Advocates welcome decision to drop case against Adnan Syed, who was released from a US prison last month.
Prosecutors in the US city of Baltimore have dropped a murder case against Adnan Syed, who became the subject of the popular podcast series Serial that cast doubt on his guilt in the 1999 killing of 18-year-old Hae Min Lee.
Emily Witty, a spokeswoman for the city of Baltimore’s state’s attorney’s office, said in an email on Tuesday that the office had dropped its case against Syed.
A judge had overturned Syed’s conviction last month, releasing him from prison and giving prosecutors one month to decide whether to renew the case.
“Breaking news: After the latest round of DNA testing generated results that, like previous rounds of testing, excluded Adnan Syed, he has now been formally exonerated!” tweeted Laura Nirider, a co-director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, who accompanied Syed out of prison last month.
Breaking news: After the latest round of DNA testing generated results that, like previous rounds of testing, excluded Adnan Syed, he has now been formally exonerated! https://t.co/RgdYCvgHFz
— Laura Nirider (@LauraNirider) October 11, 2022
The act is a final vindication for Syed, now 42 years old, who spent more than 20 years in prison for a murder that he had always maintained that he did not commit. The podcast series, released in 2014, became enormously popular, attracting millions of listeners, and raising doubts about the fairness of the trial.
Circuit Judge Melissa Phinn ruled last month that the state had violated its legal obligation to share evidence that could have strengthened Syed’s defence in the case, where he was accused of strangling Lee, who was buried in a Baltimore park.
Data from a mobile phone tower had been used in the case to paint a picture of Syed’s location despite the fact that it was known to be unreliable. A notice on the records specifically advised that the billing locations for incoming calls “would not be considered reliable information for location”.
Prosecutors have said that a reinvestigation of the case unearthed new evidence relating to two possible alternate suspects, one of whom had threatened to kill Lee and make her “disappear”, according to a court filing. Both suspects had a history of violent crimes against women.
Prosecutors said that the two potential suspects were known at the time of the original case, but were not properly ruled out or disclosed to the defence. Syed was released from jail last month and placed on home detention with a GPS monitor, a common practice in the US criminal justice system.