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| Adnan Syed’s Case, of ‘Serial’ Fame, Is Declined by Supreme Court | Adnan Syed’s Case, of ‘Serial’ Fame, Is Declined by Supreme Court |
| (about 2 hours later) | |
| The Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear the case of Adnan Syed, whose murder conviction nearly 20 years ago formed the basis of the hit podcast “Serial.” | The Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear the case of Adnan Syed, whose murder conviction nearly 20 years ago formed the basis of the hit podcast “Serial.” |
| Mr. Syed had petitioned for a new trial, arguing that his original lawyer failed to pursue an alibi witness. But the justices left in place a ruling by Maryland’s highest court that denied his petition. They did not comment on the decision. | Mr. Syed had petitioned for a new trial, arguing that his original lawyer failed to pursue an alibi witness. But the justices left in place a ruling by Maryland’s highest court that denied his petition. They did not comment on the decision. |
| Mr. Syed is serving a life sentence for the 1999 killing of Hae Min Lee, a high school classmate he had dated whose body was found in a park in Baltimore County. Both were teenagers when the crime occurred. | |
| Mr. Syed has maintained that he is innocent. He was convicted of first-degree murder, robbery, kidnapping and false imprisonment in the death of Ms. Lee. | |
| “Serial” made its debut in 2014, and its first season focused on whether Mr. Syed had received a fair trial. It was downloaded about 175 million times and won a Peabody Award, turning the case into a topic of national conversation. | |
| The case was also depicted in a four-part HBO documentary this year titled “The Case Against Adnan Syed,” which revealed the results of new DNA tests performed at the request of his lawyers. The tests found no one else’s DNA on Ms. Lee’s body or belongings. | |
| Neither the podcast nor the TV series made definitive statements about Mr. Syed’s guilt, but they raised troubling questions about the case. Perhaps most crucially, “Serial” reported the existence of a potential alibi witness for Mr. Syed: a woman who said she was with him at a library when the crime occurred. She was never called to testify. | |
| The podcast led to new court proceedings, and a 2018 decision by a Maryland court to vacate the conviction on the grounds that Mr. Syed had received ineffective legal counsel. | |
| But the next year, an appeals court ruled that while Mr. Syed’s lawyer had been “deficient,” her missteps most likely did not affect the trial’s outcome. Mr. Syed also tried to claim that his lawyer had failed to challenge questionable cellphone location data used in the trial, but the appeals court rejected that argument. | |
| Mr. Syed’s lawyer in recent years, C. Justin Brown, could not be immediately reached on Monday, but he told The Associated Press that his legal team was deeply disappointed by the Supreme Court’s decision. | |
| “There are other legal options and we are exploring each and every one of them,” he said. |