USA
According to the Georgetown University news, Adnan Syed was hired by Georgetown University as a program associate for the university’s Prisons and Justice Initiative, the university said.
Syed began work as a program associate for the Prisons and Justice Initiative (PJI), a Georgetown organization that addresses the root causes and consequences of mass incarceration and offers educational programs and training for incarcerated individuals and returning citizens. In his new role, Syed supports PJI programming, including Georgetown’s Making an Exoneree class, in which students reinvestigate decades-old wrongful convictions, create short documentaries about the cases and work to help bring innocent people home from prison.
“PJI’s team and programming has so much to gain from Adnan’s experience, insight, and commitment to serving incarcerated people and returning citizens,” the organization tweeted.
Syed had been one of 25 incarcerated students at Georgetown’s inaugural Bachelor of Liberal Arts program at the Patuxent Institute in Jessup, Maryland, during the year leading up to his release, the university said.
Syed’s own story was reinvestigated and brought to the attention of millions of listeners after Serial, a podcast from the creators of This American Life, uncovered new details in his case in 2014. Syed had been arrested and wrongfully convicted of the murder of his high school classmate, Hae Min Lee, in 1999. This fall, a judge vacated his life sentence and a month later, prosecutors announced they were dismissing charges against Syed based on newly tested DNA evidence that excluded him. Syed was represented by Erica Suter (L’03), who directs the University of Baltimore’s Innocence Project Clinic, and he was later added to the Nationa
Baltimore Circuit Court Judge Melissa Phinn ordered his release at the behest of prosecutors who said they had recently uncovered new evidence.
Prosecutors said a reinvestigation of the case revealed evidence regarding the possible involvement of two alternate suspects. The two suspects may have been involved individually or together, the state’s attorney’s office said.
After spending 23 years in prison, he walked out of a Baltimore courthouse in September after a judge overturned his conviction for the 1999 murder of high school student Hae Min Lee, Syed’s ex-girlfriend.
Syed, 41, hopes to continue his Georgetown education and eventually go to law school.
