In 2000, 18-year-old Baltimore man Adnan Syed was convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, in 1999. Syed was sentenced to life in jail and served near 23 years in jail for the crime.
That was till this week, when Syed was launched from jail on the age of 41 after his homicide conviction was vacated by a Baltimore Metropolis Circuit Choose.
The holiday of his conviction doesn't suggest Syed is formally recognised as harmless.
As an alternative, Choose Melissa Phinn expressed critical concern over Syed's preliminary conviction based mostly on new proof in addition to proof that was not handed over to Syed's defence crew. Syed and his supporters have all the time maintained his innocence.
Syed has been launched from jail, however Phinn has ordered him to stay on home arrest. The state has 30 days to decide as as to if Syed will face a brand new trial, or whether or not the case might be dismissed.
Whereas Syed's destiny stays undetermined, he is simply one in all many individuals across the globe who've frolicked in jail for crimes they strongly contend that they didn't commit.
Sadly, wrongful convictions do occur, and so they typically share related underlying causes.
The case and the podcast
The homicide of Hae Min Lee was the primary case featured on the extremely common podcast collection Serial, one of many pioneers of the true-crime podcast style.
It in a short time grew to become one of the vital quickly downloaded podcasts of all time, and the primary collection now boasts over 300 million downloads worldwide since its launch in 2014.
Lee was a senior high-school scholar at Woodlawn Excessive College in Baltimore, Maryland. She disappeared someday after college, and her physique was present in a close-by park one month later. Primarily based on the outcomes of the post-mortem, Lee had been strangled.
As Lee and Syed had dated not lengthy earlier than the time of Lee's dying, Syed grew to become a main suspect. Different suspects emerged, however none had been investigated as carefully as Syed.
Cell tower information that positioned Syed's telephone close to the situation of the park the place Lee's physique was buried implicated him. A former classmate of Syed's, Jay Wilds, additionally offered testimony indicating that he had assisted Syed with disposing Lee's physique.
These two items of proof in the end shaped the premise of the case towards Syed that led to his eventual conviction.
After Syed was convicted, an in depth good friend of the Syed household contacted respected journalist Sarah Koenig in 2013, who independently investigated the case.
Serial shone mild on a number of the oddities of the case, together with the inconsistencies within the testimony given by Wilds and the shortage of forensic proof linking Syed to the crime.
For some, Serial consolidated the suspicion they held in the direction of Syed, and for others, it solid critical doubt over his conviction.
The podcast's recognition contributed to the continued combat for Syed's freedom over time.
How widespread are wrongful convictions?
One drawback with wrongful convictions is that it is inconceivable to know precisely how frequent they're. It is because many individuals in jail who say they're harmless by no means obtain the chance to have their circumstances reviewed.
Even when we conservatively estimate that legal convictions are correct 99.5 per cent of the time, an error charge of 0.5 per cent might nonetheless lead to hundreds of wrongful convictions within the US alone every year.
In 2020, The Nationwide Registry of Exonerations in the US reported over 2,600 exonerations following wrongful convictions throughout the US since 1989. That quantity is all the time on the rise.
Within the closest Australian repository of wrongful convictions, there have been 71 documented wrongful convictions between 1922 and 2015.
What typically results in a wrongful conviction?
Wrongful convictions typically share a typical set of causes. The Innocence Venture was based in 1992 and has overturned the wrongful convictions of 375 individuals in the US utilizing DNA proof.
Primarily based on the Innocence Venture's information, the elements which might be commonest in wrongful conviction circumstances are:
mistaken eyewitness identification
improper or invalid forensic science
false confessions
and informant testimony
The Nationwide Registry of Exonerations has additionally recognized misconduct as a typical consider identified wrongful convictions.
In Syed's case, points with the validity of the cellphone proof and the confederate witness testimony offered by Wilds are amongst these widespread elements.
Primarily based on identified Australian wrongful conviction circumstances, the commonest elements look like:
police misconduct
inaccurate judicial directions to the jury
forensic errors or deceptive forensic proof
incompetent defence illustration
and false witness testimony, amongst others.
If Syed is certainly harmless of the homicide he was convicted of, the 23 years of his life that he misplaced are a grave injustice. Lee's household have additionally suffered tremendously and would proceed to endure with the shortage of closure that comes with Syed's wrongful conviction.
Any of us could possibly be susceptible to being wrongfully convicted, and the struggling that it comes with.
Growing training about what elements are widespread in wrongful conviction circumstances might hopefully imply we are able to make extra knowledgeable choices, ought to we ever maintain a person's freedom like Adnan Syed's in our personal arms.
By Hayley Cullen, Affiliate lecturer, College of Newcastle
This text is republished from The Dialog below a Inventive Commons license. Learn the unique article.