Adnan Syed ruling a mixed victory for crime victims’ rights

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While the Maryland Supreme Court last week ordered a redo of the hearing that freed Adnan Syed to allow the murder victim’s family’s rights to be observed, justices also placed firm limits on the role victims’ representatives can play in vacatur hearings.

In the 4-3 ruling, the majority determined no body of law “contemplates giving party status to a victim.”

“Indeed, it would be problematic to permit victims to participate in a vacatur hearing as a party because doing so would directly contradict Maryland law, which is clear on this issue,” Justice Jonathan Biran wrote for the court’s majority. “Furthermore, a circuit court can sufficiently analyze a vacatur motion without the victim acting as a party to the proceeding.”

Douglas L. Colbert, a criminal law professor at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, said the Maryland Supreme Court struck a balance in its ruling, where the high court invited crime victims to attend and speak in court but did not permit victims to supersede the role of the prosecutor.

The family of Hae Min Lee — the woman Syed was accused of killing — contended a victim has the right to cross-examine witnesses called by the state and the defense and call witnesses of their own.

While Young Lee, Hae Min Lee’s brother, asked for full participatory rights at a vacatur hearing so that a victim may be a party to the case, the high court rebuffed this notion.

Nevertheless, advocates for crime victims remain undeterred.

“It’s not as great a setback as it may sound,” said Kurt Wolfgang, executive director of the Maryland Crime Victims Resource Center. “The most important thing was for the victim and the victim’s attorney to be heard on the legal issues, and particularly in this forum, this type of hearing, where the burden is actually on the state to prove that there is sufficient grounds to set aside the conviction.”

Wolfgang said that while the victim can’t call witnesses, the victim can make the argument that the evidence presented is not sufficient to meet the burden of proof.

“Obviously the ability to call witnesses and introduce evidence would be one step farther, but this is a sea change really for victims anyway at this point and it’s a very good step in the right direction,” Wolfgang said in a phone call. “We think this may be the most important case on Maryland crime victims’ rights ever.”

The Maryland Supreme Court held that Young Lee should receive “reasonable notice” of a new vacatur hearing to allow Lee a reasonable opportunity to attend the hearing in person. The high court also concluded that a crime victim or victim’s representative has the right to be heard at the vacatur hearing.

“Allowing a victim to address the merits of the motion following the parties’ presentations is an important part of ensuring that the circuit court has sufficient information and argument to make an informed decision on a vacatur motion,” the high court’s majority wrote.

Colbert, who previously represented Syed at a bail hearing decades ago, said the victims’ lobby has attempted to “have a seat at the head of the table” in criminal justice matters for the past five decades.

“I think they’ve done very well in promoting the crime victims getting the proper respect and dignity that they’re entitled, and surely that includes giving the crime victim an important role at a sentencing or at a vacatur hearing, but the victims’ lobby is determined to get a much bigger place in the criminal proceedings,” Colbert said. “In my opinion, what the victims’ lobby has accomplished is that they have found a willing party to pursue their agenda, and that is on behalf of wanting the crime victim to have as big of a role as the prosecutor does.”

Young Lee brought the action that led to the high court’s ruling, arguing he wasn’t given adequate opportunity to take part in the vacatur hearing in which the Baltimore City Circuit Court agreed to prosecutors’ request that Syed’s conviction be vacated. Young Lee argued that a virtual vacatur hearing was insufficient because he received notice of the hearing with less than one business day of the start of the hearing and was never told the location of the hearing or that he could attend in person.

The case, portrayed on the hit podcast series “Serial,” has been replete with legal twists and turns for years.

In 2000, the Baltimore Circuit Court convicted Syed, then 17, of murdering his high school ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, 18. Hae Min went missing on Jan. 13, 1999, her body found in a shallow grave in Baltimore’s Leakin Park a few weeks later.

Police accused Syed, who maintained he was innocent, of strangling Hae Min Lee to death, and the court found Syed guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced him to life in prison.

In 2021, Baltimore prosecutors reinvestigated the case at the urging of Syed’s lawyer and ultimately concluded that the evidence did not support Syed’s guilt.

In September 2022, the Baltimore State Attorney’s Office, at the time led by Marilyn Mosby, agreed to vacate Syed’s murder conviction after saying it found flaws in the original trial evidence and two handwritten notes said to reveal an alternative suspect who had reportedly said he would kill Hae Min. Prosecutors said the documents were never turned over to the defense, raising questions about the legitimacy of Syed’s conviction.

The Maryland Attorney General’s Office, then being led by Brian Frosh, raised questions about the note and said in legal filings that its meaning was open to interpretation.

A judge ordered Syed’s release. Syed has since been hired by Georgetown University as a program associate for the university’s Prisons and Justice Initiative.

In September last year, Syed appealed to Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown to investigate what he called widespread prosecutorial misconduct in his case, a request that was swiftly rebuffed by Brown’s office.

Mosby is no longer the Baltimore state’s attorney. Her successor, Ivan Bates, had said prior to his election in 2022 that he would drop charges against Syed.