Baltimore prosecutors on Tuesday dropped charges against Adnan Syed in the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee after DNA evidence supported his innocence, officials said.
The news comes weeks after his murder conviction was overturned.
Syed was sentenced to life behind bars in 2000 for the murder of Lee, his former girlfriend, and his case gained national attention in 2014 from the podcast “Serial.”
The Baltimore City State Attorney’s Office confirmed Tuesday morning that the charges were dropped.
The decision to drop the charges came after DNA testing results “excluded Mr. Syed from the DNA recovered from the evidence,” the Maryland Office of the Public Defender said in a statement Tuesday.
Syed’s attorney Erica Suter, the director of the Innocence Project Clinic at University of Baltimore Law School, said in a statement: “Finally, Adnan Syed is able to live as a free man.”
“The DNA results confirmed what we have already known and what underlies all of the current proceedings: that Adnan is innocent and lost 23 years of his life serving time for a crime he did not commit,” she said.
Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby will have a press conference announcing the decision to drop the charges at 1 p.m.
NBC News has reached out to Syed’s attorneys for comment.
The news caps a more than two-decade saga for Syed, throughout which he maintained his innocence.
Hae Min Lee was 18 in 1999 when she was killed and her body was found buried in Baltimore’s Leakin Park.
Syed was released from prison on Sept. 19. after City Circuit Court Judge Melissa Phinn said trial prosecutors did not properly turn over evidence to defense lawyers that could have helped them show that someone else had killed Lee.
Phinn said evidence uncovered since the trial would have added “substantial and significant probability that the result would have been different.”
“The state has lost confidence in the integrity of this conviction and believes that it is in the interest of justice and fairness that his convictions be vacated,” prosecutor Becky Feldman said moments before the ruling.
During the trial, prosecutors relied on cellphone records that appeared to show Syed in the vicinity of the park where Lee’s body was found, but later questioned the “unreliable cellphone tower data.”
Prosecutors also said they wanted to look at “two alternative suspects.” According to a filing last month, those suspects were “known persons” in the investigation, but were “not properly ruled out.”
Syed was ultimately ordered to be released without bail, and placed on home detention with GPS location monitoring.
After his conviction was overturned, The Baltimore City State Attorney’s Office had 30 days to weigh whether to retry him or dismiss the charges, culminating with Tuesday’s decision.
Lee’s family had filed an appeal after the charges were overturned, alleging the family wasn’t given the opportunity to meaningfully participate in the hearing that secured his release.
The family asked the Maryland Court of Special Appeals to halt the circuit court proceedings during the appeal and last week the Maryland Attorney General’s Office joined Lee’s family in asking for the hold on Syed’s case.
That appeal is still pending, according to the Maryland Office of the Public Defender.
“While the proceedings are not completely over, this is an important step for Adnan, who has been on house arrest since the motion to vacate was first granted last month,” Suter said.
“He still needs some time to process everything that has happened and we ask that you provide him and his family with that space.”
Lee’s family attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
David K. Li and Julia Jester contributed.