Adnan Syed murder case in the state of Maryland illustrates the systemic problems in the American criminal justice system.

A March 28, 2023 decision by the Appellate Court of Maryland (previously the Special Court of Appeals of Maryland) continues the horrific saga of injustice that Syed has endured since his arrest for the murder of an 18-year-old high school student, Hae Min Lee, in Baltimore in 1999.

Lee’s body was discovered in a shallow grave on February 9, 1999 in Baltimore’s Leakin Park. A subsequent autopsy revealed she died by strangulation.

17-yeaar-old Adnan Syed became an initial suspect in Lee’s murder because he had dated her through most of 1998.

The police investigation into Syed actually began just three days after Lee’s body was discovered when authorities received an anonymous telephone call informing them that Syed killed Lee because he was “angry” over their romantic breakup.

Syed was arrested for Lee’s murder on February 28, 1999.

The arrest came after detectives accessed Syed’s cell phone records which showed he called two individuals, Jay Wilds and Jennifer Pusateri, after Lee’s disappearance on January 13, 1999.

Police questioned both.

Wilds confessed to detectives that he had helped Syed bury Lee’s body, and Pusateri told detectives that Wilds had confided in her about his role in burying Lee’s body.

Syed was then formally charged with Lee’s murder.

His first trial ended in a mistrial in December 1999 after jurors overheard a remark by the trial judge calling Syed’s defense attorney “a liar.”

A second trial, conducted in February 2000, resulted in Syed being convicted of first-degree murder, kidnapping, false imprisonment, and robbery.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment in June of that year.

His automatic direct appeal was denied by the Appellate Court of Maryland in March 2003.

The following is a timeline of the post-conviction events that have taken place in the Syed case:

• In May 2010, Syed filed a post-conviction application with nine claims challenging the legality of his conviction in the Baltimore trial court.
• After conducting a two-day evidentiary hearing, the trial court denied all nine claims for post-conviction relief in January 2014.
• Syed timely sought leave to appeal the post-conviction denial to the Court of Special Appeals of Maryland which was granted in February 2015.
• The appeals court remanded the case in May 2015 for further proceedings based on an affidavit Asia McClain, a potential alibi witness.
• Pursuant to that remand order, the trial court conducted a five-day evidentiary hearing in February 2016 after which it granted Syed a new trial based on ineffective assistance of counsel.
• In August 2016, the State filed a timely notice of appeal in the Court of Special Appeals seeking review of the new trial order. The appeals court agreed to hear the state’s appeal.
• In March 2018, appeals court adopted the trial court’s finding that Syed was entitled to a new trial.
• In March 2019, the Court of Appeals of Maryland, in a 4-3 decision,  reversed the appeals court’s new trial order and reinstated Syed’s conviction, even though the court found that Syed had received ineffective assistance but was not “prejudiced” by it.
• That same month—March 2019—HBO began to air a four-part series, “The Case Against Adnan Syed.” That documentary offered the finding that DNA tests conducted at the request of Syed’s new attorneys did not find anyone else’s DNA on Lee’s body or her personal belongings.
• In November 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the Court of appeals’ narrow decision.

That did not end the Syed case’s demand for justice.

The Adnan Syed case drew national and international media attention as evidence of his innocence continued to mount. Syed’s attorney—Erica Suter with the Baltimore Public Defenders’ Office and the Baltimore University’s Innocence Project—convinced the Baltimore State’s Attorney’s Office in 2021 to reopen the case on the issue of “actual innocence.”

While that combined year-long investigation did not conclusively reach an actual innocence finding, it did uncover serious Brady violations in the prosecution of Syed, as well as significant new information about two other individuals’ involvement in Lee’s murder. Further, the investigation developed serious reliability issues concerning critical pieces of evidence used to prosecute Syed.

These serious factual findings and prosecutorial flaws was enough for the State’s Attorney’s Office to file a motion on September 14, 2022 to vacate Syed’s conviction.  The motion stated that “the interests of justice and fairness” demanded a new trial, especially since the State’s Attorney’s Office had lost “confidence in the integrity of [Syed’s] conviction.”

Five days later Baltimore Circuit Court Judge Melissa M. Phinn granted the state’s motion and ordered a new trial in the case.

Adnan Syed walked out of the courthouse on a personal recognizance bond.

The following month, October 11, the State’s Attorney’s Office dismissed all charges against Syed following a one-minute court hearing. He was effectively a free man.

It was at this point that the Syed case took one of the most bizarre turns in the annals of law.

Young Lee, Hae Min Lee’s brother, immediately filed motions in both trial court and the Appellate Court of Appeals permissible under Maryland law to stay any further proceedings in the case because he had not been given “adequate notice” to appear at the September 14, 2022 hearing to speak against the motion to dismiss.

What governmental interest is served by letting a crime victim’s relative have a voice in a legal proceeding in which serious constitutional violations are at issue is beyond normal comprehension. The September 14 hearing had nothing to do with either the victim or her relatives. The legal purpose of that hearing was to put in the trial record compelling evidence that the State of Maryland had engaged in serious prosecutorial misconduct to convict Adnan Syed for Hae Min Lee’s murder.

After some preliminary procedural wrangling, the Appellate Court of Maryland ruled that Young Lee’s victims’ rights had been violated in the trial court proceedings which led to the reversal of Syed’s convictions for constitutional violations. The appeals court specifically held:

“Therefore, we vacate the circuit court’s order vacating Mr. Syed’s convictions and sentence, which results in the reinstatement of the original convictions and sentence. We remand for a new, legally compliant, transparent hearing on the motion to vacate, where Mr. Lee is given notice of the hearing that is sufficient to allow him to attend in person, evidence supporting the motion to vacate is presented, and the court states its reasons in support of its decision.”

It is reasonable for crime victims should be kept apprised of all legal proceedings prior to the trial of an offender, and they should have a voice at sentencing hearings, but, with all due respect to the Maryland legislature and its constitutional protection of victims’ rights, the family of a crime victim should not have any voice at a hearing to determine whether an offender’s fundamental constitutional rights have been violated.

The constitutional Rule of Law is more important—dare it be said more sacred—than any revenge-seeking interests a crime victim or a crime victim’s survivor may have in determining how the Rule of Law should be applied.

The police cannot beat or torture a confession out of a guilty offender; the police cannot seize incriminating evidence from a guilty offender’s home without a warrant; and the prosecution cannot lie, cheat, suppress evidence, or use perjured testimony. The U.S. Constitution safeguards the rights of all people, guilty or innocent.

That is the essence of the Rule of Law.

Crime victims and/or their survivors, as a rule, do not care if these constitutional violations take place. They have one interest: convict the wrongdoer at any cost and punish them to the fullest extent of the law.

Whether or not Adnan Syed killed Hae Min Lee is not the issue anymore. The issue, and the only issue now, is whether or not the Rule of Law was violated by the State of Maryland in convicting him.

Adnan Syed’s conviction is now on hold as the Maryland Supreme Court decides whether to uphold the lower ruling.

Whatever the outcome in the Syed case, Young Lee’s revenge should not play a role in it.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This article previously appeared in the August 9, 2023 The Crime Report.

On September 9, 1981, I wrote the below paragraph in a letter to Jodie We had known each other a mere three months.

“I once told you that it is terribly important for you to believe in me – and while my life is a chronicle of failure and tragedy, I’ve never failed a single individual who believed in me. Perhaps more should make my world tick, but I strive harder, work longer when there are stakes on the table. When I walk out that prison front gate, and I most assuredly will one day, I need for you to be there and to know that you believe in me. I will climb any mountain or surmount any obstacle for you. Some men climb mountains because they are there and they see a challenge in it but in a hundred years it is all academic. But it will not be academic if I climb that mountain for you and will be able to look into your eyes and say, ‘I did it for you.’ That is the significance of life, and, yes, as Sartre has written, death may rob it of that significance, just as the beach deprive the single grain of sand any significance. But for that blessed instance that I am able to stand there, hold you in my arms, and stare into your, that will be all the significance I need in life. In fact, no one should expect anything more.”

This morning, some 43 years later, I shared another of the tens of thousands of moments Jodie and I have experienced together—holding each other, looking into the other’s eyes, and knowing that as the sand eases down in the hour glass life has been significant for us. Our love—the very existence of love itself—rejects Sartre existentialism teaching that we are born of nothing, live for nothing, and die into nothingness. The love we have for a spouse, parent, a child, a sibling, a relative, or a friend—and even a pet we cherish with love—makes this life significant.

With tragedy all around us, and there is so much of it in today’s world, human love is still alive and rescuing each of us in our own way.

I made a promise of love to Jodie 43 years ago. That love has never wavered, not in a single moment.

The significance of that is: a promise kept.

The thing that lets people keep up with activity, both human and non-human, that occurs throughout the world each day.

News implies momentous events—the ones that can shape and influence daily human endeavors.

We love news as evidenced by the thousands of news outlets around the world.

For example, this past week the news featured allies of former President Trump telling the truth to federal prosecutors about the former president’s alleged and charged criminal conduct; about six Supreme Court justicess—two of whom are the most corrupt in the court’s history—imposing their political ideology under the “rule of law” in three decisions that adversely impacted at least 100 million disadvantaged people; and about too many climate-change spawned weather disasters to even count.

And, then there was Vanessa Trump and Cardi B who, for reasons only known to them, decided to give their peculiar versions of “breaking news” to enlighten the rest of us about the “special” gifts of behavior the “rich and famous” have n crisis situations.

First, from Yahoo News, we learned that Vanessa, who unfortunately was once the wife of Donald J. Trump, Jr. before their marriage came apart after little Donnie Jr. decided to have an adulterous affair with Aubrey O’Day—a former contestant (a “reality TV star” as she was described by news outlets) on Celebrity Apprentice, a spinoff of Donnie Jr’s pappy’s show, The Apprentice.

What Jr. and Audrey did in their bedrooms (or in hotel rooms or behind trash dumpsters) must be left to the imagination of the reader.

But according to a social media news outlets Vanessa knew a thing or two about what the pair did in their bedrooms—and that was enough to cause Vanessa to go “gangster” (as described by the media) on poor, heart-broken Audrey—a rather fitting description given the family’s organized crime-like business ventures.

It seems , according to the Yahoo News report, that Vanessa sharply criticized Audrey about her lack of, or certainly inferior, “bedroom skills”—criticisms  that “deeply hurt” little Miss Audrey.

Why Miss Audrey did not tell Vanessa that her bedroom “skills” were apparently good enough to lure little Donnie out of his marriage bedroom into an adulterous bedroom, is anyone’s guess.

But the “bedroom wars” between Miss Audrey and the billionaire’s wife pale in comparison to the nuclear meltdown Cardi B had after her husband—some fella named Offset (or maybe it was Offbeat) who accused her in a Twitter post, “My wife fucked a N**ga on me gang yall n**gas know how I come.”

That’s an exact quote, it really, truly is.

After being scrapped off the ceiling by her maid, Cardi B took to Twitter telling her followers (and anyone else who would listen) that hubby Offset was just “talking shit.”

Apparently after some deep reflection, she then returned to Twitter to share with the world her intellectual genius with these earth-shattering and life-gripping nuggets of marital wisdom:

“Come on, y’all. I’m fucking Cardi B. I think sometimes motherfuckers forget I’m Cardi B. If I was giving this pussy to anybody, it would be out. I’m not just anybody.”

That’s also an exact quote—it really, truly is. Cannot possibly make this stuff up.

She then told hubby, Offset: “Please boy, stop acting stupid.  Stop acting stupid. Don’t play with me. What the fuck. Stop playing. That’s all I’m motherfucking gonna say.”

No one can dispute that she made her point.

Got to love Twitter, the Musk News Hour.

Cardi B, for whatever reason, decided to inform the public about the value of her most private anatomical part—that if she chose to share that valuable part, the entire world would know about it.

This was the Yahoo News leading into Independence Day weekend—a sneak peek into the lives of the rich and famous.

It certainly provided enough “fireworks” to last till Christmas.

But I really don’t understand why Yahoo “news” thought it was “news” enough to be put in the public square.

Why can’t these rich and famous folks keep their private business private?

Anyway, I hope Vanessa and Cardi B have a great holiday weekend.

And I thank them for giving me the “news” fodder for this post.

Extremism of virtually every stripe is behavioral insanity.

Commercial products of every make and model are peddledacross media advertising venues through extremism: speed, sound, color, exaggeration, and idiocy are used in extreme methods to secure and manipulate the American public into buying one thing or another.

Here is how extremism works in real time.

Beginning this past Father’s Day through Thursday, June 22, the American and world attention was absorbed in the missing OceanGate submersible Titan lost with a crew of five adventurers who wanted to go to extreme depths to see the infamous wreckage of the Titanic.

Every morsel of information, every possible detail was consumed by a public absorbed in a death watch ritual until their actual deaths were announced.

Simultaneously, while the public’s interest and attention was focused on those five lost souls, more than 300 Pakistanis nationals died off the coast of Greece when a fishing trawler being used to smuggle them capsized and sank. The world barely noticed the tragedy. It was not extreme enough for the world to care about.

The question no one wishes to ask: are five rich lives more deserving of world attention than 300 impoverished lives?

All life is sacred. Each death of life deserves notice.

It was the extremism of the adventurers’ journey to the depths of the ocean where the ruins of the Titanic lay that captured the mass fascination of the nation.

Extremism.

Americans love it, especially when it comes to extreme adventure.

But should we?

Since the advent of the Tea Party Movement in 2010 (or thereabouts), America has seen a bumper crop of idiocy—even greater than soybeans which, at least, contribute to the world’s food source.

Idiocy does not serve anything other than to make stupid people feel smart, almost intellectual at times.

I watched a video recently of a town hall meeting in none other than New York City during which Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was booed and heckled by a dozen or more folks in attendance. I don’t know what the meeting was about. What caught my attention was the Yahoo News headline that the representative had been booed.

The video showed one man, who I assume is the Godfather of Idiocy in New York City, screaming at Ocasio-Cortez and her supporters in the crowd in a language befitting of Vladimir Putin on the day 16 of his 17 so-called “invincible” hypersonic missiles were shot down over Ukraine. The idiot’s language was difficult to understand as spittle flew out of his loud mouth as he screamed profanities and hostile protests that only he could understand.

I’ve seen men like this more than once in my life. In Texas, the bow-legged, hard-riding cowboys would say the idiot was “all hat and no cattle” while in prison someone would have told him to, “shut the fuck up, mother..ker, you ain’t gonna bust a grape with a sledgehammer.”

I’m sure you’ve seen this kind of person in one social format or another during your lifetime. You know the kind that makes you want say something ugly or nasty.

And this Godfather of Idiocy had one of his idiot cohorts with him.

This guy had, I’m fairly sure, a steroid induced stunted brain, a peanut size tallywacker, and a proverbial beer belly bloated over the years from too many Bud Lights before Marjorie Taylor Green told him it was a “woke” habit.

Lieutenant Idiot was being politely removed from the meeting by a security official. Each time the security official would ease or direct Lieutenant Idiot to the door, he would say:

“Don’t touch me,” or, more forcefully, “keep your hands off of me.”

The security official was undeterred by the implied threats as he gently maneuvered Lieutenant Idiot out of the crowd.

It made me wonder how he must have recounted the story of being kicked out of the meeting to his wife and kids once he got home and as he struggled to get a new “Tough Guy” beer down the ole hatch. No more Bud Lights for him.

Some lady got removed from the meeting as well. Not sure what her particular gripe was about, but she expressed it all the way out of the town hall.

What this brief viewing episode showed me is that about 30 percent of Americans have drank too much Idiot Juice and eaten too many soybean sandwiches.

Welcome to America Made Great Again!