A judge vacated the murder conviction of Adnan Syed on Monday, reversing a decision that put the Baltimore man behind bars for 23 years, after a hit podcast series brought new light on the case.
Syed was convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend, 18-year-old Hae Min Lee, in 2000, when he was 17 years old. At the time, Lee was found buried in Leakin Park after being strangled to death, and prosecutors thought Syed had killed her over their relationship ending, the Baltimore Sun reported.
Now, prosecutors have 30 days to decide if all of Syed’s charges will be dropped, or if he will get a retrial.
Syed’s case became a point of international intrigue after a true-crime podcast series released in 2014, Serial, dove into the details of who could have killed Lee.
The podcast’s description reads, “It’s Baltimore, 1999. Hae Min Lee, a popular high-school senior, disappears after school one day. Six weeks later detectives arrest her classmate and ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, for her murder. He says he’s innocent — though he can’t exactly remember what he was doing on that January afternoon. But someone can. A classmate at Woodlawn High School says she knows where Adnan was. The trouble is, she’s nowhere to be found.”
Syed had appealed his case and but had been unsuccessful until Monday, when Baltimore Circuit Judge Melissa Phinn overturned the conviction.
Phinn said trial prosecutors at the time of Syed’s conviction did not turn over evidence on alternative suspects, NBC News reported.
The state has known about two “alternative suspects” in Lee’s murder since 1999, the Baltimore Sun reported, citing the motion to vacate Syed’s conviction.
Prosecutors wrote the one of the suspects had threatened Lee before she was killed, saying “he would make her disappear. He would kill her,” the outlet reported.
“Given the stunning lack of reliable evidence implicating Mr. Syed, coupled with increasing evidence pointing to other suspects, this unjust conviction cannot stand,” Syed’s lawyer, Erica Suter, said.