Adnan Syed's murder conviction still stands as he seeks sentence reduction in 'Serial' case

BALTIMORE (AP) — Despite documented problems with the evidence against him and an earlier request from prosecutors to clear his record, Adnan Syed will remain convicted of murder, according to court papers filed Tuesday night.

The decision from Baltimore prosecutors comes ahead of a scheduled hearing Wednesday morning where a judge will consider whether to reduce Syed’s sentence, but this means the conviction itself is no longer in question.

It’s the latest wrinkle in an ongoing legal odyssey that garnered a massive following after being featured in the “Serial” podcast over a decade ago.

Syed’s attorneys recently filed the request for a sentence reduction under Maryland’s Juvenile Restoration Act, a relatively new state law that provides a potential pathway to release for people serving long prison terms for crimes committed when they were minors. That request is supported by prosecutors.

Meanwhile, Baltimore State’s Attorney Ivan Bates announced Tuesday that his office is withdrawing a previously filed motion to vacate Syed’s conviction in the 1999 killing of his high school ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, who was found strangled to death and buried in a makeshift grave.

“I did not make this decision lightly, but it is necessary to preserve the credibility of our office and maintain public trust in the justice system,” Bates said in a statement.

Syed’s attorney Erica Suter issued a statement late Tuesday, criticizing the move and reasserting Syed’s innocence.

“Tonight, the state’s attorney got it wrong,” Suter said. “His decision to withdraw his office’s motion to vacate Adnan’s conviction ignores the injustices on which this conviction was founded. We will continue to fight to clear his name through all legal avenues available to him.”

The original motion to vacate — which was filed by Bates’ predecessor Marilyn Mosby — won Syed his freedom in 2022. But his conviction was reinstated following a procedural challenge from Lee’s family. The Maryland Supreme Court ordered a redo of the conviction vacatur hearing after finding that the family didn’t receive adequate notice to attend in person.

Since the prosecutor’s office changed hands in the meantime, the decision of whether to withdraw the motion fell to Bates.

Instead of asking a judge to again consider Syed’s guilt or innocence, Bates chose a different path. He supported Syed’s motion for a reduced sentence — without addressing the underlying conviction.

Bates said that since his release in 2022, Syed has demonstrated he is a productive member of society whose continued freedom is “in the interest of justice.” He said the case “is precisely what legislators envisioned when they crafted the Juvenile Restoration Act.”

The legislation was passed amid growing consensus that such defendants are especially open to rehabilitation, partly because brain science shows cognitive development continues well beyond the teenage years. Syed was 17 when Lee was killed.

Now 43, he has been working at Georgetown University’s Prisons and Justice Initiative and caring for aging relatives since his release, according to court filings. His father died in October after a long illness.

Bates was facing a Friday deadline to decide on the motion to vacate.

After reviewing the motion filed by his predecessor, Bates concluded that it contained “false and misleading statements that undermine the integrity of the judicial process,” he said in a statement Tuesday.

Bates wrote in an executive summary released Tuesday that his decision “does not preclude Mr. Syed from raising any new issues that he believes will support his innocence in the proper post-trial pleadings.”

“However, properly shifting this burden back to Mr. Syed will re-instill the adversarial nature of proceedings that are the hallmark of the truth-seeking function of our criminal justice system,” the summary says.

Attorneys for the victim’s family had argued that prosecutors should address the integrity of Syed’s conviction before the court considered reducing his sentence. Prosecutors “should not be allowed to duck the issue by hiding behind” his motion for a reduced sentence, attorneys wrote in a recent filing.

Syed has maintained his innocence from the beginning, but many questions remain unanswered even after the “Serial” podcast combed through the evidence, reexamined legal arguments and interviewed witnesses. The series debuted in 2014 and drew millions of listeners who became armchair detectives.

Rife with legal twists and turns, the case has recently pitted criminal justice reform efforts against the rights of crime victims and their families, whose voices are often at odds with a growing movement to acknowledge and correct systemic racism, police misconduct and prosecutorial missteps.

When prosecutors sought to vacate Syed’s conviction in 2022, they cited numerous problems with the case, including alternative suspects and unreliable evidence presented at trial. A judge agreed to vacate the conviction and free Syed. Prosecutors in Mosby’s office later chose not to refile charges after they said DNA testing excluded Syed as a suspect.

Even though the appellate courts reinstated his conviction, they allowed Syed to remain free while the case continued.

FILE - Adnan Syed, right, and his mother Shamim Rahman, follow attorney Erica Sutter, not in the photo, to talk with reporters outside Maryland's Supreme Court in Annapolis, Md., Oct. 5, 2023, following arguments in an appeal by Syed, whose conviction for killing his ex-girlfriend more than 20 years ago was chronicled in the hit podcast "Serial." (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

MADRID (AP) — Spanish authorities are preparing to receive a hantavirus-stricken cruise ship headed for the Canary Islands.

Health officials plan careful evacuations of the more than 140 passengers and crew when the MV Hondius arrives in Tenerife this weekend.

At least three passengers have died, and several others are sick. None of the remaining passengers or crew is currently symptomatic.

The U.S. and the U.K. are arranging flights to repatriate their citizens. The World Health Organization says the risk to the wider public is low. Health authorities are tracking passengers who disembarked before the outbreak was detected.

Here's the latest:

The virus usually spreads when people inhale contaminated residue of rodent droppings. Hantaviruses have been around for centuries and are thought to exist around the world.

But global health officials say the risk to the general public remains low because the germ does not easily spread between people.

“This is not the next COVID, but it is a serious infectious disease,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, director of epidemic and pandemic preparedness at the World Health Organization. “Most people will never be exposed to this.”

The disease gained renewed attention last year after the late actor Gene Hackman ’s wife, Betsy Arakawa, died from a hantavirus infection in New Mexico.

Health authorities across four continents were continuing to track down and monitor passengers who disembarked the ship before the deadly outbreak was detected. They are also trying to trace others who may have come into contact with them since then.

On April 24, nearly two weeks after the first passenger had died on board, more than two dozen people from at least 12 different countries left the ship without contact tracing, the ship’s operator and Dutch officials said Thursday.

It wasn’t until May 2 that health authorities first confirmed hantavirus in a ship passenger, the World Health Organization said.

The KLM flight attendant who tested negative for the virus was working on a flight headed from Johannesburg to Amsterdam on April 25, and had later fallen ill. She was taken to an isolation ward at an Amsterdam hospital on Thursday.

The cruise passenger briefly aboard the flight — a Dutch woman whose husband died on the ship — was too ill to stay on the international flight to Europe. She was taken off the plane in Johannesburg, where she died.

The MV Hondius is expected to reach Tenerife, off the coast of West Africa, on Saturday or Sunday.

Passengers “will arrive at a completely isolated, cordoned-off area,” said Virginia Barcones, Spain’s head of emergency services, on Thursday.

The MV Hondius is a Dutch-flagged vessel and Dutch officials said Friday they were also in close contact with the ship’s owner and authorities of countries whose citizens are on board.

The United States has agreed to send a plane to the Canary Islands to repatriate its 17 citizens from the cruise ship, Barcones said. The British government also said it will charter a plane to evacuate the nearly two dozen British citizens on board.

Health workers in protective gear evacuate patients from the MV Hondius cruise ship into an ambulance at a port in Praia, Cape Verde, Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)