Prosecutors Drop Charges Against Adnan Syed in ‘Serial’ Case

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Prosecutors dropped charges against Adnan Syed on Tuesday in the 1999 killing of Hae Min Lee—a case that was chronicled in the hit podcast “Serial”—after additional DNA testing further undermined his conviction, his lawyer said.

Emily Witty, a spokeswoman for the city of Baltimore’s state’s attorney’s office, said in an email that her office had dropped its case against Syed and would release further details about its decision later Tuesday.

The state’s attorney’s office announced it would not prosecute the case further based on DNA testing results that excluded Syed, the Maryland Office of the Public Defender said in a statement. The Circuit Court dropped the charges Tuesday, resulting in the dismissal of the criminal case, according to the public defender’s office.

“Finally, Adnan Syed is able to live as a free man,” Syed’s attorney Erica Suter said in a statement. “The DNA results confirmed what we have already known and what underlies all of the current proceedings: that Adnan is innocent and lost 23 years of his life serving time for a crime he did not commit.”

A Baltimore judge last month overturned Syed’s murder conviction and ordered him released from prison, where the 41-year-old had spent more than two decades. Circuit Judge Melissa Phinn also gave prosecutors 30 days in which to decide whether to retry Syed or drop the charges.

Phinn ruled that the state had violated its legal obligation to share evidence that could have bolstered Syed’s defense. After his release, Syed was placed on home detention with GPS location monitoring.

Lee’s family last month asked the Court of Special Appeals, which is Maryland’s intermediate appellate court, to halt the case. Attorney Steve Kelly said Lee’s family was not challenging Syed’s release, but instead wanted the judge to hold another hearing that the family can attend in-person and address the court—Lee’s brother Young Lee appeared via videoconference on short notice during the previous hearing. Kelly did not have an immediate comment Tuesday.

Last week, state Attorney General Brian Frosh’s office filed court papers supporting the appeal by Lee’s family.

The family’s appeal remains pending, but Suter, an assistant public defender and the director of the University of Baltimore Law School’s Innocence Project Clinic, stressed that the decision by prosecutors to drop the charges was an important step for Syed, who has been on house arrest since last month.

“He still needs some time to process everything that has happened and we ask that you provide him and his family with that space,” she said.

Syed has maintained his innocence for decades and captured the attention of millions in 2014 when the debut season of “Serial” focused on the case and raised doubts about some of the evidence, including cellphone tower data.

Prosecutors have previously said that a reinvestigation of the case revealed evidence regarding the possible involvement of two alternate suspects. The two suspects may have been involved individually or together, the state’s attorney’s office said.

One of the suspects had threatened Lee, saying “he would make her (Ms. Lee) disappear. He would kill her,” according to a court filing.

The suspects were known persons at the time of the original investigation and were not properly ruled out nor disclosed to the defense, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors also said new information revealed that one of the suspects was convicted of attacking a woman in her vehicle, and that one of the suspects was convicted of engaging in serial rape and sexual assault.

Prosecutors also noted that unreliable cellphone data had been used to convict Syed.

Syed served more than 20 years in prison for the strangling of Lee, who was 18 at the time. Her body was found weeks later buried in a Baltimore park.

More than a decade later, the popular “Serial” podcast revealed little-known evidence and attracted millions of listeners, shattering podcast-streaming and downloading records.

Contact us at [email protected].