Baltimore prosecutors on Tuesday dropped the charges against Adnan Syed, who was released last month after he spent 23 years in prison fighting a murder conviction that was chronicled in the hit podcast “Serial,” officials said.
Marilyn J. Mosby, the state’s attorney for Baltimore City, said that she had instructed her office to dismiss the charges against Mr. Syed on Tuesday morning after he was cleared by DNA testing.
Mr. Syed, 41, had been serving a life sentence for the strangling death of Hae Min Lee, 18, whose body was found buried in a park in Baltimore in 1999.
Questions about the fairness of the trial received widespread attention in 2014 after the debut of the podcast “Serial,” which examined the case in detail, but it wasn’t until last month that a judge vacated Mr. Syed’s conviction. Prosecutors said in a hearing on Sept. 19 that an investigation had revealed problems with key evidence that was used to convict Mr. Syed, as well as the possibility of “alternative suspects.”
“It’s still and open and pending case, but with regard to Adnan Syed, the case is finished,” Ms. Mosby said at a news conference on Tuesday.
After Judge Melissa M. Phinn of Baltimore City Circuit Court vacated Mr. Syed’s conviction on Sept. 19, prosecutors had 30 days to decide if they would proceed with a new trial or drop the charges.
Ms. Mosby said that her office received notice on Friday of the results of DNA testing of items belonging to Ms. Lee, including a skirt, pantyhose, shoes and a jacket. Ms. Mosby said investigators were able to recover DNA only from the shoes.
“The items that we tested had never before been tested,” Ms. Mosby said. “And we used advanced DNA to determine that it was not Adnan Syed.”
She said that Mr. Syed had been “wrongfully convicted,” but that a petition for his innocence still had to be initiated and certified.
Mr. Syed’s lawyer, Erica J. Suter, said at a news conference on Tuesday that her office would file a motion to certify his innocence “as soon as possible.” She said the results of the DNA testing confirmed “what Adnan and his supporters have always known: Adnan Syed is innocent.”
She said Mr. Syed had dreams of going to law school and, now that he is free, he planned to focus on getting his bachelor’s degree, a process he began while he was incarcerated. “He is elated, he is joyful, he is still processing this,” said Ms. Suter, who is also the director of the Innocence Project Clinic at the University of Baltimore School of Law.
Last month, prosecutors recommended that Mr. Syed’s conviction be vacated because, they said, “the state no longer has confidence in the integrity of the conviction.”
Mr. Syed was ordered to serve home detention until prosecutors reached their decision. He has maintained his innocence.
Mr. Syed and Ms. Lee were in an on-again, off-again relationship when they were both students at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore County.
In 2000, a jury convicted Mr. Syed, who was 17 at the time of Ms. Lee’s death, of first-degree murder, robbery, kidnapping and false imprisonment. The podcast “Serial” chronicled the case in its first season and became a pop culture sensation that attracted renewed interest in the prosecution of Mr. Syed and raised questions about who was responsible for Ms. Lee’s murder. (In 2020, The New York Times Company bought Serial Productions, the company behind the podcast.)
In a motion filed in Baltimore City Circuit Court last month, prosecutors said that a nearly yearlong investigation, conducted with Mr. Syed’s lawyer, had found two possible “alternative suspects,” who have not been named publicly or charged.
The investigation also found “reliability issues” with key evidence and revealed that prosecutors might have failed to disclose evidence to Mr. Syed’s lawyers that could have helped him in the trial.
Becky Feldman, a prosecutor with the state’s attorney’s office, said at the hearing last month that the investigation “acknowledged justice has been denied to Ms. Lee and her family by not assuring the correct assailant was brought to justice.”
Ms. Lee’s family said that they had not been given enough prior notice to attend the hearing and had not received information that showed why prosecutors were reversing the conviction. The family asked the Maryland Court of Special Appeals last week to pause proceedings in the trial. The appeal remains pending.
A lawyer for Ms. Lee’s family, Steve Kelly, said in a statement that the family learned through media reports on Tuesday morning that the charges against Mr. Syed had been dismissed.
“By rushing to dismiss the criminal charges, the state’s attorney’s office sought to silence Hae Min Lee’s family and to prevent the family and the public from understanding why the state so abruptly changed its position of more than 20 years,” Mr. Kelly said. “All this family ever wanted was answers and a voice. Today’s actions robbed them of both.”
Ms. Mosby said at the news conference that her office had notified the family’s lawyer on Tuesday morning but that they had not heard back from him.
She also apologized to the family of Ms. Lee and to Adnan Syed.
“The fundamentals of the criminal justice system should be based on fair and just prosecution,” she said, “and the crux of the matter is we are standing here today because that wasn’t done 23 years ago.”
