Adnan Syed cries outside court after judges question whether family of Hae Min Lee’s have a case
Adnan Syed cried out of court after three Maryland Court of Appeals judges questioned whether they had the authority to reinstate his decades-old murder conviction.
Syed, whose case was highlighted on the popular Serial podcast, was released last year after a judge overturned his sentence for the 1999 murder of his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee.
While Lee’s family appealed the reversal that released Syed after 23 years behind bars, their lawyers came up empty-handed when Justices Stuart Berger, Kathryn Graeff and Gregory Wells pressed Thursday why the charges should not be dropped.
Speaking publicly about his case for the first time, Syed told reporters, “Our family has suffered so much over the past 20, almost 24 years. It’s really hard for us.
‘It’s hard for my father; it’s hard for my mother; it’s hard for my younger brother.’
Adnan Syed cried and spoke about his case for the first time Thursday as the Maryland Court of Appeals questioned the ruling that released him after 23 years
Syed spent more than two decades behind bars after being convicted of the murder of Hae Min Lee, an ex-girlfriend who was seen above with him in a high school photo. The case became public knowledge after it was included in the serial podcast’s debut
Syed was convicted of murder in 2000, but in September the court ruled that DNA collected from Lee’s shoes did not match Syed, and found that prosecutors had provided the defense with no evidence that could have exonerated him.
However, Lee’s family argued that neither the prosecution nor the court provided the evidence they used to overturn Syed’s conviction, claiming that they held the hearing to privately release him.
However, when Graeff pressed Lee’s family attorney David Sanford for legal precedence over why the reversal should be overturned, the attorney admitted he had no examples. The Baltimore sun reports.
“I have no case law for the support in Maryland,” Sanford told the judges.
Weeping outside the courtroom on Thursday, Syed asked the court to consider the damage his family has suffered as it weighs his future.
“It’s like our family, we just go unnoticed,” Syed said. “Every time we go to court, we go unnoticed.
“We absolutely understand that Hae’s family has suffered so much and they continue to suffer. And it’s just that we suffer too. And we hope that the court will just take note of that today.’
Syed asked the court to spare his family more grief after he was released last year. Pictured: Syed makes his first public plea to reporters on Thursday
A Maryland court chose to release Syed after an investigation found that the DNA on Lee’s shoe did not match his own and that his lead prosecutors withheld evidence from the defense that could have exonerated him
Sanford alleged that the Lee family was denied their right to fully participate in the proceedings because they were not adequately informed, given facts or evidence.
“There are a lot of violations of the law here and mistakes are made by the courts here,” Sanford said CBS. “If Adnan Syed is indeed innocent, that was a terrible miscarriage of justice and we’ll be the first to say so once there has been a proper hearing of witnesses.”
As the three judges debated whether or not the case was “arguable,” as Berger put it, they seemed sympathetic to the Lee family over the speed with which Syed’s charges were dropped.
Erica Suter, Syed’s attorney, pleaded with the court to uphold the reversal as she also referenced her client’s story and court system issues being featured on the popular Serial podcast.
“This court’s decision will not bring back Hae Min Lee, nor restore Adnan’s lost 23 1/2 years, but what it can do is confirm that the lower court’s decision remains in effect,” Suter said.
“Adnan, his family and I would like to thank the tens of thousands around the world who have heard his story and believe in him, who believe in our system’s ability to correct his mistakes, even in difficult cases.”
In addition to rejecting the appeal, the appeals court could also hold a new hearing on the decision to release Syed.
It typically takes weeks or months for the court to issue a ruling, the Sun noted.
Hae Min Lee, right, was just 18 when she was strangled to death in 1999 and buried in a shallow grave in Baltimore’s Leakin Park. Syed, right, has repeatedly questioned the evidence against him
Youn Kim, Hae Min Lee’s mother, is pictured being escorted from her daughter’s memorial service. The family is now seeking to appeal a Maryland court decision to overturn Syed’s conviction
Hae Min Lee was just 18 when she was strangled in 1999 and buried in a shallow grave in Baltimore’s Leakin Park.
Syed has maintained his innocence for decades and caught the attention of millions in 2014, when Serial’s debut season focused on the case and cast doubt on some of the evidence used against him, including cell phone tower records.
Prosecutors have previously said a re-examination of the case has uncovered evidence regarding the possible involvement of two deputy suspects.
The two suspects may have been involved separately or together, the prosecution said.
One of the suspects had threatened Lee saying ‘he would make her (Mrs. Lee) disappear. He would kill her,” a court indictment said.
The suspects were known persons at the time of the original investigation and were not properly ruled out or disclosed to the defense, prosecutors said.
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