Some Baltimore News

The murder conviction of Adnan Syed has been vacated at the request of the Baltimore States Attorney.

If the name sounds familiar, it is because his case went viral as a result of the Serial podcast.

They intend to retry him, which should prove interesting.

I’ve not paid much attention to this, but it is a Baltimore story, and a prominent one at that, so I feel the need to note this development:

Adnan Syed, the Baltimore man whose legal saga rocketed to international renown with the hit podcast “Serial,” could get a new trial after city prosecutors determined their predecessors withheld information about alternative suspects in the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee.

The Baltimore State’s Attorney’s Office moved Wednesday to vacate Syed’s conviction, according to legal papers filed in Baltimore City Circuit Court. The new motion said prosecutors on the case decades ago knew there was another suspect who threatened to kill Lee, Syed’s ex-girlfriend, and neglected to disclose the information to defense attorneys — committing what’s known as a Brady violation.

Lee was strangled to death and buried in a clandestine grave in Baltimore’s Leakin Park. Authorities at the time believed Syed struggled with Lee in a car before he killed and dragged her through the park. He has always maintained his innocence.

………

Prosecutors asked a judge to set a hearing, to order a new trial and to release Syed on his own recognizance pending the ongoing investigation. A judge has not yet set a hearing for the motion to vacate Syed’s conviction, and it’s the court’s decision whether to undo a judgment.

The prosecution concealed evidence at the earlier trial.

I cannot speak to the particulars of the case, but the virality of this entire affair is weird, though not unprecedented. We saw this with Dr. Sam Shephard in the 1950s, so it predates the existince of any sort of computer network.