The family of Hae Min Lee on Monday urged the Maryland Supreme Court to uphold the Appellate Court’s decision ordering a redo of Adnan Syed’s vacatur hearing.
In a merits brief, the family argues that Young Lee, Hae Min Lee’s brother, learned of Syed’s Sept. 2022 vacatur proceeding “at the last possible minute and received no opportunity to attend, review the evidence or opine on the State’s arguments.”
The family said that Lee was “prevented from meaningfully participating and never saw the evidence” when he received a few days’ notice of the vacatur hearing and could not fly to Maryland from California to attend the hearing. Instead, Lee spoke briefly over Zoom.
The Lee family argues they should have been allowed to speak in court and oppose the vacating of Syed’s conviction under Maryland’s victims’ rights laws.
To grant vacatur, a court must hold a hearing and record its reasons for ruling. In its ruling, the court must state how any newly discovered evidence calls the integrity of the conviction into question and how the “interest of justice and fairness justifies” vacatur by clear and convincing proof.
Although the circuit court held that notice was adequate because the state followed the law, the family argues that the law does not expressly specify that notice must be reasonable. Under this logic, according to the brief, a prosecutor could give a victim mere minutes notice.
David Sanford, counsel for the Lee family, said there are two significant principles at stake in this case. The first involves the rights of criminal victims in Maryland, and the second is transparency in criminal justice proceedings, Sanford said.
“In (this case), the lower court has not allowed the victim and the public to review evidence and has, as a result, denied Lee’s brother, Young Lee, the dignity, respect and sensitivity he is entitled to receive under the Maryland Constitution,” Sanford said.
In 2000, the Baltimore Circuit Court convicted Syed, then 17, of murdering his high school ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, 18. Hae Min went missing on Jan. 13, 1999, her body later found in a shallow grave in Baltimore’s Leakin Park a few weeks later.
Police accused Syed, who maintained he was innocent, of strangling Hae Min to death, and the court found Syed guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced him to life in prison.
The case drew international attention after it was chronicled in hit podcast “Serial,” whose creators raised a host of issues they said cast doubt on Syed’s conviction.
In Sept. 2022, the Baltimore State Attorney’s Office agreed to vacate Syed’s murder conviction after finding flaws in the original trial evidence and two handwritten notes said to reveal an alternative suspect who had reportedly said he would kill Hae Min. Prosecutors said the documents were never turned over to the defense, raising questions about the legitimacy of Syed’s conviction.
A judge ordered Syed’s release. He has been hired by Georgetown University as a program associate for the university’s Prisons and Justice Initiative.
Erica Suter, counsel for Syed, was not immediately available for comment.
The response to the brief filed today is due by Sept. 22.
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