Prosecutors drop charges in ‘Serial’ case, calling Syed ‘wrongfully convicted’

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The Baltimore State’s Attorney’s Office on Tuesday dropped the charges against Adnan Syed, the man whose conviction in a 1999 murder case became internationally known through the hit podcast “Serial.”

State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby said Syed’s DNA was excluded in new testing on the shoes of the victim, Hae Min Lee. After receiving the results on Friday, prosecutors moved to dismiss Syed’s still-pending case and will not pursue another trial against him.

“This morning, I instructed my office to dismiss the criminal case against Adnan Syed following the completion of a second round of touch DNA testing of items that were never tested before,” Mosby said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon.

The DNA testing on Lee’s shoes showed “a mixture of multiple contributors,” Mosby said. She said the investigation into Lee’s murder is ongoing and declined to provide additional details, including whether the DNA testing matched two alternative suspects whom prosecutors have not named.

Assistant Public Defender Erica Suter, who represented Syed, said “the DNA results confirmed what we have already known and what underlies all of the current proceedings: that Adnan is innocent and lost 23 years of his life serving time for a crime he did not commit.”

Syed was not made available for comment Tuesday. Suter said the defense team “joins in hopes that an investigation will bring (the Lee family) real answers and a sense of closure.”

The State’s Attorney’s Office asked to vacate Syed’s conviction last month, citing evidence of the alternative suspects and other flaws in the original evidence. One of the alternative suspects reportedly said he would kill Lee and had a motive to harm her, prosecutors said, but that evidence was never turned over to the defense.

When prosecutors fail to turn over exculpatory evidence to the defense, that is known as a Brady violation, after the Supreme Court case that established that standard. The State’s Attorney’s Office also said it had lost faith in cellphone location evidence and a key eyewitness that were critical elements of Syed’s conviction in 2000.

Baltimore Circuit Judge Melissa M. Phinn granted the request to vacate Syed’s conviction last month and gave the State’s Attorney’s Office 30 days to decide whether to proceed with a new trial.

Syed remained on home monitoring while the decision was pending. Tuesday’s dismissal means he is no longer under court supervision.

Lee, 18, was last seen at Woodlawn High School on Jan. 13, 1999. Her body was found in Leakin Park several weeks later. Police said she was strangled to death and accused Syed, who had been in an on-again-off-again relationship with Lee. Syed spent 23 years in prison for the murder.

Mosby’s office re-investigated Syed’s case over the past year after Suter approached prosecutors to review Syed’s life sentence for the murder. Syed was 17 years old when he was charged with killing Lee.

Mosby offered an apology to both families Tuesday.

“Although my administration was not responsible for either the pain inflicted upon Hae Min Lee’s family, nor was my administration responsible for the wrongful conviction of Mr. Syed, as a representative of the institution, it is my responsibility to acknowledge and to apologize to the family of Hae Min Lee and Adnan Syed,” she said.

Lee’s brother, Young Lee, objected to prosecutors’ sudden request to vacate Syed’s sentence and filed an appeal based on Maryland’s victim’s rights laws. The Maryland Attorney General’s Office joined the Lee family in asking for a stay that would have put Syed’s case on hold while the appeal proceeded.

The request for a stay is now moot. The Attorney General’s Office declined to comment Tuesday morning.

Although Mosby said Tuesday that her office had attempted to contact Lee’s family before dropping the charges against Syed, a lawyer for the family said they learned of the dismissal through the media.

“The family received no notice and their attorney was offered no opportunity to be present at the proceeding,” said the lawyer, Steve Kelly. “By rushing to dismiss the criminal charges, the State’s Attorney’s Office sought to silence Hae Min Lee’s family and to prevent the family and the public from understanding why the State so abruptly  changed its position of more than 20 years. All this family ever wanted was answers and a voice. Today’s actions robbed them of both.”

The alleged Brady violation in Syed’s case has been an ongoing source of controversy. The Attorney General’s Office, which represented the state as Syed repeatedly appealed his conviction over the last decade, has denied that a Brady violation took place.

City prosecutors and Syed’s attorney said they discovered two handwritten documents that revealed the alternative suspect who reportedly said he would kill Lee. Mosby’s office has opposed the release of those documents, citing the ongoing investigation into Lee’s murder, though the Attorney General’s Office supported their release.

Mosby has characterized the alleged Brady violations in the case as “misdeeds” by former prosecutors who handled the case years before she took office. But she also said she has not referred the case for disciplinary review by Maryland Bar Counsel.

“That’s not my duty,” Mosby said Tuesday.

Suter said in a separate news conference that Brady violations are a leading cause of wrongful convictions.

“What has happened to Adnan is tragic and horrible, but it is incredibly common,” Suter said.