AG says Md. high court should take up Adnan Syed exoneration case

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The Maryland Attorney General‘s Office agrees that the state’s top court should take up Adnan Syed’s appeal in his 1999 murder conviction, which was vacated and then reinstated amid a legal battle over crime victims’ rights.

The office acknowledged that the appeal raises “novel questions of broad public importance” and meets the test for the Maryland Supreme Court to grant a writ of certiorari.

Syed is appealing because Maryland’s intermediate appellate court in March reinstated his conviction in the killing of his high school ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee.

Syed walked free in September after prosecutors asked to vacate his conviction, citing newly discovered evidence of a potential alternative suspect and other flaws in the trial evidence.

Lee’s family quickly appealed and argued they should have had the opportunity to attend the hearing in person. Lee’s brother, Young Lee, received only a few days’ notice of the hearing and could not fly in from California, where he lives, so he gave a brief statement to the court over Zoom.

Now, all of the parties to the case are asking the Maryland Supreme Court to give it another look. Syed wants the Supreme Court to reverse the lower court’s ruling and address whether crime victims’ rights can supersede prosecutors’ decision to vacate a conviction.

The Lee family is asking the high court to go a step further than the Maryland Appellate Court and find that crime victims have the right to speak and challenge evidence at a vacatur hearing. The Appellate Court found that Lee had the right to be present at the hearing, but not to address the court.

The Attorney General’s Office, which largely sided with the Lee family in their appeal, wrote in its cross-petition to the Supreme Court that it agrees with the Appellate Court’s decision but recognizes that Syed and the Lee family’s petitions raise important questions.

The Supreme Court has yet to decide if it will hear the case. It agreed to keep Syed’s murder conviction on hold last month, meaning that he will not return to prison while the appeal is pending.

Hae Min Lee, 18, went missing on Jan. 13, 1999, and her body was found buried in Baltimore’s Leakin Park a few weeks later. Police accused Syed, who was 17 at the time, of strangling her to death. He was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison, though he always maintained his innocence.

The case gained international recognition when it was examined in the hit true-crime podcast “Serial” in 2014.

In 2021, Baltimore prosecutors reinvestigated the case at the urging of Syed’s lawyer, Assistant Public Defender Erica Suter, and ultimately concluded that the evidence did not support Syed’s guilt.

The Baltimore State’s Attorney’s Office asked to vacate his conviction in a request that centered on two handwritten notes said to reveal an alternative suspect who had reportedly said he would kill Lee. Those documents were never turned over to the defense, prosecutors said, raising questions about the original conviction’s legitimacy.

Then-Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby also entered a nolle prosequi a month later, dropping the case against Syed entirely after new testing eliminated Syed as a contributor to DNA recovered from Lee’s shoes.

The Maryland Attorney General’s Office, however, questioned the integrity of the exoneration process in court records during the Lee family’s appeal. The office claimed that the handwritten notes were open to interpretation, and that the State’s Attorney’s Office selectively quoted one of the notes to make it appear more exculpatory.