Melissa Phinn: Last News

A Maryland appeals court refused on Wednesday to intervene in a lower court’s decision to free a man who served over 20 years in prison for the killing of a high school student, a case chronicled by the groundbreaking "Serial" podcast. The state Court of Special Appeals issued its order a day after prosecutors dropped charges against Adnan Syed in the 1999 killing of 18-year-old Hae Min Lee.

Adnan Syed, the subject of the hit 2014 podcast Serial, was released from prison last September after 23 years, but now his murder conviction has been reinstated.

The ever-surprising case of Adnan Syed, whose murder conviction was examined in a massively popular season of the podcast Serial, has taken another stunning turn: The 2022 vacation of his conviction has been overturned on appeal.

Prosecutors dropped charges against Adnan Syed on Tuesday in the 1999 killing of Hae Min Lee — a case that was chronicled in the hit podcast “Serial” — after additional DNA testing further undermined his conviction, his lawyer said.

Baltimore prosecutors have dropped the charges against "Serial" podcast subject Adnan Syed, who had been convicted of killing a former girlfriend more than two decades ago, but saw his sentence vacated last month. Judge Melissa Phinn granted Balitmore State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby's request to vacate Syed's sentence on September 19 based on new evidence, the existence of other potential suspects, and gave prosecutors 30 days to decide whether to re-try Syed in the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee. Mosby announced her decision in an afternoon news briefing.

. Emily Witty, a spokeswoman for the city of Baltimore's state's attorney's office, said in an email that her office had dropped its case against Syed and would release further details about its decision later Tuesday.Laura Nirider, a co-director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law who accompanied Syed when he walked out of prison last month, tweeted: «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!»Erica Suter, a lawyer who has represented Syed in court during his push to be freed, confirmed the charges were dropped to .«Finally, Adnan Syed is able to live as a free man,» Suter said. «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.»A Baltimore judge last month overturned Syed's murder conviction and ordered him released from prison, where the 41-year-old had spent more than two decades.

HBO Documentary Films is in production on a follow-up episode to the critically acclaimed, four-part docuseries The Case Against Adnan Syed. Directed by Amy Berg, the episode will feature exclusive access to Syed leading up to and following his release from prison earlier this week, after 23 years behind bars. The new episode will debut in 2023.

In a new 17-minute episode of Serial updating the latest developments in the murder case that rocketed the podcast to international success, host and exec producer Sarah Koenig says she believes “the chances of the state ever trying to prosecutor Adnan [Syed] again are remote at best.”

 podcast released Tuesday, a day after Adnan Syed walked out of court following the vacating of his murder conviction, host Sarah Koenig noted that most or all of the evidence cited in prosecutors' motion to overturn the conviction was available since 1999.«Yesterday, there was a lot of talk about fairness, but most of what the state put in that motion to vacate, all the actual evidence, was either known or knowable to cops and prosecutors back in 1999,» Koenig said in concluding the new episode. «So even on a day when the government publicly recognizes its own mistakes, it's hard to feel cheered about a triumph of fairness.

Adnan Syed is a free man!

Adnan Syed, the subject of the hit podcast , has been released from prison after spending 23 years behind bars. On Monday, Baltimore City Circuit Judge Melissa Phinn overturned Syed's conviction «in the interest of justice,» granting him a new trial. Syed’s shackles were removed, and the judge ordered Syed to be released under home detention while the investigation continues into the murder of his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee.Under Maryland state law, prosecutors will now have 30 days to decide whether to drop the charges against Syed or to retry the case.The move came after prosecutors made a request for his release Wednesday, saying that «the state no longer has confidence in the integrity of the conviction.» After a new, almost year-long investigation, prosecutors said they had doubts about the validity of cell phone tower data presented in the trial, and uncovered new information about the possible involvement of two alternate unnamed suspects.Syed was convicted in 2000 of first-degree murder, robbery, kidnapping and imprisonment of Lee, and was sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years.

UPDATE, with video Adnan Syed, whose prosecution in the 1999 killing of his high school girlfriend Hae Min Lee was examined in minute detail in the massively popular 2014 season of the hit podcast Serial, will be released from prison after 23 years, with a Maryland judge today overturning his murder conviction.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor A judge has overturned the murder conviction of Adnan Syed — whose case was the focus of the viral “Serial” podcast back in 2014 — and the Baltimore man has been released from prison after serving more than 22 years behind bars. The ruling Monday by Judge Melissa Phinn of Baltimore City Circuit Court vacated Syed’s murder conviction, after she found that prosecutors failed to turn over evidence that could have helped Syed at trial — specifically, evidence that two other suspects may have been involved in committing the crime. “At this time, we will remove the shackles from Mr. Syed,” Judge Phinn said after announcing the decision, according to the New York Times.