The first installment arrived with some fanfare in October 2014 by the end of the year, Serial had morphed into a smash hit and bona fide cultural phenomenon, one that broadened the audience for the genre of true crime and exploded the possibilities of what the genre could do. Syed's release marks the latest chapter in an odyssey that by rights began with the murder of 18-year-old Lee, but really took off when This American Life, the venerable WBEZ radio storytelling program, decided to turn reporter Sarah Koenig's real-time investigation of the case into a podcast “told week by week,” as each episode announced. Along with “significant reliability issues regarding the most critical pieces of evidence” and preliminary DNA results that did not point to Syed, prosecutors sought to vacate the conviction “in the interest of justice and fairness” as they had lost confidence in its integrity.īut the reason why Syed’s overturned conviction made headlines, of course, is because of the podcast Serial. A motion filed by prosecutors last week detailed how months of investigations uncovered two potential “alternative suspects” along with key evidence that should have been disclosed, but had not, to Syed’s lawyers all the way back in 1999. Then the state's highest court reversed course in 2018, keeping the murder conviction on the books and denying Syed another chance to prove his innocence in court after all. Syed won a new trial in 2016, which led to a Maryland appeals court upholding the decision and setting aside the original conviction. We were also both guests of the podcast The Argument discussing all things true crime.) (Full disclosure: Chaudry contributed to an anthology I edited, coming next summer. And indeed, Syed's lawyers, advocates, and friends, chief among them Rabia Chaudry, the attorney and advocate who had initially brought Syed's case to the public’s attention, worked hard to vacate his sentence. Vacated convictions often arise because of the work by defense lawyers and investigators. The latter prospect seems far more likely. With Syed’s conviction overturned (he will serve home detention for now), Baltimore county prosecutors have 30 days to decide whether to seek a new trial or forgo charges altogether. Syed left the courthouse to cheers and a throng of reporters and cameras, all demanding to know how he felt about this remarkable turn of events. “At this time, we will remove the shackles from Mr. Early Monday afternoon, Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Melissa Phinn announced that Adnan Syed, who was convicted of the 1999 murder of his former girlfriend Hae-Min Lee and has been serving a life sentence ever since, was free to leave prison.
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