Search Results - Hae Min Lee

Murder of Hae Min Lee

Hae Min Lee (; October 15, 1980 – January or February, 1999) was a Korean-American high school student who went missing on January 13, 1999, in Baltimore County, Maryland, before turning up dead on February 9, 1999, when her corpse was discovered in Leakin Park, Baltimore. Her autopsy revealed that she had been killed by way of manual strangulation.

Amidst an ongoing investigation by the Baltimore Police Department, Lee's ex-boyfriend Adnan Masud Syed (; born May 21, 1981) was arrested on February 28, 1999, and put on trial for homicide. He was found guilty on all counts for the charges of kidnapping, false imprisonment, robbery, and first-degree murder; Syed was sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years. Syed's friend Jay Wilds had confessed and pleaded guilty to being an accessory to the murder and was given a five-year suspended sentence. In 2014, the investigative journalism podcast ''Serial'' covered the events of Lee's killing, bringing renewed attention to Syed's case. In 2016, judge Martin P. Welch vacated Syed's conviction and ordered a new trial. While this decision was upheld by the Maryland Court of Special Appeals in 2018, it was ultimately overturned by the Maryland Court of Appeals in 2019.

Following an investigation by prosecutors that uncovered new evidence, a judge again vacated Syed's conviction in September 2022. In October 2022, prosecutors announced that the charges against Syed had been dropped. However, in March 2023, Syed's conviction was reinstated by an appellate court, although the court stayed the effective date of the decision for 60 days. In August 2024, the Supreme Court of Maryland, in a 4–3 decision, reinstated the murder conviction against Syed and ordered a new hearing to address the merits of dismissing Syed's conviction. In March 2025, Judge Jennifer Schiffer resentenced Syed to time served, with the conviction remaining reinstated. Provided by Wikipedia