Adnan Syed released from prison

[AJL]

As judge vacates murder conviction.

(Gift article) www.nytimes.com/2022/09/19/us/adnan-syed-murder-conviction-overturned.html?unlocked_article_code=azRPmaT_9YJU5bwU4k9k9s0bBx63FEX36PxjnKpesJA2MemHLZAShktAl3JNWPfrAA5Xdy2HKmgQmgTz9J5V83z4Gd1C9nMViroBYrYsdPf-WI3JsXVA9eg_f2FAxOG5ijBg42GrotR5W64hueeccUIcAtjeNUABTQsNnARioZ2e5mAZOIJE8f6mFzX9rKN_mf2ih9p-WGImYOShfSI5PL7aSSZnGiJMieB-RbTKFOncCl_ZpOoUeCIWf3KQXbwene6aJ_Z3d4TvVzKpTY4-UKg4UHGZ2WLD4bZSWPJ5TenfYCk9pIa0x5c-9EM-GO69E8pcQoNFMkzHxSpbEEAwQCslP4WNwChfZTpxeQ&smid=share-url

[erbear]

Wow. I'm glad to hear this. I am not convinced he didn't do it, but I am convinced that his trial was bullshit.

[StrawberryBlondie]

Sept 19, 2022 19:02:14 GMT -5 erbear said:

Wow. I'm glad to hear this. I am not convinced he didn't do it, but I am convinced that his trial was bullshit.

This is exactly where I am.

[ellipses84]

I feel bad for the victim’s family and I hope they find true justice. The withheld and questionable evidence definitely casts reasonable doubt. Maybe at this point DNA evidence can provide proof. The friend who testified refused to be interviewed for the podcasts but later gave an interview where he tried to explain his inconsistency and changing stories, but still maintained Adnan was the murderer.

[aurora]

The NYT Morning briefing today has an interview with Sarah Koenig with a few interesting items:

1) there's a new Serial episode or this morning on his release
2) she says she was as surprised as anyone
3) there were two other suspects, one of whom had previously threatened to kill Hae, that the prosecution knew about but didn't tell the defense!, and
4) Serial was more meant to illustrate the deficiencies in our justice system than "prove" whether Adnan was guilty or innocent

I know you can subscribe free to the daily email but don't know if it's free to read online if you don't subscribe:
www.nytimes.com/2022/09/20/briefing/adnan-syed-freed-serial-sarah-koenig.html

[mrshandy]

There is so much more to this story beyond Serial.

I do hope they found the real killers, but I'm honestly doubtful that will ever happen.

[quesyrah]

Sept 20, 2022 8:47:45 GMT -5 mrshandy said:

There is so much more to this story beyond Serial.

I do hope they found the real killers, but I'm honestly doubtful that will ever happen.

This is where I am. I’m also not convinced he didn’t do it, but he absolutely did not get a fair trial.

This must be so painful for Hae Min Lee’s family.

[wambam]

Sept 20, 2022 8:47:45 GMT -5 mrshandy said:

There is so much more to this story beyond Serial.

I do hope they found the real killers, but I'm honestly doubtful that will ever happen.

I’ll second this over here too. I posted on ML about it, but if you have only engaged with Serial, there’s so much more going on here. Undisclosed podcast got deep in the weeds, but it’s often hard to listen to. The HBO documentary is really well done and pretty comprehensive.

[Velar Fricative]

Prosecutors dropped the charges against him.

www.baltimoresun.com/news/crime/bs-md-ci-cr-adnan-syed-charges-dropped-20221011-r43q45csdnhi3abqygnhimqouq-story.html

[hermione]

Oct 11, 2022 10:03:20 GMT -5 Velar Fricative said:

Prosecutors dropped the charges against him.

www.baltimoresun.com/news/crime/bs-md-ci-cr-adnan-syed-charges-dropped-20221011-r43q45csdnhi3abqygnhimqouq-story.html

23 years. 

I hope they have enough evidence to finally go after whoever they believe did it.

[AJL]

Oct 11, 2022 10:03:20 GMT -5 Velar Fricative said:

Prosecutors dropped the charges against him.

www.baltimoresun.com/news/crime/bs-md-ci-cr-adnan-syed-charges-dropped-20221011-r43q45csdnhi3abqygnhimqouq-story.html

I think this is such great news! 

But I think it also illustrates just how shitty our criminal justice system is. Adnan's case isn't an aberration. This type of thing happens far more often then the general public wants to believe, especially against men of color. 

[tacokick]

Here is an article about another suspect in the case that made the first page today.

I think the article should work even if you don’t have a subscription. I tried it in private mode and it worked.

digitaledition.baltimoresun.com/html5/mobile/production/default.aspx?edid=85ddcd59-7972-48ca-aca1-0c38fb805ecf

The article is a little strange. It’s about the man who found Hae Min Lee. They refer to him a “suspect” in quotes in the headline. They “connect” the guy to the case in other ways that seem very tenuous. The “father of his niece” lived in the community that backed into the lot where her car was found. Is this man someone he actually knew or spent time with? They don’t call this man his sister’s former partner or husband which I would think is a more logical way to describe that relationship. Surely it’s not his brother. Did he know he lived there? There aren’t that many “grassy lots” in the suburb.

They are also very puzzled why a serial flasher/streaker would be heading 120 feet into the woods to “pee” after picking up a beer, a tool from home and heading back to work on the day he found Hae Min Lee. One, he doesn’t seem like someone who wouldn’t pee in public and two isn’t it likely that he was in the woods to flash someone and instead found Hae Min Lee? Maybe that’s not something he’d be forthcoming with the police about?

They also make a big deal about him living nearly a mile from the school where she was last seen and that a “relative” of his was a math teacher at the school. Do they think the math teacher set this up? Is he close to this relative? It all seems like grasping at the tiniest of straws. It’s a dense suburb of like 35,000 people. I bet at least thousand people live a mile or so from the school.

They say he was at work until 4 (about 20-30 minutes away) she missed picking up her cousin at 3:30.

She disappeared in the county but they don’t call Baltimore Smalltimore for nothing. Everyone’s related and stays put. I don’t even know where my own cousins live or anything about them but I bet there are here somewhere. Being related to people in the community you live in doesn’t seem like much of a smoking gun to me.

I truly don’t know who or what happened to her but I’m not sure how any of this is front page news? It just shows again how incompetent the police are.

[mrshandy]

I don't think the other suspect had anything to do with the murder. Although the way he found her is really suspicious. The route he took to find the body according to everyone who has seen the scene makes no sense and his story is really off. My thoughts are that perhaps someone had found the body incidentally (they found a liquor bottle nearby I believe) and rumors started to spread about it in his neighborhood or through other acquaintances. Something doesn't add up about his story, but I don't think he killed her or even knows who did.

The point of this alternate suspect is that all of his issues should have been told to the defense team at trial and they weren't.

[tacokick]

Oct 31, 2022 8:03:04 GMT -5 mrshandy said:

I don't think the other suspect had anything to do with the murder. Although the way he found her is really suspicious. The route he took to find the body according to everyone who has seen the scene makes no sense and his story is really off. My thoughts are that perhaps someone had found the body incidentally (they found a liquor bottle nearby I believe) and rumors started to spread about it in his neighborhood or through other acquaintances. Something doesn't add up about his story, but I don't think he killed her or even knows who did.

The point of this alternate suspect is that all of his issues should have been told to the defense team at trial and they weren't.

I don’t think there is much of a “route” to take, he was only about 130 feet in nearly a straight line from the pull off of the road. That’s less distance than my backyard is long. If the guy is a “serial flasher” as his record suggests, wouldn’t it make sense that he was going to flash someone in the park (or was thinking about it) and found her? People park there to walk around the park all the time, if it wasn’t January, I bet someone would have found her sooner. It’s not a remote area at all, it’s a common entry point to an urban park.

He’d already been convicted of indecent exposure once in 1996, I can’t imagine he’d want to tell the police he was there looking for walkers to flash, if that was what he was doing.

I think he’s probably creepy but I agree, he doesn’t seem like a logical suspect.

The article states that one of these “connections” (the location of niece’s father’s home) weren’t known until after the trial so that wasn’t withheld, they were unknown. They both knew the rest. The defense tried to bring up his exposure charges during the trial but couldn’t, but I really don’t see how that would done anything but give him a reason to be in the woods, not give him a reason to have kidnapped and murdered a teenager.

That’s part of why the article seemed so strange. They didn’t make any connection to how any of this could have changed anything at the time.

More recently during the motions to dismiss, the defense said the police shouldn’t have cleared him because of “faulty” polygraph results and the fact he committed some other indecent exposure related crime in 2020, not that there was unknown information per se.

ETA clarity

[mrshandy]

tacokick, could you cite a source for this information?

People park there to walk around the park all the time, if it wasn’t January, I bet someone would have found her sooner. It’s not a remote area at all, it’s a common entry point to an urban park.

Everything I've heard that it was an isolated spot and not easy to get to from the road. But I've never been there so it is all based on watching the documentary and reading a billion articles and podcasts about this story.

[tacokick]

Oct 31, 2022 10:30:37 GMT -5 mrshandy said:

tacokick, could you cite a source for this information?

People park there to walk around the park all the time, if it wasn’t January, I bet someone would have found her sooner. It’s not a remote area at all, it’s a common entry point to an urban park.

Everything I've heard that it was an isolated spot and not easy to get to from the road. But I've never been there so it is all based on watching the documentary and reading a billion articles and podcasts about this story.

You can see it in the maps of the scene. I also grew up near there, still live in Baltimore and have been there plenty of times. It’s a city park and that pull-off is one of the few places along a busy major street where you can park your car.

serialpodcast.org/posts/2014/10/evidence-map


I wouldn’t say you could see someone standing in that spot easily if you were driving down the road or maybe even parked (especially if the trees had leaves) but 130 feet is not an especially long distance. I would not call .02 miles from a major street “isolated” or difficult to get to.

To set the scene—the street is a throughway of the park and runs between between 2 major interstate highways (Rt 40 and Rt 70), connects the county to the city and is highly trafficked. The park is busy and located in a city. We aren’t talking about a remote rural area here. It’s a flat, lightly wooded area you can park your car in front of and walk around.

[kiminky]

Adnan Syed hired by Georgetown University to work on prison reform.

www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/adnan-syed-hired-georgetown-university-work-prison-reform-rcna63097

[Vespasia]

Adnan Syed conviction reinstated by Maryland appellate court panel

www.wbaltv.com/article/adnan-syed-murder-conviction-sentence-reinstated/43442507

"The Appellate Court of Maryland's opinion states the Baltimore court did not provide the Lee family with the rights to be afforded a victim or victim's representative under constitutional provisions and Maryland laws.



The opinion calls for a new, "legally complaint and transparent" hearing on the motion to vacate where the Lee family is given notice of the hearing that is sufficient to allow him to attend in person."


It sounds like it's entirely possible it will be vacated again after a new hearing. I'm honestly not sure how this works since the Baltimore City State's Attorney dropped all charges in 2022. 

[hermione]

On a similar but different note, the podcast "Letters from Sing Sing," is really good and also about a wrongly convicted prisoner.

[hermione]

Rabia Chaudry did an Instagram Live this morning that explains what is happening really well.