The Supreme Court of Maryland has decided to reinstate the conviction of Adnan Syed. 

The justices of the court released their decision on Friday, CNN reports. The decision, in its entirety, can be read here.

The outlet reports:

The Maryland Supreme Court ruled Friday that the conviction of Adnan Syed should be reinstated because of procedural errors in how Syed’s conviction had been wiped away in 2022.

This probably means that the process of trying to get rid of the conviction is going to restart.

Background

According to the New York Times, Syed was convicted in 2000 for the murder of Hae Min Lee.

Per the Times: 

Ms. Lee was killed by strangulation in 1999 at 18 years old. She had been a student at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore County, Md. Mr. Syed was convicted in 2000 of first-degree murder, kidnapping, robbery, and false imprisonment. He spent 23 years in prison, fighting charges that he had killed her.

It was in 2022, according to the outlet, that Syed won the fight.

The Times writes:

In 2022, the state’s attorney for Baltimore City moved to vacate Mr. Syed’s 2000 conviction for the murder of Hae Min Lee, for which he had been serving a life sentence, and the conviction was overturned. In 2023, the Appellate Court of Maryland reinstated it, ruling that a lower court had violated the right of Ms. Lee’s brother, Young Lee, to have been notified of and attend the hearing.

This decision then made it up to the state supreme court.

The latest

As mentioned at the outset, the Maryland Supreme Court has now upheld the appellate court's decision to reinstate Syed's conviction.

CNN reports:

On Friday, the state’s highest court agreed with an appeals court decision that said the rights of Lee’s family were violated because her brother Young Lee received inadequate notice of a 2022 hearing on the state’s efforts to vacate the case and was not afforded opportunities to fully participate in the hearing.

The outlet goes on to quote the court.

The justices, in part, wrote:

In an effort to remedy what they perceived to be an injustice to Mr. Syed, the prosecutor and the circuit court worked an injustice against Mr. Lee by failing to treat him with dignity, respect, and sensitivity and, in particular, by violating Mr. Lee’s rights as a crime victim’s representative to reasonable notice of the Vacatur Hearing, the right to attend the hearing in person, and the right to be heard on the merits of the Vacatur Motion.

Now, it appears that Syed will, once again, try to get the conviction overturned. It remains to be seen whether he will be successful.