BALTIMORE — Adnan Syed, whose protracted authorized odyssey was chronicled within the hit podcast “Serial,” is asking Maryland’s highest courtroom to disclaim a petition to develop the rights of crime victims in post-conviction proceedings.
Syed, who was convicted in 2000 of killing his highschool ex-girlfriend, regained his freedom final yr after Baltimore prosecutors discovered flaws within the proof offered at trial and a choose agreed to vacate his conviction. But surviving relations of the sufferer, Hae Min Lee, appealed the ruling, arguing they didn’t obtain adequate discover to attend the conviction vacatur listening to that set Syed free.
In a March choice, the Maryland Appellate Court agreed, reinstating Syed’s conviction and ordering a redo of the listening to. That choice prompted celebration inside the crime victims rights motion and criticism from prison justice reform advocates who warned of a possible chilling impact on present efforts to struggle wrongful convictions and extreme sentences.
After Syed appealed to the state Supreme Court, the Lee household filed their very own petition earlier this month asking the courtroom to provide victims a fair bigger position in such hearings – by permitting them to problem proof and cross-examine witnesses. The courtroom has but to rule on both problem.
As the case drags on, Syed will stay free whereas the attraction is pending. But there’s a likelihood he might in the end return to jail, relying on the result.
In paperwork filed Wednesday, Syed’s attorneys requested the courtroom to disclaim the Lee household’s request to develop victims’ rights.
Maryland regulation grants victims the “right to speak” in sure proceedings, however permitting extra lively participation in conviction vacatur hearings would “create a sea change in Maryland courts” by successfully letting them play the position of third-party prosecutor, Syed’s attorneys wrote. That is a query the state legislature ought to resolve, not the courts, the attorneys argued.
In most conviction vacatur instances, prosecutors and protection attorneys are in settlement, with shared issues about potential innocence. Inserting a sufferer or their consultant into the combo could be “wildly impractical, if not disastrous,” in response to Syed’s argument.
“There is nothing inherently suspicious or nefarious about an agreed upon resolution to a case, nor does the fact that the parties agree suggest a need for third party intervention,” his attorneys wrote.
Last September, the sufferer’s brother Young Lee was notified on a Friday afternoon that the vacatur listening to would happen the next Monday. Lee lives in California, and the listening to would happen in Maryland. When the listening to started, an legal professional representing the household requested a one-week postponement so Lee might journey to Baltimore. A choose denied the request however allowed Lee to handle the courtroom through Zoom.
During transient remarks, Lee stated he felt blindsided by the sudden request to vacate Syed’s conviction. He stated the household spent many years considering his sister’s killer was behind bars, solely to seek out out prosecutors now not had confidence within the proof used to convict.
Not lengthy after he spoke, the choose ordered Syed unshackled contained in the courtroom.
In addition to receiving inadequate discover to attend the listening to in particular person, Lee’s attorneys later argued, he ought to have been afforded a extra lively position within the continuing itself. But the state’s intermediate appellate courtroom disagreed, saying the regulation doesn’t assure victims any proper to be heard in such hearings, not to mention current or problem proof.
In their March ruling, which discovered Lee obtained inadequate discover and reinstated Syed’s conviction, the judges nonetheless warned that increasing the position of victims would “result in a huge shift in practice.”
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