United States: a court restores the conviction of the American at the heart of the “Serial” podcast

After the charges were dropped, an appeals court ended up restoring, on Tuesday March 28, the conviction of an American who spent twenty-three years in prison for a murder of which he claims to be innocent, a case at the heart of the podcast to worldwide success Serial. Adnan Syed, sentenced to life imprisonment in 2000 for the murder of his former girlfriend Hae Min Lee in Baltimore, on the east coast of the United States, was released on bail in September 2022.

The Maryland State Court of Appeals ruled that a procedural flaw had occurred and that the rights of the victim's brother, Young Lee, who lives in California, had not been respected. It requested a new hearing to allow Young Lee to be present and demanded that "evidence supporting the request to drop the charges be presented", according to a court document. The parties have 60 days to respond to this decision.

Police arrested Adnan Syed after finding the body of 18-year-old Hae Min Lee half-buried in a Baltimore woods in February 1999. He was sentenced to life in prison a year later. According to the prosecution, he had not supported that she left him for another and had strangled her. He has always proclaimed his innocence, claiming to be the victim of anti-Muslim prejudice.

In 2014, a team of journalists conducted a counter-investigation, told in 12 episodes in the first season of Serial (Serial Productions), accessible free of charge on the serialpodcast.org website. A precursor to the era of podcasts, this audio soap opera has, according to its producers, been downloaded more than 300 million times. It also inspired the HBO documentary The Case Against Adnan Syed.