Murder of Hae Min Lee
Hae Min Lee was a Korean-American high school student who went missing on January 13, 1999, in Baltimore County, Maryland, before turning up dead on February 9, 1999, when her corpse was discovered in Leakin Park, Baltimore. Her autopsy revealed that she had been killed by way of manual strangulation.
Amidst an ongoing investigation by the Baltimore Police Department, Lee's ex-boyfriend Adnan Masud Syed was arrested on February 28, 1999, and put on trial for homicide. He was found guilty on all counts for the charges of kidnapping, false imprisonment, robbery, and first-degree murder; Syed was sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years. Syed's friend Jay Wilds had confessed and pleaded guilty to being an accessory to the murder and was given a five-year suspended sentence. In 2014, the investigative journalism podcast Serial covered the events of Lee's killing, bringing renewed attention to Syed's case. In 2016, judge Martin P. Welch vacated Syed's conviction and ordered a new trial. While this decision was upheld by the Maryland Court of Special Appeals in 2018, it was ultimately overturned by the Maryland Court of Appeals in 2019.
Following an investigation by prosecutors that uncovered new evidence, a judge again vacated Syed's conviction in September 2022. In October 2022, prosecutors announced that the charges against Syed had been dropped. However, in March 2023, Syed's conviction was reinstated by an appellate court, although the court stayed the effective date of the decision for 60 days. In August 2024, the Supreme Court of Maryland, in a 4–3 decision, reinstated the murder conviction against Syed and ordered a new hearing to address the merits of dismissing Syed's conviction. In March 2025, Judge Jennifer Schiffer resentenced Syed to time served, with the conviction remaining reinstated.
Background
Hae Min Lee was born in South Korea in 1980 and emigrated with her mother Youn Kim and her brother Young Lee to the United States in 1992 to live with her grandparents. Lee attended the magnet program at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore County, Maryland. She was an athlete who played lacrosse and field hockey.Lee's family reported her missing on January 13, 1999, after she failed to pick up her younger cousin from daycare. She had last been seen by fellow students at her high school around 2:15 p.m. On that day, police officers called various friends of Lee to try to find her. They reached Adnan Syed, a former boyfriend, around 6:30 p.m.; he said the last time he saw her was around the time classes ended at school. At 1:30 a.m., they reached her then-current boyfriend who said he had arrived home at 7 p.m. On February 6, a dog-led search was conducted around Woodlawn High School.
Lee's partially buried body was discovered by Alonzo Sellers in Leakin Park in Baltimore on February 9. On February 12, the Baltimore City Police Homicide Division received an anonymous phone call suggesting that investigators focus on Syed. One of Syed's friends, Jay Wilds, told the police that Syed had expressed intentions of killing Lee and stated that he had helped Syed bury Lee's body after Syed confessed to killing her on January 13. Wilds took a plea deal to accessory to murder, and his testimony would ultimately be heavily relied upon in the state's criminal case against Syed.
Baltimore Police applied for cellular-phone records for a phone belonging to Syed on February 16. Syed was arrested on February 28, and charged with first-degree murder.
Trials and conviction
Syed's family hired defense attorney Cristina Gutierrez to represent him. Syed's first trial began in December 1999, but ended in a mistrial after jurors overheard a sidebar dispute between Gutierrez and the presiding judge; Gutierrez interpreted a statement by the judge as tantamount to accusing her of lying and said as much — unaware that members of the jury were within earshot.Syed's second trial began in January and lasted six weeks. On February 25, 2000, the jury found Syed guilty of first degree murder, kidnapping, false imprisonment, and robbery. Syed was sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years. Syed's family immediately fired Gutierrez following the verdict. Syed unsuccessfully appealed his conviction.
Post-conviction-relief petition
Syed sought post conviction relief in May 2010, alleging ineffective assistance of counsel. Syed argued that Gutierrez had failed to investigate an alibi witness, Asia McClain, who maintained she was talking with Syed in the library at the exact time that prosecutors said Syed attacked Lee in a Best Buy parking lot several miles away. In January 2014, the petition was denied by Justice Martin Welch, who found that Gutierrez's failure to call McClain as a witness was strategic rather than an act of incompetence because McClain's timeline was not consistent with Syed's stated timeline.Syed subsequently filed a motion seeking leave to appeal in the Court of Special Appeals. The court granted that motion and remanded the case to the circuit court, instructing the circuit court to consider reopening Syed's application for post-conviction relief in light of an affidavit filed by McClain. With the circuit court, Syed filed a supplement asking for a reexamination of the cell-tower evidence that was used in his trial.
On November 6, 2015, Judge Welch re-opened Syed's post-conviction relief proceedings. The post-conviction relief hearing, originally scheduled to last two days, lasted five days from February 3 to February 9, 2016. The hearing was attended by people from across the United States, including Sarah Koenig. Asia McClain testified that she talked to Syed at the library on January 13, 1999. On June 30, 2016, Welch granted Syed's request for a new trial and vacated his conviction, ruling that Gutierrez "rendered ineffective assistance when she failed to cross-examine the state's expert regarding the reliability of cell tower location evidence". Welch denied Syed's defense team's motion for bail for Syed in the interim.
On March 29, 2018, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals, the second-highest court in the state, upheld Syed's request for a new trial. The Court of Special Appeals' opinion said that Syed's counsel failed to contact a potential alibi witness who could "have raised a reasonable doubt in the mind of at least one juror". Prosecutors and Attorney General Brian Frosh asked the Court of Special Appeals to reverse the lower court's ruling, and argued that "Syed's defense attorney did a thorough job and the witness, Asia McClain, would not have changed the outcome of the case."
The prosecution appealed to the Supreme Court of Maryland. On March 8, 2019, in a split 4–3 ruling, the high court reversed the findings of the lower courts, denying Syed's request for a new trial. While the majority agreed Syed's legal counsel was deficient for failing to pursue alibi witnesses, they found "there not a significant or substantial possibility that the verdict would have been different had trial counsel presented" such a witness. They said that McClain's account "does little more than call into question the time that the state claimed Ms. Lee was killed and does nothing to rebut the evidence establishing Mr. Syed's motive and opportunity to kill Ms. Lee". Finally, the court ruled that Syed had waived his right to re-examine the validity of the cellphone tower evidence because the issue had not been raised as part of his original petition.
On November 25, 2019, the Supreme Court of the United States rejected Syed's appeal for a new trial. Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh responded to the Supreme Court's decision by stating "the evidence linking Syed to Lee's death is 'overwhelming and in a statement: "We remain confident in the verdict that was delivered by the jury and are pleased that justice for Hae Min Lee has been done".
''Serial'' podcast
From October 3 to December 18, 2014, the murder of Hae Min Lee and the subsequent arrest and trial of Adnan Syed was the subject of the first season of the podcast Serial. It was developed by the creators of This American Life and hosted by Sarah Koenig. The podcast episodes generated international interest in the trial and were downloaded more than 100 million times by June 2016.Follow-up media
In 2015, attorneys Rabia Chaudry, Susan Simpson, and Collin Miller began producing a podcast, Undisclosed: The State vs. Adnan Syed. Chaudry said she is Syed's friend from childhood and strongly believes in his innocence, while Simpson and Miller became interested in the case from listening to Serial. This podcast involved a detailed examination of the State of Maryland's case against Adnan Syed. Simpson also persuaded Abraham Waranowitz to sign an affidavit stating his original testimony was incorrect; he had been an expert witness in relation to cellphone locations.Investigation Discovery aired a one-hour special, Adnan Syed: Innocent or Guilty? on June 14, 2016. Its findings were based on a new analysis of evidence brought up in the podcasts.
In 2016, two books were published about the case. Confessions of a Serial Alibi, written by Asia McClain Chapman, was released on June 7, 2016. Adnan's Story: The Search for Truth and Justice After Serial, written by Rabia Chaudry, was released on August 9, 2016.
In May 2018, HBO announced it would produce a four-hour documentary based on the murder case called The Case Against Adnan Syed. The first part of a four-part series was released on March 10, 2019. The HBO documentary revealed that Syed turned down a plea bargain in 2018 that would have required him to plead guilty in exchange for a shortened sentence.
In a February 2016 statement, Lee's family said they remained convinced of Syed's guilt, adding that it was now "more clear than ever" that he killed their daughter.