Adnan Syed’s opportunity for another day in court will have to wait a little longer. Early Monday morning, the Supreme Court rejected Syed’s appeal to reverse a Maryland Court of Appeals decision that reinstated his conviction for the murder of 18-year-old Hae Min Lee in 1999. Lee was his former girlfriend and a fellow senior at Woodlawn High School at the time of her death. Syed, whose case gained national notoriety through the podcast Serial and a subsequent HBO documentary series, The Case Against Adnan Syed, has been serving a life sentence since 2000.

From the beginning, the appeal—a petition for a writ of certiorari filed in August—was a bit of a long shot. Justices hear just 2 percent of all cases submitted to the nation’s highest court each year.

Syed’s case has been through Baltimore and Maryland courts several times throughout the past five years. Syed’s arguments for why he should be granted a new trial are explored both in Serial and the HBO series. Essentially, issue has been taken with Jay Wilds, whose inconsistent testimony has raised questions about the details of the case; malpractice on the part of Syed’s former lawyer, Cristina Gutierrez; and DNA evidence that did not match Syed or anyone in the system.

Syed’s nearly 20-year quest for acquittal has had many twists and turns. Prior to the Supreme Court decision, the last major development in the case was the March 8 Maryland Court of Appeals decision. And while this latest ruling is another setback for his defense team, Rabia Chaudry, Syed’s longtime family friend and advocate, asserted Monday that things are far from over.

As for specific action, Syed’s lawyer C. Justin Brown has not publicly announced what path the defense will take moving forward, but he told The Sun that he feels there are still options open.

At a screening of the final episode of the HBO series in April, Brown was firm in just how far he and his colleagues are willing to go to fight for their client.

“If the Supreme Court doesn’t hear it, then we’ll try to go to federal court, and if the federal court doesn’t hear it, we’ll go back to Baltimore City Circuit Court, and we’ll keep going,” Brown said in April. “As long as we have support, as long as we believe in Adnan and we believe in his innocence, there’s no reason we’re going to stop.”

The latest chapter in the saga of the murder of Hae Min Lee and conviction of Adnan Syed for the crime came to a close last night with the finale of HBO’s The Case Against Adnan Syed, which director Amy Berg and her team worked on for three-and-a-half years.

Through interviews, research, and a team of private investigators and experts, Berg has constructed a solid argument for Syed getting a new trial, if not his innocence. Before the final episode, “Time is the Killer,” aired on HBO, the Landmark Theatre in Harbor East hosted a premiere of the finale featuring a panel discussion with Berg, attorney C. Justin Brown, and former Baltimore City prosecutor Ivan Bates, moderated by Marc Steiner.

For those attempting to keep track of the twists and turns of a case that has now stretched across 20 years, here’s some of the key points we learned from the finale and post-show panel. Many, many spoilers ahead.

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The fingerprints

Fingerprints left on Hae Min Lee’s car did not match Syed, or anyone else whose prints are in the system. This means whoever they belong to has never been booked by law enforcement.

The autopsy

Fulton County, Georgia, medical examiner Jan Gorniak examined the autopsy report and other details regarding Lee’s body and posited that she may have been somewhere other than Leakin Park for eight to 12 hours before she was buried. This change in the timeline is based primarily on a phenomenon called “lividity” during which blood settles in the body differently depending on how it is positioned.

Jay Wilds’ testimony

Wilds declined to be interviewed for The Case Against Adnan Syed, but according to Berg, when they spoke he discussed several points that contradict his previous statements (Wilds has contradicted himself many times before), including that the police coached him to say that he first saw Lee’s body in the parking lot of Best Buy and that Syed had asked him to provide 10 pounds of marijuana, which Syed then allegedly used to blackmail Wilds into helping bury Lee’s body.

Hae Min Lee’s car

Turf physiologist Erik Ervin’s testing and analysis of the grassy area where Lee’s car was parked was not conclusive. But Ervin did state that, based on the freshness of detritus on the tires and the turf below it, he believed the car had been there for a week at most. This hypothesis is supported by interviews private investigators hired by Berg conducted with a longtime resident of the area where the car was parked.

What comes next

The series ends with the March 8 ruling in the Maryland Court of Appeals that reinstated Syed’s conviction, meaning that his hopes for a new trial are on hold for the moment. But this is not the end of Syed’s legal fight.

“Other courts have found ineffective assistance of counsel when an attorney fails to contact an alibi witness who was neutral and who provided an alibi for the time of the murder. So it was absolutely stunning to us that Maryland is now the outlier on this issue. We did not see that coming,” said Justin Brown following the March 28 premiere at the Landmark.

When asked where completing the series has left her, Berg also stated her surprise over the ruling. “I mean, we expected to be in a different place tonight, so it’s hard to kind of imagine,” said Berg. “This turn kind of casts a dark light on the story. So, we’re not done obviously.”

The same day the finale premiered in Harbor East, the results of DNA tests mentioned in the film were also released. Several pieces of evidence previously went untested, partially due to concerns from the defense team that Syed’s DNA could be present Lee’s car or on her person because they had remained friends after their breakup. “If anyone has been holding it back, it has been me, because I have been concerned that it could potentially be misinterpreted,” said Brown. “But finally an opportunity arose to do it.” None of the recovered evidence contained DNA matching Syed’s.

Brown said that the team would go as far as the Supreme Court to try to get Syed his new trial and was met with a roar of applause from the packed theater, which included the filmmakers, Syed’s legal team, Rabia Chaudry, Syed’s friends and family, and many of those interviewed for the documentary series. Brown followed with another promise.

“If the Supreme Court doesn’t hear it, then we’ll try to go to federal court, and if the federal court doesn’t hear it, we’ll go back to Baltimore City Circuit Court, and we’ll keep going,” he said. “As long as we have support, as long as we believe in Adnan and we believe in his innocence, there’s no reason we’re going to stop.”

Almost exactly 20 years ago, Hae Min Lee’s body was found in Leakin Park on a sunny February day, and the details of how she ended up there still remain unclear. It’s a case that was first made famous by Serial and continues to fuel podcasts, Reddit threads, and groups of armchair sleuths across the world.

Adnan Syed was convicted of first degree murder, robbery, kidnapping, and false imprisonment in 2000 and sentenced to life imprisonment plus 30 years for the crimes. But there are many who say the case was, at best, mishandled and, at worst, a possible wrongful conviction. The case is currently being considered by the Maryland Court of Appeals, but the latest development in The State of Maryland v. Adnan Syed comes not from the courtroom, but from HBO.

The new documentary series The Case Against Adnan Syed, set to premiere March 10 and directed by Academy Award nominee Amy Berg, both revisits the sources those following the case have come to know (Rabia Chaudry, Asia McClain, Kristi Vincent) and explores new information and developments in the case, such as cell phone record inaccuracies and unexplored leads. Perhaps its greatest strength is the complete picture it paints of many lives impacted by the case, including the one often lost in discussion of the new developments: Lee herself. Berg has taken great care to bring Hae Min Lee’s voice into the story, using her journal and animation to make Lee feel present in her own story, even though she can no longer speak for herself.

We spoke with Berg about revisiting the case, finding balance in the story, and where she would like Syed’s case to go from here.

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This is a case so many people are invested in and familiar with. Why did you want to add your voice to the conversation?
I was approached by Working Title Films, and they had optioned the rights to Rabia Chaudry’s book. I had listened to the podcast and was really interested in knowing more. It’s an unsatisfying case in a lot of ways, and I wanted to dig in and see what else I could figure out. I also thought there was a great need for a visual depiction of this story, because it was all in audio online. Baltimore is such a unique place and there was really a lot to dig into visually for me.

The series feels different than other true crime documentaries I’ve watched in that the victim, Hae Min Lee, feels very present. Was there an intention to give her more of a voice?
There’s a balance that we need to comprehend, especially in documentary in true crime cases, because there are two sides to the story. There’s a family on both sides that I want to respect. When I started speaking to Hae Min Lee’s friends, and when we spoke to her family’s representative, I realized there was so much more to Hae than what I had known previously. And I was lucky enough to have her journal from the original trial case file. I just wanted to make sure she had a voice, because obviously if there was an injustice in Baltimore, Hae Min Lee would have wanted the truth to come out as well just based on the way her friends described her and who she was.

It would be nice if there was a way to find closure for both sides of this family, of this story. I’m sure that there was a certain status of closure in 2000 for Hae’s family. But I’m sure that the more issues that keep coming up, it probably creates more pain for them. It’s difficult, but if there was a wrongful conviction, it has to come out. The case that was out forth doesn’t fit the evidence that was presented. So there’s a problem to begin with.

One of the ways you do that is through animation of some of her diary entries and experiences. Can you tell me a little about how those scenes came to be?
I had recently seen this film The Diary of a Teenage Girl and I was really moved by the animations in that film. So when I started thinking about how to bring Hae to life, I reached out to the woman who did the animations for that film and found this incredible partner in telling this story. She stayed on the project for three and a half years with me, and we really created a great narrative for Hae together.

You’re dealing with a story that’s 20 years in the making and one that has been analyzed by so many people. How did you begin when crafting your own version?
We began in November 2015, and I started with the case file and the state’s case to convict Adnan Syed, as well as the wealth of resources I was able to establish with both friends of Hae and Adnan. I just started with that and let the story expand from there. We brought in some private investigators to help us when we had a strong comprehension of the case and elaborated from there, but I wanted to keep it true to the people who know it.

How did you go about sourcing the series and gathering some of these new voices?
We started with the case and the people closest to Adnan and Hae, and then we tracked the current day events starting from the [post-conviction relief] hearing to the most recent appeal. And then our investigation led us to people who were new to this case, to people who maybe heard Serial or heard about the case and knew someone later in life. So we did have access to new voices in the film.

Was there a part of your investigation that really surprised you?
I think the true travesty in this three-and-a-half-year journey that I took, and I guess it’s very similar with many other cases where there might be a wrongful conviction, is the absence of the actual prosecutors and detectives that tried the case originally. I don’t understand. Prosecutors are supposed to be seeking justice, and I don’t understand this lack of interest in trying to find the truth. I think it’s really unfortunate. Maybe it’s not that surprising, but I think it’s wrong.

Why do you think people have remained so interested in this case?
The case leaves you with so many questions. It’s not satisfying in that sense. It didn’t feel like the detectives or the case did a thorough deep dive into this murder to see what really happened. And things just don’t line up. And when things don’t line up, you want to understand what really happened.

Is that the goal of The Case Against Adnan Syed, to understand how this all happened?
A beautiful young woman was murdered. She left school and was never seen or heard from again. So understanding and hopefully putting closure to this whole story for many people would be very satisfying. But you know, I’m not sure that will ever happen.

In an ideal world, what happens next in this case?
Well, in an ideal world, Adnan Syed would get a new trial. He’s won a new trial twice now in two courts. But my fear is that that will never happen and the film will become the trial that he didn’t ever receive. So that’s the kind of reality of it. But it would be nice if he could get a new trial so that he could actually get exonerated if the case goes that direction. Because with the evidence that is available to the public, there just isn’t enough evidence to convict somebody today.

HBO is teaming up with Sky for new documentary series The Case Against Adnan Syed, which will revisit the 1999 murder of Baltimore County teen Hae Min Lee and the trial of her ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed. 

Whether or not Syed committed the crime has been a topic of public debate since Sarah Koenig launched the hit podcast Serial, which chronicled the story of the murder and trial, in 2014. Syed was convicted in 2000 and sentenced to life in prison. However, The Maryland Court of Special Appeals ruled in March that Syed’s attorney failed to call a key alibi witness and ordered that his conviction be thrown out. Prosecutors are now asking the Maryland Court of Appeals to reverse the lower court’s ruling, and it could be months before a decision is made as to whether the conviction will stand or Syed will receive a new trial.

Throughout his trial and during his imprisonment, attorney and family-friend Rabia Chaudry has remained a staunch supporter of Syed. It was Chaudry who originally brought the story to Koenig, and it seems she’s on board with director Amy Berg’s new look at the case.

“There are no coincidences: it was Amy Berg’s documentary West Of Memphis that I watched one night on Netflix, turned off the TV & got online to search for a reporter to investigate Adnan’s case,” Chaudry tweeted after the HBO announcement was made. “I found that reporter same night, Sarah Koenig. Now Amy is directing this series.”

Berg is also known for her 2006 documentary Deliver Us from Evil, about sex abuse cases in the Catholic Church, which was nominated for an Academy Award.

In production since 2015, the documentary series claims to present “new discoveries, as well as groundbreaking revelations that challenge the state’s case” and will feature exclusive access to Syed and his family, the defense team, friends and teachers of Syed and Lee, and Baltimore law enforcement per HBO. It will also feature original music from Nick Cave and Warren Ellis.

The series’ air date has not yet been released.

The Baltimore Love Project

Rafael Alvarez, with photographs by Sean Scheidt (self-published)

It’s likely you’ve encountered at least one, with its painted black fingers gesturing to you, spreading a message everyone understands. Since 2008, murals depicting hands that spell “LOVE” have sprung up on 20 walls around Baltimore, thanks to the creativity of mural artist Michael Owen and the strategic negotiating of his partner in the project, Scott Burkholder. This book chronicles their journey in finding walls to paint and obtaining approval from property owners. But it also takes the reader beyond descriptions of the murals’ locations and explores what their effect has been—from altering lives to physically changing the surrounding communities, and even affecting Burkholder and Owen’s relationship. Alvarez’s poignant, intimate prose also highlights the history of murals in Baltimore, including the 1970s-era Beautiful Walls project and the more recent Open Walls. And Scheidt’s stunning photographs strike the right tone, showcasing people and neighborhoods authentically. This piece of Baltimore spreads the love, just as Owen and Burkholder intended.

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Adnan’s Story

Rabia Chaudry (St. Martin’s Press)

This confusing, enveloping, and at times infuriating murder case had listeners of the podcast Serial wondering for weeks, “Who killed Hae Min Lee?” And even almost two years after the start of Serial, we still don’t know, as the man convicted of the crime—Lee’s ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed—was granted a new trial on June 30. This book takes us beyond Serial to examine what this case has done to Syed’s life and the lives of those close to him who maintain his innocence. (If you felt Serial left Lee out of the narrative, this isn’t the place to find her story.) Family friend Chaudry—who has her own podcast devoted to investigating what she believes are wrongful convictions—takes us through the events leading up to the disappearance on Jan. 13, 1999, presenting the evidence of the case, how Serial got involved, and the Syed family’s mission to overturn the verdict. Chaudry’s words make room for passages penned by Syed, and together they draw back the curtain on what life is like for Muslim residents of Northwest Baltimore and what it is like to be part of a high-profile murder case. It’s a riveting read that will draw you deep into its depths.

See our full interview with writer Rabia Chaudry.

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John Barth: A Body of Words

Edited by Gabrielle Dean and Charles B. Harris (Dalkey Archive Press)

It’s no secret that John Barth is a giant of the literary world. One of the best writers “we’ve ever had,” according to The New York Times Book Review, he’s a two-time finalist and 1973 winner of The National Book Award, and author of the brilliantly experimental The Sot-Weed Factor and Chimera. We get to claim Barth as one of our own, as he is a Cambridge resident (and native) and was a professor in The Writing Seminars at The Johns Hopkins University from 1973 until his retirement in 1995. And as this anthology of essays describes, behind the guise of literary genius was a kind, thoughtful, inspiring professor who encouraged students to call him “Jack” and looked after them “beyond anything expected of him,” writes former student John Balaban. That anecdote illustrates what this collection of essays (including one by our own John Lewis, Baltimore editor at large) does best—it takes us from the publishing house to the classroom, illuminating a treasured literary mind and showing his grace and brilliance in intimate detail.

The question, “Who killed Hae Min Lee?” was on the minds of many across the country as this Baltimore murder case, and defendant Adnan Syed, became the subject of the first season of the podcast Serial. Attorney Rabia Chaudry has an inside view, as a close family-friend of Syed’s who initially brought the case to Serial producer Sarah Koenig’s attention. Her book, Adnan’s Story, details her work to get his conviction overturned, and she joined us to talk about the process, the podcast, and what went wrong in the case.

How does it feel to be a published author?
I feel like I haven’t had the time to let it sink in yet. I had some friends over last night and I gave them each a copy because I had a bunch of author copies and they kept saying, ‘Rabia, you have a book,’ and I was like, ‘Huh?’ I also think it’s also because my head is really in the space of what’s happening in Adnan’s case. Right now, what’s occupying my brain is that his conviction was vacated. I’m so glad I did the book and he was a part of it, but I’m still thinking about the case.

And the news that a judge ordered him a new trial in June makes the book that much more relevant right now.
I’m very thankful. There was a part of me wondered how it would feel if the book came out and we had gotten a ruling in which we lost. It really would have felt horrible.

At what point in the process of his case did you decide to write this book?
Serial was ongoing and I was blogging along with it, and, I think it was maybe six or seven weeks in, when a literary agent called me who had been listening to Serial and reading my blog and had taken a look at other things I had written. She said, ‘Hey, have you thought about writing a book?’ And I had not at all. In fact, I wasn’t interested. I was exhausted and overwhelmed. But what she made clear was that somebody was going to write the book about this case and I was in the best position to do it. That was an argument I couldn’t dispute, but I did talk about it with Adnan. It was stressful for Serial to control the narrative, and it could be just anybody to come in and write the book. I told him, ‘If you give me permission and if you’re ok with it, I’ll do it.’ And he said, ‘Do it.’

When did you decide to get involved with Adnan’s case?
Not from the beginning at all. I was in law school and I lived in Virginia. He had an attorney. It was right after he was convicted. It literally might have been the same day or a few days after. Because I was like, ‘What happened here?’ I wasn’t able to attend a lot of the first trial, just the last few days. It was astonishing how this happened because I could tell the state didn’t have a case. So right afterwards, I told him that it literally came down to the time after school, he had to account for himself for a half hour, and how could he and his lawyer fail to do that? That’s when he told me he’d gotten letters from Asia McClain, and she said she specifically remembered seeing him in the library that day. But Adnan said his lawyer had called her and it didn’t check out. So I told Adnan to give me her contact information, and when I met with her, she told me nobody had ever contacted her. That’s when I realized what had happened here, and I got involved. It was shocking.

You’ve been working on this case for years. How do you keep yourself motivated to keep going?
I know him personally. You can’t walk away from somebody you know and care about. For years, it was about the post conviction. We kept thinking once we had the post conviction, we get Asia in front of a judge, that’s it. It was a huge failure on the part of his lawyer, it basically proves his innocence. It took a long time to file the post conviction, and when Asia didn’t show up and refused to cooperate, then we had to think of another plan of action. That’s when I decided to go to the media.

What was it like for Adnan’s case to be on Serial, and then have the podcast end in the inconclusive way that it did?
I really envy everyone who got to listen to Serial and love it and be enthralled by it. For me and Adnan’s loved ones, it was horribly stressful. For us, it was like Serial or bust, this is our last big chance and we might not get another opportunity. We spent almost a year with Sarah thinking, ‘There’s no way that she can look at all of this and not say he’s innocent.’ That would have been what we were looking for. But more than that, what we were hoping for was that she would uncover some evidence that would move the case forward. It was a relief when it was over. We had no idea what she was going to talk about, who she was going to talk to, what she found. We weren’t privy to that.

The last time she came to interview me, a week or two before the end, she said she hadn’t found a smoking gun. And I remember thinking, ‘Should I ask her, should I ask her?’ and then I just did. I said, ‘Sarah, what do you think? Do you think he’s guilty?’ And she told me that in her heart she thinks he’s innocent. And we weren’t being recorded when this conversation took place. But that’s not where she left off in the podcast himself. She said she didn’t think he should have been convicted, which to me is a little bit different. I don’t know why there is that discrepancy between what she said to us and what she said in the podcast.

Why do you think she and others haven’t been able to find a so-called smoking gun, and why has the case gone the way it has?
This is very typical of cold cases left untouched for decades. You’re talking about trying to find evidence that’s not nailed down 16 years ago, to go back and now talk to witnesses and get cell phone records that should have existed in the file. If the investigation had been done thoroughly in 1999, we wouldn’t be struggling now. I’m convinced there was evidence that police found that they got rid of. For example, Adnan’s incoming cell records. Who makes a request to a cell phone company saying they only want his outgoing calls? How could they not have gotten Hae Min Lee’s pager records? It doesn’t make sense, and now we can’t get them. Even if Sarah didn’t find a smoking gun, we have found a couple of real serious pieces of evidence.

Do you blame anyone in particular for the path the case took?
There’s enough blame to go around. If any single party had done their job, this result wouldn’t have been reached. If the police had thoroughly investigated, Adnan would never have been charged. The prosecutor played really dirty and didn’t give the defense the documents they needed. In the book, I talk about Adnan’s defense attorney telling the court she doesn’t know what time the prosecution is alleging the murder took place. But [Christina] Gutierrez, the defense attorney, also failed. If I didn’t know what the state’s theory of the case was, I could check news reports and do my best to build a case for my client.

What is your view on the testimony of Jay Wilds, who told the court he helped Adnan dispose of Hae’s body?
If you look at local convictions, you’ll find that false confessions, even false confessions against yourself, are a very common component. There are people who falsely confess that they committed murder. The police in this case have been implicated in other similar Baltimore city cases in which it was found that they coerced witnesses. In the book, I mention that Jay was told, ‘It’s either you or him. Either we’re going to charge you with the murder, or him.’ Jay’s story keeps changing, because every time there was more evidence, the police had to go back to him and his story would change with the new evidence. All these years I thought Jay might actually have done it, because he knew details of the crime. But he didn’t know anything—he knew what the police knew, and as the police knew more he knew more. That’s such an obvious indication, and we’ve had experts look at this, and they say this has hallmarks of when a witness is being fed information about the case.

What’s it been like for Adnan through this process?
It’s been emotionally difficult for him, but obviously, we knew it wasn’t going to be easy exposing yourself to the media and scrutiny. There’s a purpose for it, and that was to get him another chance in court, and it worked. If we had done this and it hadn’t worked, there might have been some regret from us, but there’s no regret. It was worth it. He’s doing well, we talk all the time. Now, we’re starting to think about issues we never thought we’d think about, like re-entry and what he’s going to do when he gets out. We don’t know what the state is going to do, but I’m confident either way that he will come home fairly soon.

How has this affected his family?
His parents are overjoyed. But with the joy, there’s always going to be a sense of grief and pain that it took 17 years of his life. He grew up in prison—now he’s 35, and I think we’re all a little worried about him adjusting. I’m always going to hold anger about this.

Who do you think killed Hae?
That’s not a question that I’m prepared to answer, first of all because it’s a live, ongoing investigation, but I think in the book I make a clear argument for where the investigation, if it’s re-opened, should begin, and that’s with her boyfriend at the time, Don.

Adnan is Muslim, and of Pakistani descent. What role do you think race and religion played in his case?
I’m not saying that if he wasn’t Muslim they wouldn’t have charged him, but I do think they used his religion and his ethnicity against him. You cannot make the argument that it didn’t matter, because if it didn’t matter, it wouldn’t have been mentioned. There was a purpose in bringing it up over and over.

What do you hope changes because of Adnan’s case?
There are immediate repercussions I want to see in my lifetime, and that’s for Adnan to come home. I want him to be made as whole as much as he possibly can. I want to see the prosecutors in this case be disbarred. I want to see the cops pay for this. But there’s no accountability in the system. You can’t get away with things like coercing witnesses in other occupations. I want accountability.