BALTIMORE — Baltimore prosecutors and a city judge collaborated behind closed doors to “choreograph” the hearing where Adnan Syed’s conviction stemming from the killing of Hae Min Lee was overturned, attorneys representing her brother in an appeal seeking to restore his conviction have alleged.
In a filing Monday evening — the last before oral arguments for the case in the Appellate Court of Maryland on Feb. 2 — Young Lee’s lawyers ramped up claims of impropriety in the proceedings that freed Syed, while doubling down on previous legal arguments and distinguishing their client’s position from that of Maryland’s attorney general’s office.
Attorneys for Lee are asking the appeals court to reinstate Syed’s murder charges from the 1999 killing and to order a do-over of the Sept. 14 hearing where Syed’s conviction was vacated. They say city prosecutors, under then-State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, didn’t give Lee adequate notice of the hearing and that Circuit Judge Melissa Phinn didn’t give Lee a meaningful opportunity to participate.
