The Biggest Takeaways From The Case Against Adnan Syed Episode 5
Six years after HBO’s documentary The Case Against Adnan Syed was released, we are getting a new episode. Syed’s case was first brought to national attention with the podcast Serial in 2014, where Sarah Koenig reported on the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee and the conviction of Lee’s ex-boyfriend, Syed, for that murder. The podcast became a phenomenon and cast doubt on his conviction in one of the first instances of true-crime media having real-life consequences for its subjects.
The first four episodes of The Case Against Adnan Syed explored Syed’s attempt at overturning his conviction while also shedding more light on Lee’s story than Serial ever did. In 2019, episode four ended with the Maryland Court of Appeals denying Syed a new trial. Now, six years later, “Part Five: The Tree Grew” details the long, complicated process that resulted in Syed becoming a free man. Syed’s case got wrapped up in the racial reckoning that occurred in America in 2020. A new, progressive district attorney championed freeing the falsely convicted in Baltimore, which she felt potentially included Syed. Her career at the state attorney’s office was cut short, but her office’s investigation into Lee’s murder found untested DNA and two potential new suspects.
Here are all the new developments revealed in the final episode of The Case Against Adnan Syed.
Marilyn Mosby’s office reinvestigated the original trial
Early in episode five, The Case Against Adnan Syed introduces us to Marilyn Mosby, who served as Baltimore City State’s attorney from 2015 to 2022. Mosby ran on being a “progressive” DA, working to hold the police accountable and overturn improperly obtained convictions. Donald Trump called her “disgraceful” for attempting to prosecute the police officers involved in the death of Freddie Gray. Her office undertook a nearly year-long investigation into Syed’s trial and found multiple problems with it, including untested DNA found on a liquor bottle near Lee’s body. The new investigation also identified two other potential suspects. “The case has just been systematically destroyed,” Susan Simpson, one of the advocates for Syed, says in the doc. “Piece by piece, brick by brick. Adnan’s trial was not constitutionally sufficient; his conviction needs to be thrown out.”
Mosby feels she was run out of office
In 2022, Mosby was federally indicted on perjury charges while running for reelection. One charge stated that Mosby falsely claimed financial hardship during the pandemic, while another claimed she made a false statement on a loan application. “I am innocent of the charges that have been levied against me and I intend to fight with every ounce of energy within my being to prove my innocence and to clear my name,” Mosby said at the time. The documentary characterizes this apparent persecution of Mosby as part of the same beast keeping Syed in prison. Rather than admit any wrongdoing, people higher up in the Maryland government circled the wagons.
Despite her lame-duck status, Mosby still worked to vacate Syed’s charges with the time she had left in office. “We can’t keep him in prison any longer than we already have,” she said in a phone conversation between herself and the documentary’s director, Amy Berg. When asked by Berg why the state is pushing back so hard on this case in particular, Mosby didn’t have an answer. “I can’t figure that out,” Mosby said. “I think it’s a lot deeper than we can see.”
There are now two other suspects
The DA’s filing identified two other suspects in the killing of Hae Min Lee. One suspect allegedly made violent threats against Lee, yelling that he would kill her. Though not named in court documents, Simpson states that another suspect is Alonzo Sellers — the man who said he found Lee’s body while urinating in Leakin Park. The existence of both men was kept from the defense, known as a Brady violation.
Alonzo Sellers had other convictions
While mostly circumstantial (like that against Syed), the case against Alonzo Sellers was stronger than the defense ever knew. Lee’s car was found by the house of one of Sellers’s relatives. Sellers had a record as a serial streaker; in 2020, he accosted a postal worker nude while wearing a ski mask in Baltimore. Prosecution even brought up his testimony in Syed’s trial during Sellers’s own public-indecency trial.
The state played ping-pong with Syed’s conviction
In 2022, Mosby’s office moved to vacate Syed’s conviction. He was released, pending a new trial. A year later, his conviction was reinstated by a Maryland Appellate Court panel. It ruled that Young Lee, Hae Min Lee’s brother, was not given sufficient notice about the vacatur hearing. It looked like Syed would have to return to prison. But in 2025, Syed was resentenced under the Juvenile Restoration Act, reducing his sentence to time served.
Adnan Syed had an emotional reunion with his family
Berg’s cameras were with Syed when he returned to his childhood home in 2022. He reunited with his father and mother, now in treatment from leukemia. The doc shows Syed snacking on leftover dumplings and returning to his teen bedroom, where detectives apprehended him in 1999. It also shows Syed touching a tree for the first time in more than 20 years. He points to a large tree that was only a sapling when he went to prison. “The tree grew,” he says.
What is Adnan Syed doing now?
Syed now has a position at Georgetown University’s Prison and Justice Initiative. According to his university bio, he “supports the organization’s mission to offer education and job training for incarcerated people and returning citizens, and to advocate for wrongfully convicted individuals.”
Related