Household of ‘Serial’ podcast homicide sufferer calls for proper to participate in hearings

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — The household of the homicide sufferer whose case is chronicled by the hit podcast “Serial” requested Maryland’s highest courtroom on Thursday to provide crime victims a proper to be heard and problem proof at hearings.

Young Lee, whose sister Hae Min Lee was killed in 1999, says the household didn’t get ample discover to attend a listening to final fall the place the person convicted of her homicide, Adnan Syed, had his sentence overturned. An intermediate appellate courtroom agreed with the household and reinstated Syed‘s sentence, though he stays free whereas the case works its means via the courts.

On Thursday, attorneys for Young Lee filed a petition asking the state Supreme Court to evaluate authorized points raised by the household. The petition says the intermediate appellate courtroom ruling falls brief as a result of it “leaves no one to speak on the Lee family’s behalf.”

While Syed’s launch final yr was a high-profile instance of a rising motion inside the legal justice system to acknowledge and proper previous errors, the continued case in Maryland appellate courts has highlighted questions in regards to the rights of crime victims.

Last September, Young Lee was notified on a Friday afternoon that the 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 may journey to Baltimore. A choose denied the request however allowed Lee to deal with the courtroom through Zoom.

“The Maryland Declaration of Rights requires that state agents treat crime victims with dignity, respect and sensitivity,” stated David Sanford, an legal professional for the household, in a information launch Thursday. “Young Lee should have the right to meaningfully participate in a hearing that could potentially vacate a murder conviction.”

Syed, who has all the time maintained his innocence, was freed after prosecutors reviewed the case and located different suspects in addition to unreliable proof used at trial.

In the information launch saying Thursday’s courtroom submitting, Lee‘s attorneys stated the household “does not take a position on Mr. Syed’s underlying guilt or innocence, only that Mr. Lee receive the procedural rights he is owed, and that the circuit court proceed in an open and transparent manner.”

An legal professional for Syed additionally filed a petition final month asking the state Supreme Court to overturn the reinstatement of his conviction.

Syed was 17 when Hae Min Lee, his highschool ex-girlfriend and classmate, was discovered strangled to dying and buried in a makeshift grave in 1999. He was arrested weeks later and finally convicted of homicide in 2000. He acquired life in jail, plus 30 years.