Murder of Hae Min Lee

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.[11] Lee attended the magnet program at Woodlawn High School near Baltimore, Maryland.[12] She was an athlete who played lacrosse and field hockey.[13]

Lee disappeared on January 13, 1999. Her family reported her missing after she failed to pick up her younger cousin from daycare around 3:15 p.m. Lee had attended Woodlawn High School that day and had been seen by several people leaving the campus at the end of the school day.

Baltimore police immediately began investigating her disappearance.[14] On that day, officers called various friends of Lee to try to find her.[14] They reached Adnan Syed, a former boyfriend, early around 6:30 that evening; he said the last time he saw her was around the time classes ended at school. At 1:30 a.m., they reached her boyfriend, who said he had not seen her that day. On February 6, a dog-led search was conducted around Woodlawn High School.[14][15]

On February 9, Lee's partially buried body was discovered by a passerby in Leakin Park in Baltimore.[16] Police attention became focused on the person who reported finding the body.[14]

On February 12, 1999, the Baltimore City Police Homicide Division received an anonymous phone call suggesting that the investigators should focus on Lee's ex-boyfriend and classmate, Adnan Syed. On February 16, Baltimore Police applied for cellular phone records for a phone belonging to Syed. Among the people in the call log was Jay Wilds.[17]

Physical evidence collected in 1999 was not tested for DNA during the initial trial process.[18]

Syed was arrested on February 28, 1999, and charged with first-degree murder.[19]

Syed's family hired defense attorney Cristina Gutierrez to represent him. During Syed's first trial, jurors accidentally overheard a sidebar dispute between Gutierrez and the presiding judge, in which the judge accused Gutierrez of lying.[31] After learning that the jury had heard him do so, the judge declared a mistrial.

After a second trial that lasted six weeks, Syed was found guilty of first degree murder, kidnapping, false imprisonment, and robbery on February 25, 2000.[32] Syed was sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years.[3]

Syed appealed his conviction in 2003, which was unsuccessful. He later made an appeal for post-conviction relief in 2010, based on ineffective assistance of counsel. This was based on Gutierrez's failure 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.[33][34] "The judge had ruled that Gutierrez's decision not to call McClain as a witness was part of her defense strategy rather than an act of incompetence. The judge said the letters McClain sent Syed in jail were weak and possibly damaging evidence for the defense, since they did not state the time she saw him at the library and contradicted Syed’s own account from that day".[34] This appeal was initially denied in 2014.[34]

On February 6, 2015, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals approved Syed's application for permission to appeal for a potential hearing on the admissibility of the alibi testimony of Asia McClain.[35]

On May 18, 2015, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals remanded the case to the Circuit Court for Baltimore City.[33] Syed's appeals lawyer, C. Justin Brown, filed a motion in court on August 24, 2015, pertaining to the cellular phone evidence, saying that a newly recovered document showed that the cell tower evidence used by prosecutors was misleading and should not have been admitted at trial.[36]

On November 6, 2015, Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Martin Welch ordered that Syed's post-conviction relief proceedings, to determine his eligibility for a new trial, would be re-opened, "in the interests of justice for all parties".[37] The post-conviction relief hearing, originally scheduled to last two days, lasted five days from February 3–9, 2016.[38] 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.[39]

On June 30, 2016, Judge 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".[40] Judge Welch denied Syed's defense team's motion for bail for Syed in the interim.[41]

On March 29, 2018, Maryland's Court of Special Appeals, the second-highest court in the state, ruled that Syed deserved a new trial. The Court of Special Appeals' opinion said that Syed's counsel failed to contact a potential alibi witness, Asia McClain, who could "have raised a reasonable doubt in the mind of at least one juror".[42]

On March 8, 2019, the Maryland Court of Appeals, on a 4–3 vote, reversed the lower appellate court's ruling, effectively denying the new trial.[43] The Court of Appeals agreed that Syed's legal counsel was deficient, but ruled that it would have not been enough to have swayed the jury to change their decision because, the judges said, the evidence against him was strong. It "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".[43] They also ruled that Syed's right to reexamine claims about the cellphone tower evidence had been waived because the issue had not been raised as part of Syed's original petition.[43]

On November 25, 2019, the Supreme Court of the United States rejected Syed's appeal for a new trial.[44]

• "Serial Podcast", Season one
• "Undisclosed Podcast", Season one
• "Truth and Justice Podcast", Season one
• Hae Min Lee at Find a Grave