US prosecutors have dropped charges against Adnan Syed over the 1999 killing of Hae Min Lee, a case that was chronicled in the first season of the hit podcast Serial.
Emily Witty, a spokeswoman for the city of Baltimore’s state’s attorney’s office, said in an email that her office had dropped its case against Mr Syed and would release further details about its decision later on Tuesday.
Laura Nirider, a co-director of the Centre on Wrongful Convictions, at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, who accompanied Mr Syed when he walked out of prison last month, earlier tweeted: “Breaking news: After the latest round of DNA testing generated results that, like previous rounds of testing, excluded Adnan Syed, he has now been formally exonerated!”
A Baltimore judge last month overturned Mr Syed’s murder conviction and ordered that he be released from prison, where the 41-year-old had spent more than two decades. He was convicted of strangling of Ms Lee, who was 18 at the time. Her body was found weeks later buried in a Baltimore park.
Circuit judge Melissa Phinn also gave prosecutors 30 days in which to decide whether to retry him or drop the charges. Ms Phinn ruled that the state had violated its legal obligation to share evidence that could have bolstered Mr Syed’s defence.
After his release, Mr Syed was placed in home detention with GPS location monitoring.
Ms Lee’s family had asked Maryland’s intermediate appellate court to halt the case.
Lawyer Steve Kelly said Ms Lee’s family is not challenging Mr Syed’s release, but instead wanted the judge to hold another hearing that the family can attend in person and address the court.
Ms Lee’s brother, Young Lee, appeared via videoconference at short notice during the previous hearing.
Last week, state attorney Brian Frosh’s office filed court papers supporting the appeal by Ms Lee’s family.
Mr Syed has maintained his innocence for decades and captured the attention of millions in 2014 when the debut season of Serial focused on the case and raised doubts about some of the evidence, including mobile phone tower data.
Prosecutors have previously said that a reinvestigation of the case found evidence regarding the possible involvement of two alternate suspects. The two suspects may have been involved individually or together, the state’s attorney’s office said.
One of the suspects had threatened Ms Lee, saying “he would make her disappear. He would kill her”, according to a court filing.
The suspects were known persons at the time of the original investigation and were not properly ruled out or disclosed to the defence, prosecutors said. New information showed that one of the suspects was convicted of attacking a woman in her vehicle, and that one of the suspects was convicted of engaging in serial rape and sexual assault, they said.
Prosecutors also noted unreliable mobile phone data used during Mr Syed’s court case to corroborate his whereabouts on the day of the crime. The notice on the records specifically advised that the billing locations for incoming calls “would not be considered reliable information for location”. — AP