CNN
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The Maryland Supreme Court docket dominated Friday that the conviction of Adnan Syed must be reinstated due to procedural errors in how Syed’s conviction had been wiped away in 2022.
The ruling is the newest twist within the authorized saga made well-known by the podcast “Serial,” which examined the investigation that led to the 2000 conviction of Syed for the homicide of Hae Min Lee.
On Friday, the state’s highest courtroom agreed with an appeals courtroom resolution that stated the rights of Lee’s household have been violated as a result of her brother Younger Lee acquired insufficient discover of a 2022 listening to on the state’s efforts to vacate the case and was not afforded alternatives to totally take part within the listening to.
“In an effort to treatment what they perceived to be an injustice to Mr. Syed, the prosecutor and the circuit courtroom labored an injustice towards Mr. Lee by failing to deal with him with dignity, respect, and sensitivity and, particularly, by violating Mr. Lee’s rights as a criminal offense sufferer’s consultant to cheap discover of the Vacatur Listening to, the suitable to attend the listening to in particular person, and the suitable to be heard on the deserves of the Vacatur Movement,” the Maryland Supreme Court docket stated within the 4-3 resolution.
The ruling will restart the efforts to clear away Syed’s conviction from the purpose that the 2022 movement to vacate the conviction was filed by Maryland state’s lawyer’s workplace.
On the time, prosecutors stated that they’d uncovered proof associated to one of many different suspects within the case.
The reinvestigation of the case revealed proof concerning the attainable involvement of two suspects aside from Syed, together with an individual who stated they might make Lee “disappear” and that “he would kill her,” prosecutors beforehand stated.
Syed’s attorneys stated he and his authorized crew have been unaware that info existed till 2022.
Syed’s conviction gained renewed — and widespread — consideration almost 10 years in the past after the “Serial” podcast dug into his case, elevating questions concerning the conviction and his authorized illustration. In doing so, the podcast reached an enormous viewers and set off a true-crime podcasting growth in addition to additional examinations of the case, together with the HBO docuseries, “The Case Towards Adnan Syed.”
In two separate dissents, three members of the Maryland Supreme Court docket expressed disagreement with the bulk’s resolution to reinstate the conviction.
Writing in a single, Decide Michele Hotten stated that underneath Maryland regulation, Younger Lee “had no proper to be heard on the vacatur listening to.”
”The circuit courtroom isn’t statutorily required to listen to from a sufferer or sufferer’s consultant throughout vacatur proceedings as a result of these proceedings not concern punishing the legal defendant; slightly, these proceedings concern the very foundation of the legal defendant’s guilt — conviction,” she wrote within the dissent