On September 22, 2022, Marilyn Mosby, the State’s Attorney for Baltimore City, Maryland, was outside the courthouse preparing to address the substantial crowd but her timing was off. As Marilyn began her speech, Adnan Syed exited the courthouse where his 20 plus year-old murder conviction had just been overturned . Marilyn’s office was responsible for the reversal and Marilyn was there to take a bow. Unfortunately for her, the crowd – on seeing Syed – erupted in cheering and applause and she could not be heard .

If 1999 was the worst year of Adnan Syed’s life, 2014 may have been his best year. In 2014, Syed, then in prison for the 1999 murder of his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, met Sarah Koenig ,a journalist who co-created the podcast, Serial, which originated from Chicago’s NPR radio station, WBEZ. Koenig’s podcast was a part of the This American Life series on NPR.

While there had been podcasts before Serial, it is fair to say that the Serial podcast on Adnan Syed (its very first) came close to breaking the Internet. It ran for 12 weeks at the end of 2014, and, within a year, it had been downloaded 100 million times. To date, it has been downloaded 300 million times.

The podcast world is divided into two parts: BS and AS, meaning Before Serial and After Serial referring to the Serial podcast on Adnan Syed. After that podcast, the number of podcasts exploded so that now there is a podcast on virtually any conceivable subject; in the BS period virtually none.

Syed was a 17-year-old high school student as was Hae Min Lee, his ex-girlfriend who was the victim. He was a member of a thriving Muslim community and it was two members of this community who persuaded Sarah Koenig to give his case a look almost 15 years after his conviction. Koenig had been a reporter for the Baltimore Sun some years before and had known Syed’s advocates when she lived in Baltimore and believed that they were serious and believable people. Once convinced that a wrong may have occurred, she spent a year researching the case and preparing the podcast which convinced more than a few people that Syed was innocent. To be sure, there are also those who were not convinced.

The power of the Serial podcast resulted from several factors. First, Sarah Koenig had done exhaustive research into the 15-year-old case. She reviewed every court document available and talked to every witness from 1999. Second, her voice and her delivery were both distinctive and pleasing. Third, when listening, you felt you were somehow involved in solving the case.

Listen now to the first of the 12 episodes entitled “The Alibi”.(https://serialpodcast.org) and see if you don’t agree.

Koenig has detractors. Some are just plain jealous that she has done something so original and so good that is now owned by the New York Times. Others believe she had an agenda to show that the criminal justice system does not work properly because of prosecutorial misconduct, false witnesses encouraged by investigating detectives, the failure to pursue alternative suspects and the use of “junk science” which, in Syed’s case, had to do with cell tower transmissions. That criticism now appears more accurate given her comments after Syed was released.

So, while Marilyn Mosby was attempting to give her speech and while the crowd was chanting that day’s version of Kumbaya, the question remains: was he guilty or was he innocent? The judge’s decision is now on appeal on the basis that Hae Min Lee’s brother was not given sufficient time to participate in the hearing on the motion to vacate Syed’s conviction. No matter the outcome of that appeal, it is clear that Syed will not be retried given the “problems” with the original prosecution.

Frankly, there does not appear to be the “problems” that the State’s Attorney now maintains. Even the new discovery of a “Brady” violation is not without controversy. A “Brady” violation involves a situation where the prosecution is aware of mitigating information (e.g., alternative suspect) which is not properly revealed to the defense before trial. A Brady violation means a new trial. The State’s Attorney now maintains that it discovered a note in the original prosecutor’s handwriting indicating that another person wanted to kill Hae Min Lee (if true, a clear “Brady” violation ). The prosecutor in question maintains that his note referred to Syed and not to someone else.

People who have listened to the podcast come away with different conclusions. Sarah Koenig was of the belief that Syed’s conviction was improper. In my family, my daughter agreed with Sarah. My son-in-law, my son and I thought that Syed was guilty. Political leanings do not appear to have affected the outcome as the “guilty” votes range from very conservative to very liberal. The State’s Attorney was careful to note that its action was not a declaration of innocence but a determination that the trial was flawed and that the conviction could not stand.

What is crystal clear is that without Serial, Syed would still be in prison. He became nationally and internationally famous and, all of a sudden, got what an inmate always hopes for: lawyers banging down the door to represent him. Ultimately, it was “pro bono” lawyers who freed him with the help of the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s office which, no doubt, was well aware of the Serial podcast.

We are most accustomed these days to the use of DNA to free the wrongfully convicted. There was no DNA in the Syed case. A witness said that he helped Syed bury Hae Min Lee’s body and took detectives to her car which had been abandoned after the burial. So, the Syed case depended on whether you believed this individual or not. The jury clearly did.

While 2022 was the year of Syed’s resurrection, it was not a great year for Marilyn Mosby and the least of her problems was the speech which was not heard. In January, in a spectacular fall from grace resembling a Greek tragedy, she had been indicted by a Federal Grand Jury for perjury and also lying on a mortgage application. She was denied a third term by the voters in July. She would be convicted of perjury in November 2023.

Unlike Syed’s trial, the testimony in Marilyn’s trial was reported each morning in the paper.  In 1999, Hae Min Lee was one of 300 plus murders in Baltimore and very few received any notoriety.  We know the details of Syed’s murder trial only because of Serial.

So did Serial result in the release of a person actually guilty of premediated murder?

Maybe. Maybe not.