BALTIMORE — In a circuit court filing Sunday, Baltimore prosecutors agreed with Adnan Syed that his life sentence should be reduced to time served in the 1999 killing of his high school sweetheart, Hae Min Lee, which drew national attention in 2014 as the focus of the podcast “Serial.”
If approved by a judge, the development means Syed — who was released in 2022 amid legal challenges to his convictions on murder, robbery and kidnapping charges — will likely never return to prison, even if Baltimore State’s Attorney Ivan Bates refuses to overturn Syed’s judgment of guilt as the previous state’s attorney recommended.
In an exclusive interview with The Baltimore Sun ahead of Sunday’s filing, Bates said his office was still evaluating the evidence underlying the now 2-year-old “motion to vacate” filed by then-State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby. While Bates was not prepared to take a position on that legal matter, he said it was clear that Syed, now 43, had paid his debt to society and should remain free.
“Whether it’s Mr. Syed or whether it’s a 16-year-old or 17-year-old [whose] case never reaches the paper, I think it’s important to recognize that individuals who made mistakes still have the opportunity to have hope,” said Bates, a Democrat.
“If you go into an institution,” Bates continued, “you listen to the rules, you do what you’re supposed to, you try to rehabilitate yourself, you really work hard, that people will see what you’re doing and you do have the opportunity to come back and be a positive member of society. … It’s clear to me Mr. Syed has done just that.”
Lee was strangled to death and buried in a clandestine grave in Baltimore’s Leakin Park when she was 18. Authorities postulated at the time that her popular boyfriend at Woodlawn High School, Syed, couldn’t handle it when she broke up with him, so he killed her. After a second trial, a jury convicted him in 2000 of murder and related charges. A judge sentenced him to life in prison.
Attorneys for Lee’s family said in their own court filing Friday that it was inappropriate for a judge to consider whether to reduce Syed’s sentence until Bates decides what to do about the convictions. They asked the judge to freeze that legal question, but said they were OK with Syed remaining free in the meantime.
“Before the Court considers Adnan Syed’s motion for a reduction in sentence, it should first deal with the question of whether the state ever had information or evidence to call into question the original conviction,” attorney David Sanford said in a statement. “There has never been any information or evidence to support a motion to vacate Mr. Syed’s conviction. The state needs to first tell us what its position is with respect of vacatur before there is any consideration of mercy.”
Syed says he is innocent, as he has since his arrest as a 17-year-old.
A city circuit court judge threw out Syed’s convictions in September 2022 after Mosby said she believed Syed had been prosecuted unfairly. Mosby dismissed the charges shortly thereafter. Lee’s brother appealed.
The legal argument, which centered on crime victims’ rights, eventually went to the Supreme Court of Maryland. In August, it reinstated Syed’s convictions and ordered a redo of the hearing that undid them. The high court ruled that Circuit Judge Melissa Phinn violated Young Lee’s right to attend the hearing but said Syed should remain free while Bates’ office decided what to do next.
As a candidate for state’s attorney, Bates said he believed Syed should be freed.
The legal filing from his office Sunday came in response to a request from Syed’s lawyers to reduce Syed’s sentence. In the filing, prosecutors said Syed’s punishment should be changed to the time he already served in prison, plus probation, effectively formalizing his free status.
Since his release, Syed, has been working at Georgetown University’s Prisons and Justice Initiative, caring for his and his spouse’s elderly parents — his father died recently — and being an active member of his mosque.
His attorneys cited his “positive and productive life” in a request to reduce his life sentence to the time he already served under a law allowing people convicted of crimes that happened before they turned 18 to petition a court to change their penalty.
“Decades of law-abiding conduct, both in and outside of prison, demonstrate that Mr. Syed is not a danger to the public,” the defense lawyers wrote. “Mr. Syed’s age at the time of this crime, his excellent institutional record, the time he has served, the life he has led since his release, his commitment to service, and contributions to his community, all indicate that the interests of justice will be better served by a reduced sentence.”
The Juvenile Restoration Act of 2021 says courts must consider in a request to reduce a sentence whether the defendant complied with the rules when incarcerated; “demonstrated maturity, rehabilitation, and fitness to reenter society”; reports on their mental or behavioral health; and the “diminished culpability of a juvenile as compared to an adult,” among other factors.
Lawyers for Syed said in their motion that he met all the criteria. Bates’ office agreed in their response.
“We believe that he has been held accountable,” Bates told The Sun. “We also look at the institutional record and the institutional record, we feel that Mr. Syed has done an excellent job of taking advantage of any and all programs. You can see where he went in a young man and came out a wiser man. He has great family support. He has great community support. He has a good job.”
“This is unique,” Bates continued, “in the sense that he’s shown he has the ability to be a positive member of society, having been released previously. But when you look at the institutional record — very, very minimal infractions of hardly anything during the time period in which he was incarcerated. When you look at that, you understand that this is an individual who deserves and has earned a second chance.”
In the interview, Bates said his office was still reviewing evidence and had not decided how to proceed with the motion to vacate his conviction filed by the previous administration.
Syed’s attorneys said they would continue to fight to undo his “wrongful convictions.”
As Syed’s years behind bars multiplied, appellate courts rejected his repeated appeals.
His break came in 2021 when his attorney approached Mosby’s office about modifying his sentence under the recently enacted Juvenile Restoration Act. A subsequent review of his case by Mosby’s office transformed into a full-throttled reinvestigation of the case, which, prosecutors said, revealed alternative suspects in Lee’s killing not before disclosed to Syed.
Prosecutors moved to vacate his convictions in September 2022.
The legal scrutiny applied to the case focused not on the merits of undoing Syed’s convictions, but on the process of throwing them out.
On a Friday afternoon following prosecutors’ motion to throw out Syed’s convictions, Baltimore Circuit Judge Melissa M. Phinn scheduled a hearing for the following Monday. Prosecutors then informed Young Lee he could watch it via Zoom, but a lawyer for Young Lee insisted his client, who lived in California, wanted to attend in person and wasn’t given enough time to travel.
Phinn went ahead with the proceeding, saying that she believed Young Lee attending the hearing by video call satisfied his right to be present. After 23 years behind bars, Syed walked away from the courthouse to a crowd of cheering supporters and scores of reporters.
Arguing that he wasn’t given adequate opportunity to attend the hearing, Young Lee appealed before Mosby’s office dismissed Syed’s charges in October 2022. The intermediate Appellate Court of Maryland ruled in Young Lee’s favor in March 2023, but Syed and Young Lee petitioned the state Supreme Court to hear the case.
In a split decision, the high court sided with Young Lee. Three dissenting judges said it was up to the legislature, not the judiciary, to clarify a crime victim’s role in hearings to vacate convictions.
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