A Baltimore judge dropped the murder conviction of Adnan Syed on Monday. “Prosecutors have 30 days to decide whether they will try him again or drop the charges; Mosby on Monday declined to say definitively whether there would be a new trial.” They are not saying he is innocent, they are just saying that he is entitled to a fair trial.
Syed had served 23 years of a life sentence for the strangling death of his 18-year-old girlfriend Hae Min Lee in 1999, when he was 17. Before Syed was freed, Hae Min’s brother Young Lee, who said he did not receive enough notice to attend the hearing in person, addressed the court via Zoom.
“This is not a podcast for me,” Lee tearfully told the court, according to the Baltimore Banner. “This is real life, a never-ending nightmare for 20 years. … Every day when I think it’s over… or it’s ended, it always comes back. It’s killing me,” he said, the Baltimore Sun reported. “It’s really tough.” Although he doesn’t oppose the investigation, Lee said he felt “betrayed” by prosecutors.
In an exceedingly rare move, prosecutors had asked for Syed’s release last week, saying that the identification of two “alternative suspects” and other evidence had not been disclosed to the defense and prevented him from receiving a fair trial. Syed’s first trial, in December 1999, was declared a mistrial after jurors overheard the judge call Syed’s defense attorney a liar. Two months later, his second trial ended with his conviction of Lee’s murder, along with kidnapping and robbery, and he received a life sentence plus 30 years.
The results of the DNA analysis are what prosecutors are waiting on to decide if they want to pursue a case another Adnan Syed.
Mosby told reporters on Monday that it remains an “active investigation, separate and apart from the 30-day mandate.”
“Once the DNA evidence comes in,” she said, “it will be much more definitive.”
But for now, Adnan Syed is a free man.
Source BuzzFeed News
