Maryland Supreme Court Upholds Adnan Syed’s Murder Conviction

Maryland’s highest court ruled Friday to uphold the murder conviction against Adnan Syed, the subject of the first season of the groundbreaking true-crime podcast Serial, agreeing with an appellate court’s previous decision to reinstate Syed’s conviction for the murder of Hae Min Lee.

In September 2022, a Baltimore judge ordered the release of Syed after overturning his third-degree murder conviction; Syed was found guilty in 2000 in the death of Lee, whose murder — and the subsequent errors during Syed’s murder trial — was the focus of Serial’s first season in 2014. A month later, prosecutors announced they would not seek retrial and instead dropped the charges against Syed, who was serving a life sentence plus 30 years following his conviction.

However, in March 2023, an appellate court reinstated the murder conviction on the grounds that a lower court had violated the right of Lee’s brother, Young Lee, to attend the hearing that resulted in the overturned conviction.

“The family received no notice and their attorney was offered no opportunity to be present at the proceeding,” Lee’s family attorney, Steve Kelly, told Rolling Stone in October 2022. “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.”

Almost 18 months after the conviction was reinstated — during which time Syed remained free as the appeals process played out — Maryland’s Supreme Court upheld the appellate court’s decision by a 4-3 ruling. 

“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 its ruling.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Michele Holten argued that Syed should remain free as the prosecutors had already announced they would drop the charges. “This case exists as a procedural zombie,” Hotten wrote (via the Associated Press). “It has been reanimated, despite its expiration. The doctrine of mootness was designed to prevent such judicial necromancy.”

David Sanford, an attorney representing Lee’s family, said after the ruling Friday, “If there is compelling evidence to support vacating the conviction of Adnan Syed, we will be the first to agree. To date, the public has not seen evidence which would warrant overturning a murder conviction that has withstood appeals for over two decades.”

Despite the upheld murder conviction, there is still a good chance that Syed will again be released eventually: His legal journey will now pick up where it left off in September 2022, when the Baltimore judge vacated the conviction due a reinvestigation of Lee’s murder that resulted in the emergence of two new suspects as well as potential DNA evidence that excluded Syed as a suspect.