HBO has released an update to its 2019 series The Case Against Adnan Syed that outlines the end of the saga of a man who was imprisoned in 2000 at the age 18 after being convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, in a Baltimore park in 1999. Syed’s case was made famous by the 2014 podcast Serial, which won a Peabody Award for its investigation that explored whether Syed was wrongfully convicted.
Six years after the HBO documentary traced Lee’s murder, Syed’s conviction, and the impact of Serial, the new episode in the series shadows Syed as he’s released from prison in 2022 after serving 23 years. That freedom was short-lived, however. In 2023, six months after his release, the Maryland Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, agreed with Hae Min Lee’s family that they were not given enough notice about his release. Syed’s murder conviction was reinstated, but in March 2025, a judge ruled that he wasn’t a harm to the public and would not have to return to prison.
The episode features conversations with Syed in prison and after his release, plus lawyers involved with the case and Syed’s family members. Here’s what to know about the doc’s final episode and the status of the case.
Re-examining a 26-year-old case
The reason Syed was sentenced to life in prison is because one of his friends, Jay Wilds, testified in 2000 that he helped Syed bury Lee’s body. However, “there’s no evidence…no actual physical evidence,” linking Syed to the crime, director Amy Berg says.
So the question is: if Adnan didn’t kill Lee, who did? No one else has been charged for Hae Min Lee’s murder. As of May 2025, the Baltimore police department hadn’t tested any new DNA results against alternative suspects.
Episode 5 zeroes in on a 2020 incident that prompted law enforcement to look at Syed’s case in a new way. A postal worker reported a naked man chasing her, and law enforcement officials made the connection that the man was Alonzo Sellers,…
