Published in The Baltimore Banner Oct. 3, 2022
Last month, Baltimore witnessed a startling development when Circuit Court Judge Melissa Phinn granted the city state’s attorney’s motion to release Adnan Syed from the prison cell where he had spent the last 23½ years after being convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend.
Indeed, it’s a rare event when a chief prosecutor like Marilyn Mosby reopens a two-decade-old murder case and persuades a judge that the conviction requires dismissal. Ms. Mosby’s motion concluded that the trial evidence lacked integrity and was insufficient to prove that Syed committed the crime.
Rather than recognize Mosby’s extraordinary action in taking a stand against an unjust conviction and focusing on the prosecutorial and police misconduct that led to Syed’s incarceration, critics in the news media cast Mosby in the most negative light.
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Professor Doug Colbert represented Adnan Syed at his bail hearings in 1999.