Adnan Syed went from convicted killer to podcast star — and now he may soon be a free man.
A Baltimore judge granted Syed a new trial and vacated his murder conviction Thursday afternoon — 17 years after he was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison for murdering his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee, who went missing and was found strangled in the woods.
“WE WON A NEW TRIAL FOR ADNAN SYED!!! #FreeAdnan,” his lawyer, C. Justin Brown, tweeted shortly after the judge issued the long-awaited ruling.
Syed’s story was detailed in the first season of the wildly popular podcast “Serial,” gaining national attention and leading to major developments in the case.
Those included key witnesses coming forward to speak on his behalf.
Asia McClain, a classmate of Syed’s, claimed she saw him at the Woodlawn Public Library at 2:15 p.m. on Jan. 13, 1999 — the same time cops believe Lee was murdered.
Judge Martin Welch will let the Maryland Court of Special Appeals weigh whether to allow McClain’s affidavit from January 2015 in the new trial, which doesn’t have an official date yet.
He also wrote that Syed’s trial attorney, the late Cristina Gutierrez, “rendered ineffective assistance when she failed to cross-examine the state’s expert regarding the reliability of cell tower location evidence.”
Gutierrez never contacted McClain during the original 1999 trial, which convicted a then-17-year-old Syed of killing Lee.
Syed’s brother, Yusuf, celebrated the ruling Thursday and deemed it a step forward for the country’s justice system.
“I had a feeling in my heart it was going to happen,” he told the Baltimore Sun. “It’s not only a win for us, but a win for a lot of people who are stuck in the system because it opened a lot of people’s eyes about the justice system.”
“This American Life” journalist Sarah Koenig used the first season of “Serial” to dig into Syed’s plight, sharing the case over a series of 12 episodes that poked holes in the murder case against him.
It has since been downloaded more than 80 million times.