Adnan Syed
After 25 years, two trials, a hit podcast, having his conviction overturned, then reinstated, then overturned again and reinstated again, Adnan Syed, the unrepentant murderer of Hae Min Lee, walked out of court a free man.
Syed was initially released from prison in September 2022, after then State’s Attorney (now convicted felon) Marilyn Mosby formed a bizarre alliance with the Innocence Project to vacate his conviction. Many pieces of supposedly new evidence were put forward in support of the Motion to Vacate, including a handwritten note from prosecutor Kevin Urick which detailed a conversation with Salma Ahmed, the then-wife of Syed’s mentor (and now convicted rapist) Bilal Ahmed. In this conversation Salma claimed that Bilal “was upset that the woman [Hae] was creating so many problems for Adnan. He told her that he would make her disappear; he would kill her”. It is unclear from the note who the “he” is, but Urick insists that the “he” is Adnan. Mosby’s team, however, were convinced the “he” was Bilal – so convinced that they didn’t bother to ask Urick what it meant.
At the initial hearing Mosby and the presiding Judge, Melissa Phinn, were so desperate to spring Syed from prison that they refused to delay the hearing by a few days so Hae’s brother, Young Lee, could appear in person – showing utter contempt for the Lee family. This decision proved fatal, however, after the Baltimore Supreme Court ruled that Lee’s rights as a victim were violated and reinstated Syed’s conviction.
Mosby’s replacement as State’s Attorney, Ivan Bates, wasn’t as convinced as she was that a note written by the prosecutor and touch DNA on the bottom of some shoes that might have been Hae’s exonerated Syed, and reviewed the “investigation” her team carried out. This review proved that there was, in fact, no new evidence which could exonerate Syed, and Bates dismissed the Motion to Vacate.
However, he and his office still supported Syed’s motion for resentencing under the Juvenile Restoration Act, which allows those convicted of crimes committed before they were 18 to have lengthy sentences shortened. At the hearing to decide this motion Syed chose to lie to the court and claim he has avoided doing any media appearances, despite having hosted his own press conference to discuss the supposed new evidence. Adnan Syed lying again – why break the habit of a lifetime?
His sentence was duly reduced to time served, and he is a free man – but remains legally, and factually, the murderer of Hae Min Lee.
As the Lee family said in 2016: “We ask that everyone remember who the criminal is and who the victim is. Weeks like this, it is easy to forget that seventeen years ago the beautiful, blossoming song of Hae Min Lee was silenced forever by Adnan Syed. In her diary, Hae once wrote: ‘Do love and remember me forever.’ We do, and we always will.”
