Adnan Syed: A miscarriage of justice is unfolding in Baltimore
Adnan Syed: A miscarriage of justice is unfolding in Baltimore
Hae Min Lee — the real victim
On September 19th 2022, Adnan Syed went back to his family home for the first time since his arrest on February 28th, 1999 – over 23 years ago.
Syed was convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee in 2000 at his second trial, after his accomplice Jay Wilds came forward to police and confessed to helping Syed bury Hae’s body in Leakin Park, and led police to where he and Syed abandoned Hae’s car. For his part Wilds pled guilty to accessory after the fact, a felony, and accepted two years of probation.
Don’t believe the hype
Despite the spin, this is a fairly straightforward case. Six weeks after Hae Min Lee disappeared, Jay told police that Syed had killed Hae and he helped to dispose of the body. If he had made this up out of whole cloth and Syed was not involved at all, all it would have taken is Syed being alibied for Jay to end up facing a slam dunk murder charge. If Jay was not involved, why would he, six weeks later, admit to a damning connection to the murder – and then accuse Syed, with the risk of him having a solid alibi? Jay knew Syed had track practice after school, and he had friends who would easily remember him. What about if Syed had been captured on CCTV somewhere? Or if Asia McClain really had seen him in the library rather than just wanting some attention? Unless Jay was either with Adnan after he had killed Hae as he said, or somehow knew through other reliable means that Syed had murdered Hae, we have to believe that he threw a Hail Mary pass and lucked out that somehow Adnan’s whereabouts couldn’t be confirmed on that one day after school when the murder occurred.
We’re talking about a very popular guy who was expected at an after-school activity that day. Syed now claims he simply doesn’t remember what he did that day, because it was “just like any other day” – but it wasn’t! It was the day he lent his car and his cell phone to Jay, it was the day before a massive ice storm which closed the school for days, and most importantly it was the day his recent ex and close friend went missing and the police phoned him to ask about her.
If one solid alibi witness had come forward for Syed, Jay Wilds would have spent the last 23 years in prison for murder – not one has ever emerged. Not only that, Jay was able to lead police to Hae’s abandoned car which had previously not been located. One further piece of corroborating evidence is that Jay didn’t go to the police directly; he told his friend Jennifer that Adnan had strangled Hae, before anyone else even knew she was dead, and Jennifer spoke to the police herself.
In 2014 the popular podcast Serial cast doubt upon Syed’s guilt and highlighted Wilds’ changing stories. Long-time Syed advocate Rabia Chaudry was unhappy that Serial host Sarah Koenig did not conclude that she was sure of Syed’s innocence, and launched her own podcast, Undisclosed, alongside attorneys Susan Simpson and Colin Miller. Unlike Serial, Undisclosed was unashamedly biased in Syed’s favour – it was even paid for by the Adnan Syed Trust, a fund to pay for his defense.
During their investigation, the Undisclosed team located an AT&T cover sheet in the defense file that said incoming cell phone calls could not be relied upon to accurately demonstrate the location of a phone. This was provided to the defense, but was not used by attorney Christina Gutierrez; additionally, Gutierrez’s decision not to use the attempt by Asia McClain to alibi Syed was also criticised. Her failure to use this evidence was deemed ineffective assistance of counsel in a successful appeal in 2016, and Syed’s conviction was overturned. This appeal was upheld in 2018, but in 2019 Maryland’s highest court, the Court of Appeals reversed the previous decisions and reinstated the conviction.
Over the last two weeks, however, Hae Min Lee’s family – and the world – were blindsided when state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby announced that the prosecution were filing a motion to vacate Syed’s conviction. Attorneys affiliated to the Innocence Project and working for Syed’s defense joined some unlikely bedfellows in Mosby’s office for what the motion claims was a “nearly year-long” reinvestigation, and claim to have uncovered significant material about two alternative suspects that was not given to the defense (Motion to Vacate, page 1). The motion claims that this failure to hand over exculpatory material constitutes Brady violations – where a prosecutor has failed to hand over exculpatory evidence to the defence, and that this material could have led the jury to reach a not guilty verdict. Usually whether or not the material constitutes a Brady violation would be decided by judges, with the state generally arguing that there were no violations.
In this hearing, however, a kangaroo court was convened in which the state and the defense argued the same case. Along with Mosby’s office, the judge treated the Lee family with utter contempt – despite the short notice they were given, she refused to delay the hearing for a week so the family could attend, and instead begrudgingly granted a half-hour recess so Hae’s brother Young Lee could attend via Zoom. The judge did not at any point intervene in this farcical proceeding and ask that the Attorney General clarify whether they agreed with Mosby in abandoning what has always been the State’s position; that Syed is guilty.
Marilyn Mosby’s Magical Mystery Motion
The timing of Mosby’s motion to vacate is curious at best. Unfortunately for State’s attorney Mosby, she recently lost the primary for her re-election and has been indicted for fraud and perjury. It seems pretty clear her career as a prosecutor is dead in the water – and in a few months she could be in jail, or at the very least out of a job.
By filing this muddled, bizarre motion to vacate a conviction that has been affirmed on direct appeal in 2003, affirmed again in 2013 and reaffirmed by the Court of Appeals in 2019, Mosby has managed to secure the release of a murderer, and a cushy future career as a talking head for the Innocence Project and their various allies.
The Motion to Vacate implicates two supposedly new suspects; “Mr A.”, Alonzo Sellers, who reported the discovery of Hae’s body, and Adnan’s friend Bilal Ahmed, a shady character from his mosque.
Mosby’s motion claims that Sellers was “improperly cleared” through an invalid polygraph test (Motion to Vacate, page 11). The information that he was cleared through a polygraph isn’t new – it was reported in Serial, for example. With that said, frankly, I agree – no-one should ever be cleared or implicated through any kind of polygraph. There’s a reason they’re inadmissible in court – they aren’t reliable. Mosby also highlights Sellers’ prior convictions for indecent exposure as reasons to suspect him – but these convictions were not only known to the defense, they were brought up at trial by the defense in an attempt to impeach his testimony, and the judge ruled that they were inadmissible as they were irrelevant. It’s bizarre to see these same convictions now raised by the prosecution as a reason to suspect him.
Alonzo Sellers could have been cleared properly during the initial investigation, given his fairly obvious alibi. On January 13th at 1pm he was being interviewed by police in connection with a robbery, and at 4.03pm he punched out of work. With such a tight timeline, officers could have reasonably concluded that Sellers didn’t have time to kidnap and kill Hae.
The second suspect, Bilal Ahmed, was a youth leader at Syed’s mosque who owned a daycare centre. According to Rabia Chaudry, “Rumors abounded about his proclivity for young boys and his continued efforts to be around them … he was forced to leave [Hagersville] after having been caught doing something sexually inappropriate … [he] would help underage kids get fake IDs, take them to bars and strip clubs, and then threaten to tell their parents if they didn’t do as he said.” (Adnan’s Story, Rabia Chaudry, p.228)
Family members of Ahmed’s wife, Salma, began receiving phone calls alleging that he was gay and sexually assaulted young boys. Her brother hired a PI to investigate these claims, and on October 12th 1999 that PI filed a report with police outlining his suspicions. Two days later four police officers followed Ahmed and observed him taking part in “sexual contact” with a 14-year-old boy. When he was arrested that night, he had a picture of Adnan Syed with him. His victim told police that he and Ahmed had visited Syed in jail. Incredibly, he was released without charge despite admitting sexually abusing his victim, and the victim confirming to police that he engaged in “consensual” sexual contact with Ahmed: apparently in 1999, “the current law [did] not make it a crime for a 14 year old to be involved in “Sexual Contact” with an adult if that contact is consensual and not against the will of the victim.” (Adnan’s Story, Rabia Chaudry, p.231) Ahmed was eventually convicted in 2017 of sexually assaulting male patients he had under anaesthetic during dental treatment.
No-one is disputing that Ahmed is a bad guy. He should have been prosecuted for child molestation in 1999. But let’s be realistic – his choice of victim and modus operandi don’t match Hae’s murder. Hae was female and there is no evidence Ahmed ever met her, let alone groomed her; she was strangled and she was not sexually assaulted. While that of course doesn’t definitively rule Ahmed out, Hae’s murder has all the traits of being killed by a partner or ex-partner, not a sexually motivated killing by a stranger.
What’s even stranger is that Mosby claims Ahmed was also improperly cleared. This is bizarre, given that Ahmed was a co-accused of Syed at the Grand Jury; hardly surprising, given his close relationship with Syed and the fact that just two days before Hae was murdered he purchased a cell phone for Syed, which was lent to Jay Wilds on the day in question. It is certainly not beyond the realms of possibility that Ahmed acted as an accessory to the murder before the fact – that does not in any way invalidate Syed’s conviction.
The alleged threat made to “make [Hae Min Lee] disappear … kill her” was attributed to “one of the suspects” (Motion to Vacate, p. 7) in the motion, but it was not clear which suspect. This was one of the many issues with the motion – while it’s certainly clear who the suspects they’re talking about are, it’s not clear which suspect is being accused of what. Mosby asked the court to accept that an unknown suspect allegedly threatening Hae, at an unknown date or time, constituted a serious reason to doubt Syed’s guilt despite overwhelming evidence against him.
After Syed’s release, the Baltimore Banner obtained a copy of the handwritten note from prosecutor Kevin Urick, who wrote it, and Urick’s transcription of the note. This added much needed context, making it clear that the information came from Salma Ahmed. The Motion to Vacate interprets this note as a reference to Bilal Ahmed making these threats. The note reads “[redacted – presumably Ahmed] was upset that the woman [Hae] was creating so many problems for Adnan. He told her that he would make her disappear; he would kill her”. It is unclear from the note who the “he” is, but Urick insisted that “‘He’ refers back to and replaces the proper noun, ‘Adnan’, its antecedent.”
The Motion to Vacate also neglected to mention the rest of the note, which actually corroborates the State’s case. Salma also told Urick that there was “Another witness – Wiels, Jay [sic]. He was involved in burial of body.” There is no evidence that Jay ever met Bilal Ahmed, let alone that they knew each other well enough for Ahmed to enlist Jay’s help in burying Hae’s body. Salma went on to tell Urick that she was “with [redacted – presumably Bilal Ahmed] & Syed when body was found”, that they “talked about police ability to determine time of death” and even “asked about her [illegible word] experience with time of death”. Not only does this note not exonerate Syed, it is further evidence against him – why would an innocent person’s response to their recent ex being found dead be to discuss how her time of death could be determined? If this note had been disclosed to the defense, there is simply no way that they would use it.
Talking of threats, even if Ahmed had been behind the alleged threat to Hae, he was not the only individual to make threats towards Hae. Jay Wilds told police repeatedly that Syed told him he was “gonna kill that b*tch”, an anonymous caller to police advised them to look at Syed and claimed that Syed told him if he ever killed his girlfriend he would drive her car into a river – oh, and he wrote “I’m going to kill” on the back of the break up letter Hae wrote him.
If this information was not turned over to the defense as Mosby claims, it could theoretically constitute a Brady violation – but only if the court held that had it been given to the defense there was a significant chance it could have changed the jury’s verdict. Neither of those things were proven in the motion or in court – they were simply stated and accepted. Despite this, the motion itself acknowledges the possibility that this material was turned over to the defense – but covers itself with the ludicrous assertion that failure to use it would constitute ineffective assistance of counsel (Motion to Vacate, p. 9). Given the incredibly high bar to demonstrate that counsel was ineffective, a claim Syed was ultimately unsuccessful in making previously, this is a nonsensical statement designed to cover the possibility that the material had, in fact, been turned over but still somehow entitled Syed to relief. And yet, somehow, that isn’t even the most ridiculous part of the motion.
Vampire Amy Berg helps free another killer
Mosby cites, apparently with a straight face, Amy Berg’s ludicrously-named HBO documentary “The Case Against Adnan Syed”. Berg has made a career out of claiming convicted murderers are actually innocent, and does so with wanton disregard for those caught in her wake. Her previous works include “West of Memphis”, in which – working alongside convicted killer Damien Echols as producer – she portrayed three convicted triple child killers who had pled guilty as being innocent, while lambasting Terry Hobbs, one of the victims’ stepfathers, as a child abuser and probable murderer with no serious evidence.
Despite being hypnotised and questioned at length Hobbs’ daughter, Amanda, didn’t recall or allege any abuse by him. Amanda was an active drug addict at the time West of Memphis was being produced, and has subsequently stated that she never believed the filmmakers’ accusations against her father, only spoke to them for money, and accused producers of providing her with a car and money to buy drugs: “I did not, at any time, believe what they had to say … I only talked to them because they kept giving me money and I was so strung out I needed it for drugs and the car … I only said what I did for the money.” (Boxful of Nightmares, Vicky Edwards with Terry Hobbs, p.186-189)
Large amounts of money were offered by the defense in exchange for information about the murders that might help to exonerate the convicted three; unsurprisingly that brought people out of the woodwork, some of whom appeared in Berg’s film to make serious accusations against Terry Hobbs and presumably picked up their promised thirty pieces of silver for doing so. The double hearsay of convicted felons Cody Gott and Christian Sisk was presented as if it was serious evidence, rather than the obvious grift it was. (West Memphis Commercial Appeal, October 29 2012)
Despite these serious accusations and ethical concerns – and the generally ludicrous nature of using a documentary as if it constitutes actual evidence – Mosby used Berg’s TV show to discredit the testimony of Kristi Vinson (Motion to Vacate, p.16). The producers of said documentary – whose aim, of course, was to present Syed as innocent – located a class schedule from 1999, which showed Kristi had an evening class scheduled on January 13th, suggesting that she could not in fact have been at her apartment with Syed and Jay Wilds as she testified to at trial. Of course, 23 years later it is impossible to know whether or not Kristi attended class that day – but in March 1999, less than two months after Hae’s murder, Kristi was able to date Syed and Wilds’ visit to January 13th because they mentioned it being Wilds’ girlfriend Stephanie’s birthday (Kristi Vinson police interview, p.9). Kristi’s testimony was believed by a jury, it was corroborated by cell phone records, and even Syed doesn’t deny that it occurred – Berg’s timetable stunt might make the audience gasp, but to present it as evidence in court is ridiculous.
Whither the Attorney General?
Immediately after the hearing was concluded, Baltimore’s Attorney General Brian Frosh released a brief statement asserting that not only had Mosby not contacted his office prior to the motion being filed, but that in fact the material in question had been repeatedly disclosed to the defense. It’s unclear how this could be proven either way, given that according to Serial the defense file had resided in Rabia’s car for around 15 years. Koenig described what she saw as “files, loose stacks, binders, some crappy looking boxes” in which “some of the papers were warped and discolored” and “wet“. Even Rabia conceded that some had been “damaged“. (Serial, Episode 1, “The Alibi”)
With that said, Frosh has serious questions to answer here: why didn’t he or or his office intervene prior to or during the hearing? This is a high-profile conviction that the state has defended for over 20 years, facing down a barrage of innocence fraud publicity, including the most popular podcast in history. That conviction has now been vacated on the flimsiest of allegations – and there was no-one in the courtroom to stand up for the integrity of the conviction and of those who secured it.
So what comes next? Well, the charges against Syed were dropped – and after Mosby and Feldman trashed the State’s star witness, the cell phone evidence and various officers involved in the original investigation, it’s pretty obvious Syed isn’t going back to trial. But what about charges against the other two suspects? Dream on.
Unless usable DNA comes back on Hae’s body or clothing, no-one else is ever being charged in this case. While Mosby used the presence of touch DNA on Hae’s shoes as her justification for dropping the charges against Syed, the DNA could not be matched to either of the suspects or indeed to anyone else. It’s difficult to see why the presence of unknown DNA on a pair of shoes found in Hae’s car does anything to exonerate Adnan, and unless it can ever be matched to another suspect or to someone who Hae would not have been likely to come into contact with, it is simply random DNA that Hae’s shoes could have come into contact with in her daily life – the mere presence of DNA doesn’t mean that DNA belongs to her killer. Judge Wanda Heard, who presided over Syed’s second trial, questioned the relevance of the DNA in a sworn affidavit, saying “I recall no evidence or testimony that Mr. Syed handled the shoes of Hae Min Lee. The absence of touch DNA on her shoes would seem to be an unusual basis to eliminate Syed as Ms. Lee’s killer in the face of other overwhelming and riveting testimony of the eyewitness of Jay Wilds, who testified that he assisted Mr. Syed in the burial of her body.”
Quite simply, there doesn’t appear to be enough evidence against anyone other than Syed for any DA to take on such a poisoned chalice of a case. If it ever went to trial the defense would have an impressive line-up of witnesses: the officers who built a case against Syed, the prosecutors who successfully convicted Syed, and of course Jay Wilds, who received a felony conviction for assisting Syed in burying Hae’s body.
Winners and losers
Never known to miss a fundraising opportunity, the Undisclosed podcast immediately re-re-issued their Season One episodes on the Syed case – the mere fact of him having been released wasn’t enough to stop Rabia beginning with the standard begging for donations “to help with Adnan’s legal fees” (Undisclosed, “S1 Ep1: Undisclosed Revisited: Hae’s Day”). #WeFreedAdnan merchandise is already being flogged to the adoring masses. That isn’t true, by the way – “you” didn’t free Syed. Marilyn Mosby freed him for her own political gains, not because you signed a petition or your favourite podcaster “proved” it was some other guy.
And, lo and behold, as we go to press Rabia has launched yet another podcast, a gimmick conveniently timed to coincide with her media star finally shining brightly again. She’s also announced the return of “an innocence podcast” with Colin Miller over the next year – at least they’ve abandoned any pretence at impartiality.
It’s pretty clear who the winners are here: Sarah Koenig created the most popular podcast in history, Rabia Chaudry has gone from being a glorified travel agent to an influential podcaster and author, and of course Syed himself just walked out of prison with his conviction vacated and the possibility of millions of dollars in compensation. But who are the losers?
Well, justice lost. This is a miscarriage of justice – a conviction vacated on the flimsiest of grounds, without being tested through the adversarial nature of the court process, leading to the release and potential exoneration of a man who is almost certainly guilty.
But more importantly, Hae Min Lee and her family lost. They have believed steadfastly in Syed’s guilt ever since his conviction, stating in 2016 that “For those of us who saw the trials and heard the evidence, it is more clear than ever that Adnan is guilty … we ask that everyone remember who the criminal is and who the victim is. Weeks like this, it is easy to forget that seventeen years ago the beautiful, blossoming song of Hae Min Lee was silenced forever by Adnan Syed.”
Six years on, what little closure the family may have reached seems to have been torn apart. Hae’s brother, Young Lee, was only able to speak via Zoom in court, but stated he felt “betrayed” and “blindsided” by the prosecution. “This is not a podcast for me. This is real life — a never-ending nightmare for 20-plus years … Whenever I think it’s over, and it’s ended, it always comes back. It’s killing me and killing my mother.” The Lee family have been retraumatised through the political games of a failing prosecutor.
Many Syed supporters have been taking great joy in sarcastically asking those who still believe in his guilt if they believe they know more than the prosecutor. It’s a strange question on the face of it, as until the recent abrupt about-face by Mosby these same supporters believed they knew more than the prosecutor! However, the short answer is no, I don’t necessarily believe I “know more” about the case than Mosby; I believe Mosby knows perfectly well that Syed is guilty and simply doesn’t care. By vacating his conviction she’s set up her new career, and left behind a mess for her successor to clean up.
True crime podcasts and journalism can be a force for good: the conviction of Paul Flores for the murder of Kristin Smart, and the conviction of Chris Dawson for the murder of his wife Lynette, were set in motion by the podcasts Your Own Backyard and The Teacher’s Pet. Sally Leydon’s fierce advocacy for her missing mother, Marion Barter, through the superb The Lady Vanishes podcast, led to the police re-opening their investigation into Marion’s disappearance, the identification of a suspect named Ric Blum, and a coronial inquest that finally quashed the false claim that Marion had simply decided to abandon her family. That’s something to be proud of – deceiving the public for decades before eventually being handed a “Get Out Of Jail Free” card isn’t.