basically starts the hearing for the motion to vacate Syed’s conviction over and gives the victim’s family an opportunity to participate.
“It will just be as if the court said that you’re starting back to the point to where the motion to vacate was filed,” he said. “Now the state’s attorney has the burden of demonstrating there’s a basis for vacating the convictions.”
While Kelly has changed firms and is no longer involved with the case, he said it was “gratifying” that the court agreed to hear the Lee’s appeal.
“To not have their [the Lee family’s] perspective as part of the criminal justice process, or even part of media coverage, is really a tragedy and this opinion really gives the victims a meaningful voice, and I think that’s so important,” he said.