DNA testing has effectively cleared the 41-year-old former murder suspect.
“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!” Laura Nirider, a clinical professor of law at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law in Chicago, wrote in a Tuesday tweet.
Syed walked free in September after a Baltimore circuit court judge ordered that his conviction be vacated. He had been sentenced to life in prison for the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee, his ex-girlfriend and high school classmate.
Newsweek reported in September that prosecutors had “filed a motion that said a recent investigation conducted with the defense found new evidence that undermined Syed’s conviction.” In Circuit Court Judge Melissa Phinn’s ruling, she wrote that the state hadn’t honored its legal requirement to divulge exculpatory evidence to the defense.
After considering whether to dismiss the charges or retry Syed, prosecutors opted to drop them. Investigators had learned of evidence that implicated two other possible suspects, per Forbes.
Speaking with Newsweek, criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor Joshua Ritter explained that withholding evidence of other possible suspects is “hugely problematic.”
“The prosecution is not supposed to act as the gatekeeper of what evidence the defense receives. The defense should receive all evidence,” Ritter told Newsweek. “Even if the prosecution deems it to be weak evidence, they should receive it, and it’s up to a judge to decide whether or not it would be admissible. But they made the mistake here of not even giving the defense the opportunity to pursue possible defenses in the fact that there may have been other suspects.”
He added: “What they were doing is closing one final question as to whether or not [Syed’s] DNA was found at a certain location that they felt might have further implicated him. Seeing how the evidence that they had didn’t include his [DNA]…it does not give them confidence that they have a case they can prove beyond a reasonable doubt. And that’s the standard.”
Syed is also off home detention, according to WBAL-TV in Baltimore. His defense attorney Erica Suter said in a statement that he’s now “able to live as a free man.”
Suter, who’s also the director of the Innocence Project Clinic at University of Baltimore School, continued: “The DNA results confirmed what we have already known and what underlies all of the current proceedings: That Adnan is innocent and lost 23 years of his life serving time for a crime he did not commit.”
Newsweek has reached out to Suter for comment.
