In explaining her decision to recuse herself, Baltimore City Judge Melissa Phinn cited material in the state investigation that was not properly turned over to defense attorneys, as well as the existence of two suspects who may have been exonerated as part of the investigation. Her decision was met with cheers and tears in the courtroom. Said — who attended the hearing wearing a white button-down shirt, a dark tie and a cap — was not handcuffed, but his legs were. After the verdict, officials placed handcuffs on his ankles, and soon after, Syed walked out of court to cheers and applause from his supporters. He didn’t stop to talk to reporters as he got into a vehicle. “We are not yet declaring that Adnan Said is innocent,” Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby said Monday after the judge’s ruling. “But we declare that in the interests of justice and fairness he is entitled to a new trial.” Prosecutors have 30 days to decide whether to pursue a new trial and await DNA analysis they are trying to expedite to determine if Adnan’s case is dismissed or the case goes to trial. But that order, Mosby said, is “separate and separate” from the investigation into who killed Lee. In the meantime, Said will wear an ankle monitor with tracking, according to Becky Feldman, head of the Baltimore State’s Attorney’s Sentencing Review Unit. Twenty-three years after he went to prison, “we now know what Adnan and his loved ones have always known, that Adnan’s trial was profoundly and grossly unfair. His evidence was hidden, evidence that pointed to other people as murderers.” Assistant Public Defender Erica Suter, Syed’s attorney and director of the Innocence Project Clinic, said in a statement after the ruling. The hearing comes nearly eight years after the “Serial” podcast dug into his case, raising questions about his conviction and legal representation. In doing so, the podcast reached a huge audience and started a boom in true crime podcasting as well as further examinations of the case, including the HBO documentary “The Case Against Adnan Syed.” Prosecutors moved to overturn Syed’s conviction after an investigation that lasted nearly a year, they said in a news release last week. At the time, Mosby said prosecutors “were not arguing, at this time, that Mr. Syed is innocent,” but that the state “has no confidence in the integrity of the conviction” and that Syed should be retried. A review of the case revealed evidence of the possible involvement of two suspects other than Syed, including one person who said they would make Lee “disappear” and that “(she) was going to kill her,” prosecutors said. Syed’s lawyers said he and his legal team did not know the information existed until this year. Defense attorneys hailed the prosecution’s motion to vacate the conviction as righting a wrong. “Given the stunning lack of credible evidence implicating Mr. Said, combined with mounting evidence pointing to other suspects, this wrongful conviction cannot stand,” Suter said in a statement last week. Maryland Public Defender Natasha Dartigue, in a news release, called the case “a true example of how justice delayed is denied. An innocent man spends decades wrongfully imprisoned while any information or evidence that could help in locating the real perpetrator is becoming more and more difficult to seek.
What we know about the case
Adnan and Lee were seniors at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore County in January 1999 when she disappeared. Her strangled body was discovered in a city forest three weeks later.
Said and prosecutors filed a joint motion in March for post-conviction DNA testing, saying that since the crime occurred more than two decades ago, “DNA testing has changed and improved dramatically.”
The March motion called for the victim’s clothing to be tested for contact DNA, which was not available at the time of trial. The items being tested now had not previously been tested in 2018 — when the Baltimore City Police Laboratory tested various items for DNA — with the exception of the victim’s fingernail clippings, Mosby’s statement said.
Mosby said the motion to vacate was filed with the head of the sentencing review unit, Becky Feldman. Syed was a minor when he was convicted.
The alternate suspects were known persons at the time of the initial investigation “and were not properly excluded or disclosed to the defense,” according to Mosby’s statement.
The state is not releasing the names of the suspects, but said that, according to the trial file, one of them said, “He was going to make her (Ms. Lee) disappear. He would kill her.”
The investigation also revealed a suspect was convicted of striking a woman with her vehicle, according to the release. The second suspect was convicted of engaging in serial rape and sexual assault, the statement said.
Some of the information was available during the trial, the statement said, and some came to light later. It is unclear when these attacks took place.
Lee’s car was located “directly behind the home of one of the suspect’s family members,” the release said.
Syed’s lawyers brought the case to the attention of the sentence review unit in April 2021.
Said’s attorneys “identified significant credibility issues regarding the most critical evidence at trial,” Mosby’s statement said.
In the 2019 HBO documentary “The Case Against Adnan Syed,” a lawyer for Syed said his client’s DNA was not found in any of the 12 samples recovered from the victim’s body and car. This test was not part of the official investigation by the authorities. HBO, like CNN, is a unit of Warner Bros. Discovery.
At trial, prosecutors relied on the testimony of a friend, Jay Wilds, who said he helped Syed dig a hole for Lee’s body. To corroborate his account, prosecutors presented cell phone records and expert testimony to place Syed at the site where Lee was buried.
CNN’s Lauren Koenig reported from Baltimore, while Dakin Andone and Eric Levenson wrote this story in New York. CNN’s Amy Simonson, Ray Sanchez and Sonia Moghe contributed to this report.
