Twenty years after Hae Min Lee was murdered, new testing has reportedly shown that there is no DNA evidence connecting her convicted killer to the crime.
Adnan Syed has spent the last 19 years in prison for Lee's murder after being convicted in 2000, a case that gained international attention in the breakout podcast "Serial." Syed has maintained his innocence and his legal teams have been fighting the case in the courts. He was even granted a new trial in 2016. But their efforts seemed all but exhausted when Maryland's highest court reinstated Syed's conviction in early March.
But a new hammer may have dropped in the ever-twisting case.
Attorney C. Justin Brown, who is representing Syed, wrote on Twitter Thursday, "Recovered evidence in #AdnanSyed case was tested for DNA in the fall of 2018 and NOTHING was matched to Syed. There is no forensic evidence linking him to this crime."
And documents obtained by The Baltimore Sun "show prosecutors tested about a dozen items: fingernail clippings, blood samples, a liquor bottle and condom wrapper. None tested positive for the convicted killer, Syed," the paper reported.
“The DNA tests did not exonerate Syed," a spokeswoman for the Attorney General's Office said in a statement to People. “In addition, there was plenty of evidence introduced during the trial that led to his conviction.”
Some of that other evidence came in the form of a story an acquaintance of Syed's told police. The man claimed that Syed killed Lee and showed him her body. The acquaintance said he then helped Syed bury the body.
However, the lack of forensic evidence tying Syed to Lee's killing would poke significant holes in the prosecution's case, Brown told The Sun.
“While these DNA results do not reveal the true killer, they do go a long way in showing that the wrong person is in prison,” he wrote.
Syed's case was examined in the HBO docu-series "The Case Against Adnan Syed," which aired its finale Sunday night and explored the new DNA testing.
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