Adnan Syed hearing live: Serial podcast subject to appear in court

The court has gone on recess for 30 minutes so that Hae Min Lee’s brother has the opportunity to join the hearing virtually.

Young Lee is at his place of work on the West Coast at this time.

Judge Melissa Phinn has denied the victim’s family’s request to postpone Adnan Syed’s court hearing.

The judge said that the state provided the family of Hae Min Lee with enough time to find an attorney that would advise them of their rights to attend and speak at the hearing.

She told the family’s attorney to contact Lee’s brother Young Lee to give him the opportunity to address the court remotely now.

Steve Kelly, the attorney for Hae Min Lee’s family, has requested that the judge postpone the hearing for seven days so that the victim’s brother Young Lee can attend.

Mr Lee lives on the West Coast and was only notified about the state’s plans to toss the conviction one week ago – on 12 September.

However, Mr Lee did not notify the state that he wanted to attend and does not appear to have joined the hearing virtually, tweeted the Baltimore Sun’s Lee Sander

Judge Melissa Phinn said that she wouldn’t have scheduled the hearing for today if she knew he wanted to attend.

Hae Min Lee’s family members were notified only last week about the state’s plans to toss Adnan Syed’s murder conviction, the court heard.

Prosecutor Becky Feldman told Judge Melissa Phinn that the family was notified on 12 September – just two days before the state asked the judge to overturn his conviction and release him from prison, reported the Baltimore Sun’s Lee Sanderlin.

The family’s attorney Steve Kelly, addressed the court on their behalf, calling the lack of adequate notice “outrageous”.

The court hearing is about to get under way in Baltimore, Maryland.

Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, prosecutors and members of Adnan Syed’s family and legal team have all arrived at the Elijah E. Cummings courthouse.

Adnan Syed’s 2000 conviction relied heavily on testimony from his friend Jay Wilds, who claimed that Syed confessed to killing Lee and enlisted his help in digging a hole to bury her body in Leakin Park, Baltimore.

Wilds said that he went along with it because Syed threatened to tell the police that he was running a drug operation, which he feared would land him with hefty jail time.

The Serial podcast raised questions about the reliability of his testimony, saying that he had changed his story multiple times.

In 2019, Wilds spoke out publicly for the first time in an interview with The Intercept where he continued to maintain that he saw Lee’s body and helped Syed dispose of it.

However, he changed parts of his story once again, saying that he first saw Lee’s body in the trunk of a car outside his grandmother’s house – and not in the car park of a local Best Buy as he said at trial.

He claimed that he lied to police to protect his grandmother, as he was dealing drugs out of her home at the time.

“I didn’t tell the cops it was in front of my house because I didn’t want to involve my grandmother,” he said.

“I believe I told them it was in front of Cathy’s [a psuedonym] house, but it was in front of my grandmother’s house. I know it didn’t happen anywhere other than my grandmother’s house.

“I remember the highway traffic to my right, and I remember standing there on the curb. I remember Adnan standing next to me.”

He added: “At the time I was convinced that I would be going to jail for a long time if he [Adnan] turned me in for drug dealing, especially to high school kids. I was also running [drug] operations from my grandmother’s house. So that would ruin her life too. I was also around a bunch of people earlier the day [at Cathy’s], and I didn’t want them to get fucked up with homicide.”

Syed has accused Wilds of lying throughout the trial.

A press conference has been scheduled for the case of Adnan Syed.

Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby will hold the briefing outside of the Elijah E. Cummings courthouse in Baltimore, Maryland, immediately after the 2pm court hearing.

Syed is expected to appear in court in person for the hearing, where Judge Melissa Phinn will decide whether to throw out his conviction.

Wednesday’s court filing did not name the two alternate suspects in the case, citing an ongoing investigation.

However, prosecutors said that the two individuals were both known to the initial 1999 murder investigation and were not properly ruled out or disclosed to the defence.

According to the new court documents, one of the suspects had threatened to kill Lee around the time of her murder. He said that “he would make [Lee] disappear. He would kill her,” the documents state.

While prosecutors have not named the two alternate suspects, there was one name that cropped up in the Serial podcast as a suspect in Lee’s slaying.

Ronald Lee Moore, a career criminal and accused murderer from Baltimore, was released from prison just 10 days before Lee’s disappearance and death.

The Independent’s Rachel Sharp has the full story:

The family of Hae Min Lee have not yet spoken out since state prosecutors asked a judge to release the man convicted of her murder.

Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby and Sentencing Review Unit (SRU) Chief Becky Feldman filed a motion to vacate Adnan Syed’s conviction on Wednesday.

In a statement, Ms Mosby said Lee’s family had been notified.

“We have spoken with the family of Ms Hae Min Lee and [they] fully understand that the person responsible for this heinous crime must be held accountable,” she said.

Back in 2016, when Syed was granted his request for a new trial, Ms Lee’s family said they stood by the original verdict.

“Although this has made us relive a nightmare we thought was behind us, we thank the state for standing up for us and continuing to seek justice,” they said in a statement.

“We believe justice was done when Adnan was convicted in 2000, and we look forward to bringing this chapter to an end so we can celebrate the memory of Hae instead of celebrating the man who killed her.”

The request to overturn Adnan Syed’s murder conviction comes after a years-long legal battle where the former boyfriend of Hae Min Lee has maintained his innocence of any involvement in her 1999 slaying.

Syed was convicted of murder, robbery, kidnapping and false imprisonment in 2000 and sentenced to life in prison.

In February 2015 – 15 years on from the murder and one year after the release of the Serial podcast about the case – a court in Maryland finally agreed to hear an appeal of his conviction.

That November, he was granted a new hearing enabling his defence team to bring forward new evidence in the case.

In June 2016, Syed was granted a new trial but continued to be held behind bars, after a judge denied a motion for him to be released on bail.

The new trial was granted after his attorneys argued that Syed’s original trial lawyer, who later died, was grossly negligent. The defence also presented new testimony from a witness who said she saw Syed in the library at the time of Lee’s killing.

The state filed an appeal against the ruling but an appeals court sided with Syed once again in 2018 – upholding the decision to grant him a new trial and vacating his conviction.

However, Maryland’s highest court reversed the lower court’s ruling the following year, denying Syed a new trial and reinstating his conviction.

The US Supreme Court then declined a request to hear his case in November 2019.

Now, in September 2022, the state and the defence filed a joint request asking a judge to overturn his conviction and release him from prison.