What rights do victims have in Maryland courtrooms?
That question is at the legal heart of the issue before the Supreme Court this week in Syed v. Lee.
Last September, Adnan Syed's murder conviction was vacated.
Young Lee, the victim's brother, was told about the Monday hearing, on Friday and attended via Zoom and was given the opportunity to speak.
Following the hearing, Lee filed an appeal arguing that his rights as the representative of the victim in the case, were violated due to insufficient notice and his inability to more meaningfully participate in the vacatur hearing.
"If you give someone who lives in California one business day's notice to appear at a hearing on the East Coast, that, on its face, is unreasonable," said one of Lee's attorneys, David Sanford.
Before any ruling could be made on that, but within the 30-days required by Maryland law, the State's Attorney dropped all charges against Syed in the case of Hae Min Lee's murder in 1999.
"In this case there's always been so many false starts," says Susan Simpson, a DC lawyer who dug into the case for the first season of the podcast 'Undisclosed,' after Serial introduced her to the case.
"I don't think I really got my hopes up until you're at the court that day, and it turns out that wasn't the end of the story either," she told WMAR-2 News.
The Appellate Court heard the arguments in Lee's appeal and then reinstated Syed's conviction and ordered the court to re-do the vacatur hearing.
"[Maryland law] provides that, on the State's motion, the court may vacate a conviction under certain circumstances. The statute provides victims with the right to prior notice of the hearing on a motion to vacate and the right to attend the hearing. These rights were violated in this case...
"Allowing a victim entitled to attend a court proceeding to attend in person, when the victim makes that request and all other parties involved in the hearing appear in person, is consistent with the constitutional requirement that victims be treated with dignity and respect."
-MD Appellate Court Ruling, March 28, 2023
However, the Appellate Court went a step further and added, that "a victim does not have a statutory right to be heard at a vacatur hearing."
"If you are allowed to participate meaningfully in a sentencing, you should be allowed to participate meaningfully in the vacating of a sentence," says Sanford. "This is the interpretation of the statute that we've offered the court."
"He had far more involvement that the law requires, and yet, that's still not enough?" asks Simpson of the Court.
We also spoke with Steven Klepper, a Appellate Court attorney from Baltimore, to help explain some of the more complicated legal issues at play here.
"The first issue is mootness which is a highly technical legal concept that is often misunderstood, even by lawyers," he says. "Mootness means that there's no affect to give the parties."
Syed's lawyers argue that the Supreme Court should overturn the Appellate Court's opinion because Lee's filing was moot, or more simply, irrelevant, after the State's Attorney dropped the charges.
"And there's nothing more that a court can do, even assuming that Mr. Lee's rights were violated," Klepper adds in explanation of Syed's legal argument.
The next issue Klepper explained was 'harmless error.' If Lee had the chance to attend the hearing, would that have changed the outcome? If not, it's chalked up to harmless error.
"It doesn't mean that it's harmless to how Mr. Lee justifiably feels. But harmlessness means did it affect how the judge ruled, would [it] have changed the outcome?" he explains.
With Sanford arguing that there should've been more participation on Lee's part at the hearing, one could argue that, in fact, that error was not harmless.
"You have a right to be here; you have a right to be seen; you have a right to meaningfully participate. None of that happened here," he says.
Oral arguments will be held at 10am on Thursday, October 5th. Lawyers from both sides will present their arguments. An opinion from the justices could take weeks or months.