Maryland appellate court reinstates Adnan Syed’s convictions, orders new hearing

[Guest]

Maryland appellate court reinstates Adnan Syed’s convictions, orders new hearing

WWW.BALTIMORESUN.COM

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The Appellate Court of Maryland on Tuesday reinstated the convictions of Adnan Syed, finding that a Baltimore judge violated the rights of the victim’s family to attend a hearing to throw out his...

What is otherwise a boring local news story was made quite famous by the Serial podcast. Last year, after more than 20 years in prison, Syed’s conviction was overturned and he was ordered released and has been out since then.

 

Today THAT decision was overturned, and his conviction and sentence have been reinstated. 
 

Why I find this most interesting is that it involves a situation that isn’t about guilt or innocence, there was actually no issues with anything presented. It was overturned because victim’s families have rights of notice and appearance at such court proceedings and apparently the brother of the victim was unable to physically attend and so did so via zoom.

 

This was deemed to not satisfy the requirements of the law, so the court sent it back to the lower court with a requirement that the brother be able to physically attend and then do the whole thing all over again. 
 

I love technicalities, to be honest 😂

[Mr.Vic20]

Jebus, even if this guy is guilty, I think he's served his time! Make it stop! This whole story really shows how media attention can both help and hurt a legal saga. 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

This feels so fucking petty. 

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

This feels so fucking petty. 

It must be especially frustrating for Syed given that the state prosecutor is the one who was like “we don’t think he should have been convicted, and we actually have two really good suspects”.

 

The brother seems really firm that Syed is the responsible party for his sister’s murder, but maaaaaan is there reasonable doubt galore here.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

So this gives the brother all the power to just say he can’t be in attendance and Syed never gets out? 

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

So this gives the brother all the power to just say he can’t be in attendance and Syed never gets out? 

I don’t think so. I haven’t read the order yet, but I believe from previous reporting that what occurred is the brother wasn’t given notice with the statutorily required amount of time prior to the hearing, so they offered to allow him to zoom in. He accepted that, but when the outcome didn’t go the way he wanted, he filed a motion saying his rights were violated because they didn’t give him proper notice. The court agreed that the statute does require notice in a specific form and fashion, and that the state failed to do so even though the brother was apparently fine with the remedy.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

24 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

I don’t think so. I haven’t read the order yet, but I believe from previous reporting that what occurred is the brother wasn’t given notice with the statutorily required amount of time prior to the hearing, so they offered to allow him to zoom in. He accepted that, but when the outcome didn’t go the way he wanted, he filed a motion saying his rights were violated because they didn’t give him proper notice. The court agreed that the statute does require notice in a specific form and fashion, and that the state failed to do so even though the brother was apparently fine with the remedy.

So they have to give him enough notice and whether he shows up or not will be immaterial. That’s at least something. Still dumb. 

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

So they have to give him enough notice and whether he shows up or not will be immaterial. That’s at least something. Still dumb. 

Correct, the victim’s family doesn’t have an absolute right to be there, but the state is required to give them sufficient notice such that they can arrange to be there. In this particular case, it’s really just a ploy to punish Syed by the brother because the hearing didn’t go the way they wanted.

[BloodyHell]

As I understood, this is a technicality, he won't see any time, but the family has to be given the right to make victim impact statements before the conviction can be legally overturned? Or give them sufficient time?

 

It's all a lot fucked up, but at least he isn't going back to prison. 

[Greatoneshere]

Most of the practice of law is procedure and little else. It's all about dotting i's and crossing t's, technicalities are where a lot of lawyers butter their bread. If only to delay cases, make things harder/more expensive for the other side, waste the other sides' time, more billable hours for themselves, whatever it is.

[CayceG]

That technicality is fucking stupid. 

[Guest]

So I have been reading through the order for the appellate court and wow, this was actually some real poor work by the lower court judge and the prosecutors office. Some of the details that came up in the order:

 

A significant portion of the hearing was done off the record in the judge’s chambers and the judge didn’t do anything to cure this. No memo of what was said, no restating it in open court so it could be recorded, nada. This is a BIG deal.

 

The notice given to victim Lee’s brother was laughable. He was notified, he asked for one week as he had to travel from California and re-arrange work stuff. He was denied this request. He was then only given 30 minutes notice of his time to zoom in to the hearing, so he had to rush home from work and try and prepare with just a few minutes.

 

The prosecutor also decided to drop the charges seemingly because they had seen the appeal of the hearing by Lee’s brother and wanted to force the appellate court to call the situation moot. Appellate courts do not like that kind of gamesmanship. Process really matters at the appellate level in particular, so rushing to null prosse so the appellate courts would say “oh well” is really thumbing your nose at the court.

 

There are some other more minor things, but a good reminder that our justice system is a mess filled with humans who make bad decisions. If the judge and prosecutor’s office had just followed established procedures, the outcome they clearly wanted would have still happened and there would be no grounds for this appeal.