Syed v. Young Lee

1

ADNAN SYED v. YOUNG LEE, AS VICTIM'S REPRESENTATIVE, ET AL

No. 7-2023

Maryland Supreme Court

August 30, 2024

Argued: October 5, 2023

Circuit Court for Baltimore City Case No.: 199103042

Watts ^[*] Hotten Booth Biran Gould Eaves Battaglia, Lynne A. (Senior Justice, Specially Assigned), JJ.

Hotten, Booth, and Battaglia, JJ., dissent.

OPINION

Biran, J.

The Maryland Constitution requires that crime victims and their representatives be treated by agents of the State with dignity, respect, and sensitivity during all phases of the criminal justice process. It also grants victims and their representatives specific rights, including in some instances the rights to be notified of, to attend, and to be heard at criminal justice proceedings. The General Assembly has enacted a number of statutes that implement these constitutional requirements. In this case, we consider the scope of a crime victim's rights at a hearing on a motion to vacate a conviction.

In September 2022, the State's Attorney for Baltimore City moved to vacate Adnan Syed's 2000 conviction for the murder of Hae Min Lee under a recently enacted statute that allows a court to vacate a conviction if certain conditions are met. See Md. Code, Crim. Proc. ("CP") § 8-301.1 (2018 Repl. Vol., 2023 Supp.). The prosecutor gave the crime victim's representative, Young Lee (Ms. Lee's brother), less than one business day's notice of an in-person hearing on the motion to vacate. As the prosecutor and the presiding judge were aware, Mr. Lee lives in California. The court denied Mr. Lee's request for a one-week postponement of the hearing, which would have allowed Mr. Lee to attend the hearing in person in Baltimore.

The requested postponement having been denied, Mr. Lee observed the hearing remotely. Mr. Syed appeared in person. The court allowed Mr. Lee to make a statement at the beginning of the hearing, prior to the presentations by the prosecutor and defense counsel. After Mr. Lee completed his remarks, the court denied Mr. Lee's attorney's request to be heard briefly.

At the conclusion of the hearing, the court granted the motion to vacate and ordered the State's Attorney within 30 days either to schedule a new trial for Mr. Syed or to enter a nolle prosequi ("nol pros") of the charges. Mr. Lee subsequently noted an appeal of the order vacating Mr. Syed's convictions and moved for a stay of the circuit court proceedings. Shortly before Mr. Syed's response to Mr. Lee's motion to stay was due to be filed, the State's Attorney entered a nol pros of the charges against Mr. Syed.

A divided panel of the Appellate Court of Maryland vacated the circuit court's order and remanded for a new hearing. The Majority first held that the entry of the nol pros did not moot Mr. Lee's appeal. On the merits, the Majority concluded that Mr. Lee had a right to reasonable notice of the vacatur hearing as well as a right to attend the hearing in person, and that Mr. Lee had been denied both of these rights. However, the Appellate Court held that crime victims and their representatives do not have a right to be heard at a hearing on a motion to vacate a conviction. We subsequently granted Mr. Syed's petition for writ of certiorari and Mr. Lee's cross-petition.

As discussed below, we agree with the Appellate Court that the entry of the nol pros did not moot Mr. Lee's appeal. We also agree that Mr. Lee had the right to attend the hearing on the motion to vacate in person, and that he did not receive sufficient notice of the hearing to reasonably permit him to do so. We further conclude that a crime victim (or victim's representative) has the right to be heard at a hearing on a motion to vacate, including on the merits of the motion, through counsel (if counsel has been retained).

Because Mr. Lee's rights as the crime victim's representative were violated and Mr. Lee has made a sufficient showing of prejudice, this case will be remanded to the Circuit Court for Baltimore City for further proceedings. On remand, the parties and Mr. Lee will begin where they were immediately after the State's Attorney filed the motion to vacate.

I Background

A. Crime Victims' Rights

The victim's role in the criminal justice system has changed over the course of history. In contrast to the criminal justice system as it exists in the United States today, criminal justice systems in ancient times were marked by a lack of State involvement. See Grey v. Allstate Ins. Co., 363 Md. 445, 451 (2001) (citing STEPHEN SCHAFER, THE VICTIM and His Criminal 8 (1968)). In earlier periods, when a victim was harmed, the offender or offender's family would make personal reparations to the victim. Id. Both the Code of Hammurabi and the Book of Exodus contained provisions for restitution from offenders to victims, while the Twelve Tables, an early codification of Roman law, provided that an offender "could avoid retribution to himself or his family by providing compensation to the victim or the victim's family." Id. at 452. This restitution was viewed "more as recompense for the damage or injury inflicted on the victim than as a punishment for an offense against the State or the Sovereign." Id. at 453. In England in the early Middle Ages, it was common for a victim to organize a "crime patrol" to track down the offender, physically punish him, and demand that he pay restitution. See Juan Cardenas, The Crime Victim in the Prosecutorial Process, 9 Harv. J.L. &Pub. Pol'y 357, 359 (1986).

In colonial America, following English practice, private prosecutions were common. See William F. McDonald, Towards a Bicentennial Revolution in Criminal Justice: The Return of the Victim, 13 Am. Crim. L. Rev. 649, 651 (1976). Under a private prosecution system, law enforcement was conducted by individual victims. Victims were responsible for arresting their offenders and bore the burdens of investigation and prosecution. See id. at 651-52. Upon a successful prosecution, the victim was entitled to damages or, if the offender was indigent, the victim was often authorized to sell the offender into service. Id. at 653.

Public prosecution became the predominant method of criminal law enforcement in America after the Revolution. Id. at 661. This change was prompted by several factors, including the popularity of Enlightenment notions of crime as a societal concern and the increasing urbanization of American life, which made private prosecution impracticable. See id. at 653-654; Cardenas, supra, at 369; Peggy M. Tobolowsky, Victim Participation in the Criminal Justice Process: Fifteen Years After the President's Task Force on Victims of Crime, 25 New Eng. J. Crim. &Civ. Confinement 21, 26 (1999). Under the public prosecution system, crime is "conceived of entirely in terms of an offense against society[,]" and the criminal case "belongs solely to the state and public officials." McDonald, supra, at 650; see also 4 WILLIAM BLACKSTONE, COMMENTARIES 5 (1769) ("[P]ublic wrongs, or crimes and misdeme[a]nors, are a breach and violation of the public rights and duties, due to the whole community, considered as a community, in [its] social aggregate capacity."). In our country's shift from private to public prosecution, the justice system likewise shifted its focus from the interests of individual victims to the interests of the larger society. Tobolowsky, supra, at 26.

However, beginning in the 1960s, the pendulum began to swing back toward recognizing the interests of victims, with California becoming the first state to enact a statute providing compensation to victims of violent crime in 1965. Frank Carrington &George Nicholson, The Victims' Movement: An Idea Whose Time Has Come, 11 Pepp. L. Rev. (Symposium Issue) 1, 2 (1984). Throughout the 1970s, grassroots movements promoted the victim's role in the criminal justice system, and the victims' rights movement began to receive national attention in the 1980s. See Tobolowsky, supra, at 21-22. In 1982, the President's Task Force on Victims of Crime was established, and two pieces of national victims' rights legislation were enacted soon thereafter: the Omnibus Victim and Witness Protection Act in 1982 and the Victims of Crime Act in 1984. Carrington &Nicholson, supra, at 7-8; Paul G. Cassell, Treating Crime Victims Fairly: Integrating Victims into the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, 2007 Utah L. Rev. 861, 866 (2007). Federal action on the issue of victims' rights continued with the Victims' Rights and Restitution Act, passed in 1990, and the Crime Victims' Rights Act, passed in 2004. Cassell, supra, at 863-64, 866. This federal legislation, among other things, provided for victim impact statements to be read at sentencing, provided a statutory right for victims to be notified of and to attend court proceedings, and conferred standing on victims to assert their rights. Id. at 866-67, 869-70.

At the same time, states were also taking action to recognize victims' rights. By 1984, 39 states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands had approved legislation for victim compensation. Carrington &Nicholson, supra, at 2. By 2007, approximately 30 states had added victims' rights amendments to their constitutions. Cassell, supra, at 866. Maryland was no exception to these trends, as the General Assembly began enacting victims' rights legislation in the 1980s, and Maryland voters approved a victims' rights amendment to the Maryland Constitution in 1994.

At first, the rights the General Assembly granted to crime victims were somewhat limited. For example, in 1982, the General Assembly passed legislation that required presentence investigations to include a victim impact statement when a defendant committed certain crimes that injured the victim. 1982 Md. Laws 3109-10 (ch. 494); see also...