Crime Weekly - S3 Ep238: Crime Weekly News: Adnan Syed Conviction Reinstated

Episode Date: September 4, 2024

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Hey everyone, welcome back to Crime Weekly News. I'm Derek Levasseur. And I'm Stephanie Harlow. And big news this week, a case that we covered, Adnan Syed. I believe we did eight or nine parts on it. We went really in-depth on the Adnan Syed-Hayman Lee case, Hayman Lee being the victim in the case, and we gave our opinions on it. And we left that series believing that Adnan Syed had, in fact, killed Hayman Lee. We both agreed on that. Would you imagine that? But

there's been a change of events because after all that went down, his conviction was vacated and he was released. And it was this big story. He was doing all these media things. He was speaking at universities, talking about how to improve the justice system, which there is truth in that. However, when all this was going down, Heyman Lee's brother, Young Lee, contested the vacating of the conviction because he wasn't given the opportunity to appear at court and give his side of what he thinks should happen. And he argued, him and his attorneys argued that he had the right to be present and the right to have a reasonable amount of time of notification to be present for that hearing. And he stated that that was not the case. 30th by Maryland Supreme Court upheld the lower court's reinstatement of Adnan Syed's murder conviction in connection with the 1999 death of his ex-girlfriend, Hayman Lee, and a four to three

ruling by the higher court. They upheld an earlier appeals court decision that said the rights of the victim's family were violated because they weren't given proper notice of the 2022 hearing to toss out Syed's conviction in the first place. And this was according to CNN. So this case is just crazy. It's back and forth without a doubt, politically motivated. And from just looking at other articles that have come out and watching other videos,

attorneys have said, what is it transpired in this case is unheard of at this rate this back and forth it's just it's just a crazy case overall but um i was surprised to see this ruling because i will get into it in a few we'll talk about it but i don't know if it's going to because now obviously this is going to go back down to the vacature hearing which is going to just be redone and i don't know if it's going to make a difference. So we could end up where we are, where we were before this reinstatement. But I was surprised to see this happen. And clearly it was an overwhelming conclusion because it was a four to three vote. But what was your reaction when you heard about this? Because you texted me not knowing that I knew.

Well, yeah. I mean, I figured you'd heard about it. I have Google Alerts set up for a lot of the cases that we cover in case something pops up like Scott Peterson, Adan Syed, things like that. The case with the Adelsons is another one that I have Google Alerts set up for. But I didn't know exactly what it meant. Like, what's changed? Because it doesn't appear that anything's changed. It appears his conviction's being upheld. Yeah, he's now a convicted murderer again. A convicted murderer again.

That's correct. But not going back to prison. That is also correct. What's up with that? You tell me. I don't know. I just don't understand. So is it like upholding his convictions sort of like this bone they're throwing to Hayes' family?

Like, oh, hey, we know you're upset and we know you didn't like this. So here, we'll uphold his conviction, but he's still going to remain a free man. Like, is it just a way to cover their asses legally so they can't be sued by Hayes family? What's what does this accomplish, I guess, for for anyone? First off, I believe Adnan killed Heyman Lee, so I don't like the guy. That's very evident. If you want to go watch our seven nine part series, you'll see that. However, I don't blame him for any of this. OK, this is a lot of the outsiders who have capitalized and monetized this tragedy and have been the megaphones for Adnan Syed on the outside. And then you had a political figure, Mosby, run on this part of her campaign to say, if I were elected, I'm going to get Adnan Syed's conviction overturned. And they ran on that.

So Adnan's kind of been a pawn in this game. But he allows himself to be, right? Oh, well, why wouldn't you? Because he could stand up and say, you know. He did it? I mean, but he's been saying he's innocent this whole time. So why? 100%. So how can you not blame him, I guess?

Oh, but that's what all these murderers do. Most of them, anyways. I mean, we're talking about the Gainesville Ripper and it took a it took an act of Congress for him to commit, convince or I should say, come forward and admit to what he did because of his girlfriend and his sidekick there. But they don't always do that. Absolutely fine. And once again, we want to be very specific. Like at this time, when we say murderer, Adnan Syed is a convicted murderer. Legally in the eyes of the law, he committed murder.

That's correct. That's the point. So we can say that. That's not slander. No. And it is consistent with the way we felt about it after extensively covering the case. And it's consistent with how many other people feel about it after extensively looking into the case. So we're not just trying to be biased, but it is our opinion that he did this.

And we are biased at this point because it's based on what we've researched. But if something came out, right, that showed that maybe it was completely wrong, we would be open to that. Because it's not like we want this guy to be guilty. It's not like we hate him just for who he is and we're like, we're glad he got caught as a murderer because we just don't like him. No, we have a bad taste in our mouth about Adnan Syed because of how deep we went into the case and because of what we believe that he did. I don't really understand what's happening here specifically because the attorney, David Sanford, who's representing Hayman Lee's family, said back in 2023, listen, we're not on a campaign to have

Adnan Syed put back into jail. This is about representing victims and their representatives. So maybe it was kind of an agreement made by both sides of like, oh, as long as his convictions upheld, we don't care if he goes back to jail. But the rest of us might. Right. So for me, where I'm at on this is you could look at it one way where there's a convicted murderer that's currently walking the streets. On the other hand, there's a lot of people who believe regardless of whether Heyman Lee's brother was present, it wouldn't have changed the outcome. We're not going to go into the weeds here because we could do seven hours on Heyman Lee again. But the reality is the judicial process, the court proceedings, there were a lot of mistakes made by the prosecution.

There were Brady violations. There were a lot of things that brought into question Adnan Syed's conviction in the first place, which is why I believe it was vacated. I think there are two things going on here. I think it's going to go back down to the vacature hearing. I think Young Lee will be present. I think he'll give his side of it. And ultimately, I feel like the conviction will be vacated again properly. Yes, it's going to go down to the lower court, Judge.

Back down to the lower court. They're going to come to the same conclusion. Yeah, they'll, it's going to go down to the lower court judge. Back down to the lower court. They're going to come to the same conclusion. Yeah, they'll decide what's going on. So you think it will be vacated? Because the reasons why they vacated it was based on the facts of the case and the judicial process that had transpired. It wasn't influenced by the fact that young Lee was there or not there. Yes, he's going to get up and say what he wants. He's going to represent his sister as he should, as he has the right to do. So I do feel this is more of a formality to do it the right way to allow victims and their families to be heard. And then you think it'll go back to where, okay, now again, Adnan Syed is not guilty. Correct. That's where I feel this will end up. That's

where I feel this will end up. But just to remind people, and I'm not trying to plug our series. There's a lot of other people who have done it too. Prosecutors did a great job on it as well. You can go back and look at the facts of the case and come to your own conclusions. But just a quick little recap here. Adnan was a passionate guy. He wanted to be with Heyman Lee. He says he didn't.

He's lying. I don't believe him. That's my opinion. He was still coming and helping her, picking her up on her car, a flat tire. He was even when she was dating someone else, you know, and oh, no, we're we're just friends. We're just friends. It's what I would do for my friend. Like, nah, you can't be friends with somebody like that when you when you love them the way you said you loved her. Like that's going to especially right after it's too fresh. So that's right. There was a, there was a, uh, couple of facts for me that, that really stood out. Obviously Jay, you have to believe Jay, but Jay saying that Adnan, he saw him in Lee's body. That's a big one.

But for me, it also goes back to just the chronological order of things and the evidence as it was found. Eventually you have a situation where Adnan, his, his whereabouts has been in question this entire time. We talk about track practice and where he was during the day. Nobody's ever been able to figure that out that in and of itself, that we can't say, yeah, no, he was in class or he was at track practice. That's a problem. Then you have Heyman lease car, the steering column the uh window wiper Arm was broken off. I strongly believe that Adnan had asked hayman lee for a ride

She had told some other people that she had things to do, but I think she reluctantly gave him a ride His plan for that ride was to try to win her back When he felt things were going the other way, I think he even brought flowers for her. I think things went the other way. He didn't like what he heard. And I feel like he killed her in that moment. He smacked her head off the car, probably the door or the window. He strangled her to death.

I believe in that process of that struggle, it broke the steering column arm. I believe that it caused that damage. There were fingerprints found in the back of the car that belonged to Adnan. And people have said, oh yeah, of course they're going to be in there. But it was about the things that they were specifically found on. They were found on different items. One of them being a map book. If you remember the map book, there was a page ripped out of the map book.

That page that was ripped out was where she was ultimately found. And his fingerprints were found on that as well. His fingerprints were found on that. And then the big thing, and I'm trying to remember all of it, it's been a while, but the big thing for me was when Jay was brought into custody for an unrelated matter, his GPS coordinates pinged off the location where Heyman Lee would eventually be found. Ednawns did, which meant Ednawn saw that Jay had got picked up by the police, was worried that the police were talking to Jay about Hayman Lee and where her body was. And so Adnan drives by the place where he left her body thinking he might see a police presence there and then he would know that Jay had turned on him

and he could take off or do whatever he had to do. Yes, that's right. There's lots of things. And we kind of talked about this before we started the podcast and I almost got into it when I was kind of going on my little tangent in the beginning whether it was premeditated or a crime of passion as you said you think it was a crime of passion and the prosecutors had a similar conversation and yes brent said he thought it was a crime of passion and then alice

said she thought it was premeditated i think that it was premeditated as well possible because he had said before i'm gonna kill her he had said before, I'm going to kill her. He had said that. I think he wrote that down. He'd written that down and maybe even said it to a couple people. He had definitely expressed that emotion, that feeling before, prior to the incident. I think that, like you said, if the interaction with her that day had gone differently, maybe she'd still be alive. But he went into that interaction

knowing if this doesn't go my way, in my opinion, if this doesn't go my way, she's dead. If I can't have her, nobody can. So is that a crime of passion or is it premeditation? I guess a little bit of both, but it wasn't the snap decision that I think he made. And this comes back to a lot of the tinier things that you really don't hear. Like when you watch that HBO docu-series, you don't hear about this Bilal guy, right? We've talked about the Bilal guy, the older guy. Oh, yeah. Okay.

So a lot of things having to do with Bilal kind of suggest that it might have been premeditated. And the fact that Adnan had this alibi about being at the the church and was it Ramadan or something like that? And he, but he wasn't there. Right. And so there's, there's things that just suggest he had a, an alibi sort of built and having an alibi built suggests premeditation to me. So this is a very complicated case. A lot of feelings run high with it on both sides. And I respect both sides because, honestly, anybody who wants to get that deep into a true crime case to figure out the truth, I respect that. Whether you come to the same conclusion I have or a different conclusion. If you spent time, energy, and brainpower looking through this case, looking through all the documents, looking through the timelines, the GPS, the cell phone towers.

I mean, there's tons of stuff. If you did that, I respect the hell out of you. And whatever conclusion you came to, I still respect it. We'll never know. That's the point. We will never for sure know. Not for sure. He'll never admit to it.

He'll never admit to it. If he hasn't by now with everything that's transpired, he won't. Even if he's saying he's innocent and that's true, the people that believe he's not are never going to believe that he is. So we'll just never know and we'll never all be on the same page. And that's fine, because I think at the end, still, even the people who support him still care about Heyman Lee and still want justice for her. They just don't think that justice can be found in Adnan. And that's fine. Yeah. I think when you go back, my takeaway is the prosecutors could have done a much better job of

prosecuting this case the right way and disclosing everything. Oh, you don't mean the prosecutor's podcast. You mean the prosecutors? No, not the prosecutors. Shut up, Brandon. Oh, the police and the prosecutors in this case? Yeah, they did a terrible job. They dropped the ball so many times, which gave the opening for this to even happen to begin with. That's right. So they gave the openings for this to happen.

And therefore, it brought up all these questions about the conviction in the first place, which led to this. And then you had a situation where Marilyn Mosby, regardless of what she personally felt, it was popular at the time, especially with the podcast, to run on. I'm going to get Adnan Syed out. I'm going to get him out of prison. That's what my goals will be in this trial. And you know, as a, the person in charge, I will get that done once in office. And she did regardless, she pushed it through without even allowing Heyman Lee's family to be present for it. So there were some missteps made, as I just said a couple minutes ago, I think at the end of all this, more than likely Adnan's conviction will be vacated and he will be a free man, but it doesn't change the fact or it doesn't change the evidence in the case and my belief and

many others' beliefs that he killed her and he did some time in prison. Not enough for what transpired because we don't get Heyman Lee back. He was in prison for a couple of decades, was he not? Yeah. I mean, which is honestly, if you're going to be honest, some killers get less. Some people get less. And some get more. And also just to try to be in the middle, there's a lot of people in prison right now for crimes they didn't commit. And there are people who have committed crimes that are out on the street. The only silver lining here is I do not think we'll see a situation where Adnan ever hurts anyone else. Maybe this was an isolated incident. It doesn't make it okay, but he also has so many eyeballs on him. He is going to be on his best behavior. I would think

if not, he's a moron, but he has served a lot of time, more than some who have committed crimes like this. And I do not think that he will be a danger to society moving forward. So that's not going to suffice for Heyman Lee's family. They just want justice. And there was even something in the people article that we had looked up where the representatives for Lee's family, the lawyers basically said, listen, if there's something that proves Adnan's innocent, we will be the first one to stand up and agree to let him out. But we haven't seen that yet. We just want to know what happened to our loved one.

That's where we lie. We don't care if it's Adnan or someone else. We just want the person responsible to be held accountable. So it's a tragic set of circumstances. It's been used as a tool by politicians and people in the entertainment industry, and it's become very polarizing with people on both sides of the aisle. And depending on what you want to believe, you can find facts that will support your narrative. I know how I feel. I know how you feel. Regardless of what happens during this vacature hearing, it's not going to change my opinion on Adnan Syed.

I do believe he killed Heyman Lee. And there's nothing that could be shown to me at this point that would change that. Unless literally there's a video of it, which there isn't. It's not going to happen for me. And we don't know, right? Derek and I believe that Adnan did this. But we don't know for sure. But we do believe it very, very strongly.

And we're litigious. We don't just say this shit a lot in these episodes. The fact that we're both saying it, I think it says for something because we might infer things, but to come out and bluntly just state what we believe like this, it was pretty overwhelming in this case. I was very surprised. You were completely not on either side when we started. I didn't know the case that well. I knew of the case, but not.

I don't even think you'd listen to serial when it was like big, you didn't even listen to that. Did you? No. And so when I started hearing it page after page, it was just becoming more and more obvious to me what happened here. And whether you believe Jay or not, um, that's one piece of it. But in totality with everything else we have, couple that with Jay's statement, it aligns for me. So that's where I leave this one. I'm glad that Young Lee and Hayes family is going to get to be heard. I think that's very important in this case. And I am interested to see how it works out. I've been surprised

by this whole thing so far, even with this four to three ruling. So maybe we'll be surprised again. The question I have is, and I'm assuming that it would be the case if for some reason they decide not to vacate his conviction, will he be taken back into custody? would imagine so right but who knows at this point you know well he's been good the entire time so we're gonna leave him out i don't know i mean we've we've been back and forth with this and it could go back the other way so let's just let's just ride this one out and see what happens like yeah let's just see what happens we'll use it as a k just a test we'll see what happens here but honestly i would say this is a unique situation because i don't know of any other case that's sort of gone this way in the aftermath so why why is that it's because of serial because

of the yes because of the public pressure because but but like you said there's a ton of people sitting in prison who are falsely convicted of murders. Right. So that's good. That public pressure, that public knowledge is good. But when this was just the wrong case, this was or or, you know, well, we don't my opinion. We think it was the right opinion. I just can't imagine anything worse where obviously being a victim of a violent crime is worse.

But I can't imagine anything worse than being charged with murder and given like a life sentence in prison or any kind of sentence. And you in your head knowing I did not do this nightmare. Like, how did this happen? You have to feel like you're living in the Matrix at some point. Like, you just don't think you never thought that something like could happen like this in America, you know, where you live, like there's going to be a legal process. There's going to be a trial and the truth will come out. And then you really understand that trials are not so much about the truth coming out. They're about who's better at presenting their side of the story to make the jury believe that that's the truth.

Trials are not about the truth coming out. Let's be honest here. And it can also depend on what your judge had for lunch that day, what type of mood they're in. What your judge had for lunch, what the jury's previous experiences are with certain people or certain situations. Yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy. And I'll take it a step further. You have situations where you have people in prison for 20, 30 years right now for marijuana charges, and now it's legal in most states. It's crazy. Our justice system is all bunches of messed up. But with this particular case, I feel very strongly about my opinion on this one. Nothing that happens from this point forward, will change that. If by chance Adnan is still out there when this is all said and done, the good news for everybody listening and watching, whether you believe he's guilty or not,

I don't think he's a threat to society. I think this was an isolated incident, whether it was premeditated or a crime of passion. I don't think he's going to be out there reoffending. Doesn't change the fact that he should be behind bars if he did in fact do it. I personally just don't see that happening. Do you think going to prison is more of a punishment or a more of a danger to society, removing a danger to society thing? Or is it like supposed to achieve both? I think it's a combination of things. I think it's being

held accountable for what you did, serving your time. I also think, and if it's not murder, it's an ability to go in there and rehabilitate by getting the services you need and understanding what you've done wrong and maybe getting out and being a contributing member of society, whether it's medical care, mental care, whatever it might be. And sometimes a lot of people come out of prison and they're better for it. They are able to actually inspire and show our youth what not to do. So there are some advantages to it, but in a case like this, when you have a murderer, if they're let out or they go into prison, I think personally they're there not for rehabilitation, but to pay for what they did, period. The person that they took away from us is no longer here. They never will be. And therefore, if we don't believe in the death penalty, depending on the state, you still shouldn't be allowed to be a

free man or woman enjoying what life has to offer while your victim and their families never will again. They'll be dead inside as well as the victim themselves. So I don't think that you should be granted that luxury. I agree. You know I agree. And I think murder should – murder in my opinion should be a mandatory life sentence. Yeah. First degree, premeditated, based on how the murder is committed. Was this person tortured? Obviously if it's like, oh, I accidentally hit this person with my car. It's a victim of a manslaughter thing.

Obviously. But like intentional murder I think should be a mandatory life sentence or death penalty based on the state always. Right. That's just my opinion. Well, our system is a need some improvement. And this is the most recent example of it that I think all of us can get behind, regardless of the outcome here. Just some really, really embarrassing things going on. And it seems like a lot of people are being used as pawns in a much bigger problem. And hopefully with this embarrassing set of circumstances, there's things that are learned from it and we improve going forward.

Although I don't have much hope. I don't have much hope. Any final words from you? I think the ship has sailed on fixing. Yeah. Fixing things, but we can only hope. We're in a really positive spirit today. I know, right?

We're so jaded. You know, this is big news. I don't know if it's going to make much of a difference. We'll obviously follow the story. We'll see how it plays out regardless of the way this one goes. Maybe we won't do a whole Crime Weekly news on it because it may not be as, there may not be as much to cover, but either way, we'll do an update, whether it's on social media or on our community page. But we're just thinking about Heyman Lee, her family, and allowing them to have their voices heard.

That's really what matters here. And I can say that they're allowing it, which is good. Yeah. At this point, that is what matters. But if his conviction gets upheld in this lower court, then I do think we are going to have to have a conversation about like, yes, this person probably does need to go back to prison. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If it gets upheld. Yeah.

That's why I'm watching. If it gets upheld, he needs to be back in prison, period. So. All right. Let us know what you think. Yeah. Yeah. Because not everyone's going to agree on this one.

I can probably guarantee it. 50% divide here. Pretty close to it. So we'll see what you guys think way down in the comments below. Let us know your opinions on this case, not only about Adnan Syed, but also about the, just the entire process that's transpired over the years. Been pretty embarrassing, but we'd love to hear your comments on this one. Not the best example of a swift justice system. No, not at all. So we'll be back later this week with the

fifth and final part of the Gainesville Ripper series. It'll be on audio on Friday, YouTube on Sunday. Until then, everyone stay safe out there. We'll see you later.