BALTIMORE – A judge scheduled a hearing for Monday to determine if Adnan Syed, the subject of the “Serial” podcast who’s currently serving a life sentence for the murder of his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, will be released after new evidence suggests two other suspects.
Both the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office and Syed’s defense lawyers are petitioning for his release.
“Given the stunning lack of reliable evidence implicating Mr. Syed, coupled with increasing evidence pointing to other suspects, this unjust conviction cannot stand,” said Assistant Public Defender Erica Suter, Syed’s attorney and director of the Innocence Project Clinic. “Mr. Syed is grateful that this information has finally seen the light of day and looks forward to his day in court.”
State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby has said she will seek a new trial for Syed.
Both sides participated in a nearly year-long investigation, leading Mosby on Wednesday to file a motion requesting Syed’s conviction be vacated. The prosecutor’s office said one suspect threatened to kill the victim but prosecutors never shared that information with the defense, which is required to by law.
One suspect threatened to kill the victim but prosecutors never shared that information with the defense, which is required to by law, prosecutors said.
The suspect said: “He would make her [Ms. Lee] disappear. He would kill her.”
Mosby’s office also said new information “revealed that one of the suspects was convicted of attacking a woman in her vehicle, and that one of the suspects was convicted of engaging in serial rape and sexual assault.”
Syed and Lee, students at Woodlawn High School, were both 17 at the time of the girl’s murder in 1999.
Lee disappeared on Jan. 13, 1999. Several weeks later, her body was found in Leakin Park. An autopsy report stated she had died from manual strangulation.
Syed, convicted in 2000, has always said he’s innocent.
The case against Syed relied largely on the testimony of one man, Jay Wilds, who claimed Syed asked him to help bury the body.
“He said, ‘the police told me all of this,’ so you know, this guy is now on the record of saying I just made up stuff,” said Rabia Chaudry, a childhood friend of Syed’s who wrote a book about the case.
The 2014 podcast “Serial,” narrated by “This American Life” producer and former Baltimore Sun reporter Sarah Koenig, raised questions about Syed’s prosecution.
“No one has been able to provide any shred of evidence that I had anything but friendship towards her – like love and respect for her. I had no reason to kill her,” Adnan said in one episode.
And a 2019 HBO documentary hinted at the existence of DNA evidence.
In March, the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office agreed to new DNA testing that Syed’s lawyers believe could clear his name.
Mosby said Wednesday investigators found trace levels of male DNA after testing swabs from Lee’s fingernails, shirt and fingernail clippings, items which were not tested during a separate inquiry in 2018.
“The swabs from the right fingernail and shirt were then analyzed with a genotyping kit that targets male Y-chromosome STR DNA,” Mosby’s office said in a motion. “However, no useful typing results were obtained from this analysis.”
Monday’s hearing is scheduled for 2 p.m.