Prosecutors in Baltimore, U.S., on Tuesday dropped the murder charges against Adnan Syed, the Pakistani-American accused of killing his ex-girlfriend in Baltimore in 1999 (aged 17) and later sentenced to life in prison: Her story gained tremendous publicity from 2014 thanks to the investigative journalism podcast Serial, which she narrated and actually helped reopen the case, casting serious doubts about the outcome of the trial and the way they had conducted the investigation .
On September 19, Syed’s life sentence was overturned by a Maryland judge, and within 30 days of that decision, prosecutors should have decided whether to seek a retrial or drop the charges: They overturned them, and now the case has done it been closed.
The episodes of Serial about Syed’s story were published from October to December 2014: twelve in total and structured in a strict journalistic research, but told very convincingly. Serial was an instant hit in the United States as well as in many other European countries and the world, quickly becoming one of the highest-grossing podcasts of all time. Finally, he revealed the existence of an alibi for Syed, as well as several problems with the conclusions reached by the investigation fifteen years earlier. A few months after the release of the podcast, the case was reopened, which has had numerous developments leading up to the current filing.
– Also read: How a Podcast Helped Overturn a Murder Conviction