Maryland’s Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling to overturn a vacancy of Adnan Syed’s murder conviction, dealing a blow to a movement to free the man who supporters say was exonerated by evidence and procedural failures in his first case.
Syed was initially convicted for Hae Min Lee’s murder in 2000, a trial which the podcast “Serial” covered, detailing the case and poking holes in the evidence brought against Syed, then the ex-boyfriend of Lee.
Syed, whose conviction was vacated in 2022 after evidence implicating two other suspects was found to have been improperly withheld, had that vacancy overturned in March of last year by the state’s appellate court.
The decision, due to the court’s failure to give Lee’s brother ample time to reach the court hearings on the conviction, is another disappointment to advocates for Syed.
“Mr. Lee had the right to attend the hearing on the motion to vacate in person . . . he did not receive sufficient notice of the hearing to reasonably permit him to do so,” the court’s opinion read.