This is a bonus release from our sister podcast: Legal Briefs.In a legal tour de force, Baltimore State's Attorney Ivan Bates laid bare the fraud on the court perpetrated by Adnan Syed and his supporters in the failed motion to vacate his conviction produced by former State's Attorney Marylin Mosby. In 88 pages, Bates deconstructed the arguments for Syed's innocence, and by the time he was finished, there could be little doubt that Adnan Syed did, indeed, murder Hae Min Lee. Brett and Alice discuss the filing which exposed the lie of a carefully constructed innocence sham more than a decade in the making.https://www.stattorney.org/media-center/press-releases/3042-state-s-attorney-announces-withdrawal-of-motion-to-vacate-judgement-in-adnan-syed-case Update: As expected, the judge did decide to allow Adnan Syed to remain free. He is still a convicted murderer. Check out our new True Crime Substack the True Crime Times at: https://t.co/26TIoM14TgGet Prosecutors Podcast Merch: https://www.bonfire.com/store/prosecutors-podcast/ Join the Gallery on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/g/4oHFF4agcAvBhm3o/ Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ProsecutorsPod Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/prosecutorspod/ Check out our website for case resources: https://prosecutorspodcast.com/ Hang out with us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@prosecutorspodSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: Who are the hosts of The Prosecutor's Legal Briefs?
I'm Alice. And I'm Brett. And this is The Prosecutor's Legal Blues. Welcome back to the Prosecutor's Legal Briefs. I'm your host, Alice, and I'm joined, as always, by my trash panda of a co-host, Brett.
I love it, Alice. I love it. Thank you. Beautiful. Wonderful. You're the best.
You know, I do what I can. Trash panda is a fantastic phrase anyways, but for once, I'm not just making up and grabbing words out of the ether. This isn't a filing in the Adnan case, so I am, in fact, quoting from a motion filed by the state.
And we're going to talk about the trash pandas later, but trash panda that, you know, man, look, we're going to talk a lot about this filing, this most recent filing in the Adnan Zayed case. Those of you who've missed it, Adnan is back in court. before Judge Jennifer Schiffer.
Chapter 2: What are the recent developments in the Adnan Syed case?
He's now seeking to have his, actually his stay out of prison continue because under the Juvenile Restoration Act or something, I forget exactly what it's called, but it's a Baltimore law that essentially says if you were sentenced to life in prison or a very long prison term back in the 90s when we were so uneducated and barbaric that we would do that to people who were not 18 when they were sentenced, you can seek to have your sentence reduced.
So he's trying to do that. And that's going on in court. But right before that was... I don't know if I have words to describe it. So years ago, it seems like now. I mean, I guess it was in 2022. It's funny because Alice... And our journey in this case started in 2022 when this vacator motion was filed by Marilyn Mosby in Baltimore to vacate Adnan's conviction to let him out of prison.
and exonerate him later on because of all this injustice against him. And at the time, we had not covered the case. And it was actually this abomination of emotion that set in our coverage of the case. So I'm glad that Marilyn Mosby allowed us to do our 14 episodes on Adnan.
And if emails and comments would be to believe, convince thousands of people who used to believe that Adnan Saad was innocent, that he is actually, in fact, guilty. Absolutely. And that motion had a long and winding path through the courts before it finally was struck down by the Supreme Court of Maryland. And it came back to the Baltimore state attorney's office.
And Ivan Bates, who some of you may know from a documentary advocating for Adnan's innocence, where he talked about how he thought Adnan was innocent, had an opportunity to reconsider the motion. And issue a new opinion on that, whether he was going to stand behind it or withdraw it. And oh, my goodness, did he take his obligations seriously?
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Chapter 3: How did the Baltimore State's Attorney's Office respond to the vacate motion?
Absolutely. Now, when this was filed back in 22, I remember we did a legal briefs on it. And at the time, we didn't have access to the full picture. But we actually asked a lot of the same questions that Ivan Bates also asked when he took a new look at this reinvestigation, shall we say. And if you haven't read this filing, first of all, it's going to take a while because it's 88 pages.
But I'm going to cut to the chase. Those 88 pages essentially say we had to reinvestigate everything because the investigation led by Mosby was destroyed and Mosby wouldn't speak to us about it. And we had to piece together what was done, quote unquote, in order to support the motion to vacate. And.
After looking at everything, reexamining the evidence, reexamining all the investigation since Mosby came into the office, I have to basically apologize to the court that I cannot stand by the lies put forth before this office. I mean, it is it goes that far. Read the footnotes. It is putting everything out there. It is naming people by names. a lot of the time.
And there are people who investigated this case and made representations to the court that he calls out.
Usually there's at least some sort of blocking for your office, but the misrepresentations were so egregious and they were such a miscarriage of justice, both for the victim as well as Heyman Lee's brother, that he basically righted the record and laid bare for all to see, including basically doing...
What we did, like the Adnan did it episode, the last part of the 88 page motion seeking to withdraw the motion to vacate is essentially the whole case against Adnan. I mean, it is a work. It is a very it could have been, by the way, many of these motions. It could have been as simple as a one pager that said easy.
We reviewed the investigation and we would like to withdraw the motion to vacate as we no longer find that it is supported by evidence signed. Ivan Bates that we see all the time. Obviously, this case has a lot of media attention, shall we say, and the office was under a microscope after Mosby filed this quote unquote bombshell of a motion.
And for him to file this out there, it really is a lay it bare for all to see. And if there was ever a question. about whether there was a Brady violation, there wasn't one. Whether there are alternate suspects who are actually viable, there are not. And whether the evidence was sufficient to convict Adnan, there was. And this is from the Baltimore City Attorney's Office.
And look, I think we're going to go through this. I mean, we're not going to go through the whole thing. We're going to give you a summary of this filing. You should read it. There's an executive summary. It's like nine or ten pages long. You should read that. If you care about this case, you should read the 88-page filing. Yeah, it's a legal filing.
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Chapter 4: What was revealed about the alleged Brady violations?
So I just want to get that out of the way. But the other thing I want to say. Before we get started, because I think this is really important because the same grifters, fraudsters and charlatans who always protect Adnan Syed will be out there trying to undermine this as well. It is so important who this is from. I cannot overstate the fact that Ivan Bates.
Is in a documentary, an HBO pro Adnan documentary talking about his feeling there was some sort of an injustice here. Number one. Number two, one of Adnan's biggest supporters, Colin from Undisclosed, when Ivan Bates won. I remember this. When he won the nomination to be the state's attorney, tweeted about how exciting it was because Ivan Bates was a supporter of Adnan Syed.
And maybe finally we would have this opportunity for justice. And he was under immense public press, all kinds of pressure to just do it again. Every single mainstream coverage of Adnan Syed is always that he is innocent. That is what they always say. The easiest thing in the world would have been for him just to say, we're going to stand behind the motion to vacate.
We think you should move forward. He could have done that. But instead, he actually looked at the evidence and the record, information he would not necessarily have had back when he was doing that documentary, and produced this document. This document is damning for anybody. remaining belief that Adnan Syed did not commit this crime. It is an astonishing piece of legal work.
And let me say something else about Ivan Bates's integrity here. There is a world where he could have done that. Just do the easy thing and say, we stand by the motion. And no one would have been the wiser because we wouldn't have known the quote unquote investigation, the reinvestigation that was done by Mosby's team and how it was not supported by evidence.
Because what would have happened instead of having to represent this in court, it never happened.
had to come to light he could have looked at the evidence and been like oh that's not very good it's okay we'll stand by it because it's the you know little p political good thing to do people will love it because all the media seems to say he's innocent and i'll be the hero here and then strike a deal with adnan so that they never had to present the new evidence he serves time served or whatever and none of us would ever know the shenanigans that happened
But that's not what prosecutors or any public servant is supposed to do. And I like have renewed faith in the public service sector that he really took a deep dive and he took a deep dive. Before we started recording, we even said in order to reinvestigate what Mosby did, it wasn't to reinvestigate Adnan's case.
It was to reinvestigate what they did in order to put the motion to vacate together and to write this 88 page tome. they probably could have solved another murder or prosecuted many other cases that's how much time this took and they had to do that though because they had to unwind the shenanigans and this is why we've said so many times before this was not a victimless action by Mosby.
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Chapter 5: Why is the DNA evidence in the Adnan Syed case controversial?
It's a really fun read. I had a long day yesterday. By fun read, I mean it's told. You know, sometimes you can read a work and you know that the person's like furiously writing. I can almost see the smoke coming out of the computer, like the intensity with which he is writing. I think Ivan may have written this.
I had a long day yesterday and I was like, man, I got to read this so we can do a podcast on it. And I started reading it and I was just following on Twitter. I was just constantly like, I cannot believe what I'm reading. So you should check it out. OK, so here's his statement.
The press release after a thorough review of the motion to vacate judgment filed by the previous administration in the case of Adnan Syed. My office has determined that it contains false and misleading statements that undermine the integrity of the judicial process. This is the Maryland state's attorney discussing a filing by his immediate predecessor.
As prosecutors, our duty is to seek justice and ensure that all legal proceedings are conducted transparently, accurately, and fairly. While I did not ask for this task, it was remanded to my office by the Supreme Court of Maryland.
Thus, we have a duty as Maryland Barred Attorneys, prosecutors tasked with pursuing justice, and officers of the court to address false and misleading statements in the state's legal filings, a duty that we take extremely seriously."
as such we cannot adopt the falsehoods and misleading statements in the motion to vacate judgment nor fail to bring them to the court's attention for these reasons i formally withdraw the motion to vacate judgment 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.
My administration remains fully committed to reviewing cases where wrongful convictions or miscarriages of justice may have occurred. However, we will do so with the highest standards of integrity and a commitment to truth. I recognize the complexity and sensitivity of this case. I hope this comprehensive review and my ultimate decision brings closure to all parties involved.
Which, once again...
This is not someone saying this in the press. It's not us saying in a podcast. It's not a YouTuber just throwing out barbs. This is the elected chief prosecutor for Baltimore accusing former attorneys in his office of lying to the court.
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Chapter 6: What is the significance of Ivan Bates' statement on Adnan Syed's case?
And when they reached out, when his office reached out to the prior state's attorney, Mosby, Mosby would not speak with Bates's attorneys to piece together what supported their motion to vacate. This is highly unusual to do an entire investigation and then to destroy your records. It's not like this was 10 years ago or 20 years ago. This was like two years ago.
And so at the forefront, he puts this out there that there are things he cannot know. And he even notes this in footnotes. He did the best he could, but there are certain things that remain to be seen.
So what he tried to do is he tried to recreate the investigation by interviewing everyone involved from the prosecutors to the police to defense team members to members of the state's attorney's offices. And one of the things that I think we had previously noted and he highlights is the original prosecuting attorneys who were.
at the time in the office, I believe, were never interviewed by the Syed review team. That's highly unusual. Wouldn't you think that you would want to talk to the people who are closest to the case, the ones who prosecuted the case, especially if you're going to allege things like Brady violations?
Especially if one of those Brady violations is going to be based...
on a note and they talk about this they talk about how they're you know they were drawing this motion it's not supported by law in fact and they say you know there are these two brady allegations and we talked about this in our episode and they talk about the brady standard they talk about the brady standard a lot more than the initial motion to vacate did which talked about almost none of the law for reasons that are now pretty obvious and they say that nothing the mosby team pointed to met the burden
The two notes that were allegedly Brady material were both already available to the defense. And to the extent they were relevant to any alternative suspect, those suspects were already known to the defense. And we learn even more about these notes. One of them is like hearsay within hearsay within hearsay. It's an anonymous person.
And a guess.
One of the, you know, we talked about, and I'm sorry, if you don't know anything about this case, you're going to be confused this whole time. Go back and listen. You got like 18 episodes to listen to. But we talked about Bilal Ahmed and we talked about his ex-wife. Initially, this is mind-blowing that they let this happen. So initially, like she wouldn't talk to the investigators.
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