In a new episode of the serial podcast released Tuesday, a day after Adnan Syed walked out of court after his murder conviction was overturned, host Sarah Koenig noted that most or all of the evidence in prosecutors’ motion for overturning the conviction were available. since 1999. “Yesterday, there was a lot of talk about justice, but most of what the state submitted in this motion to vacate, all of the facts, were either known or known to the police and prosecutors in 1999,” Koenig said in closing the new . episode. “So even on a day when the government publicly acknowledges its own mistakes, it’s hard to feel cheers for a triumph of justice. Because we’ve created a system that takes more than 20 years to fix itself. And that’s just that. case.” Syed, then 17, was convicted in 2000 of murdering his 18-year-old ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, in Baltimore in January of the previous year. His case received widespread attention in 2014 when the first season of Serial focused on Lee’s murder and cast doubt on some of the evidence prosecutors had used. Chris Flohr, a lawyer who represented Syed shortly after his arrest in 1999, weeps as he hugs journalist and serial host Sarah Koenig after Monday’s hearing. Koenig’s podcast in 2014 brought the details of Syed’s case to the general public. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters) On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Melissa Phinn in Baltimore ordered the 41-year-old’s release after overturning his conviction at the behest of the Baltimore district attorney’s office, which last week said it had uncovered new evidence. Phinn ruled that the state violated its legal obligation to share evidence that could bolster Syed’s defense. He ordered Syed placed on house arrest with GPS location monitoring and said the state must decide whether to request a new trial date or dismiss the case within 30 days. Koenig called prosecutors’ motion to vacate Syed’s conviction a “firework” coming from the same office that asked a jury to convict him more than two decades ago. Koenig records as Maryland State’s Attorney for Baltimore Marilyn Mosby speaks to the media outside court Monday. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters) “The prosecutors today are not saying that Adnan is innocent. They stopped not exonerating,” he said. “Instead they’re saying, ‘In 1999, we didn’t investigate this case thoroughly enough. We relied on evidence we shouldn’t have and we broke the rules when we prosecuted. This was not an honest conviction.’”
The sentencing review led to a new investigation
As Koenig said on Tuesday’s episode, under a new Maryland law that took effect last year, convicts who had served at least 20 years for a crime committed as a juvenile could seek a reduced sentence or even parole. Syed’s lawyers filed their request the day after the law took effect in October. That request led to a review of Said’s case by Becky Feldman, head of the state attorney’s office’s sentencing review unit. The former public defender was “disturbed” by aspects of the prosecution and began reinvestigating the case in conjunction with Said’s legal team, Koenig said. In prosecutors’ motion to overturn Seid’s conviction, Feldman said there was evidence that two potential alternate suspects were improperly ruled out in 1999, including the prosecutor’s handwritten notes on one of the suspects, which were never disclosed to Seid’s lawyers. That failure alone could be grounds for Syed’s conviction to be overturned, Koenig said. A Baltimore district attorney stumbles upon two handwritten notes in Adnan’s case file. Everything changes. A new episode from the first season, out now. https://t.co/0O60tPrtxS —@serial The show host said she knew the identities of the two suspects but would not name them as they had not been charged in Lee’s murder. “One of them was investigated at the time, he took two polygraphs. The other one was also investigated, but not very vigorously, as far as I can tell. Now he’s in prison for sexual assault,” he said. Prosecutors also had concerns about evidence from a key witness and cellphone tower records used to help convict Said. Baltimore police had told prosecutors they would try to talk to the two suspects, Koenig said, adding that she believed Syed would not face a new trial. “I have zero predictions of what could happen [the police investigation]but I know that the chances of the state trying to deport Adnan again are remote at best.” Serial ushered in the true crime podcast era with a re-investigation into the case of Syed, a Maryland college student convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, in 1999. (Series)
