SPOILER ALERT

‘Serial’ Figure Adnan Syed Was Offered a Plea Deal: HBO Doc

Finale of HBO doc dissecting the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee has a surprising twist.

In a season finale of HBO’s documentary The Case Against Adnan Syed, it was revealed that prosecutors offered the prisoner a plea deal after he had served 20 years for the 1999 murder of his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee. Syed’s case became famous in the podcast Serial. He has maintained his innocence since he was sentenced to life in prison as a high-school senior, despite a lack of forensic evidence linking him to the crime. DNA tests conducted in later years did not match him, but a confession by a witness who says he helped Syed bury Lee has been difficult for his defense to unravel. In the HBO doc, Syed tells the filmmakers a different version than he told Serial podcast host Sarah Koenig. “What they’re offering is so bad, you know, it’s so unreasonable,” he says in the HBO doc. “They’re going to want me to stand in court and say, ‘Listen I did it. I lied to my mom and dad. I lied to Sarah Koenig... When I was a kid, they threatened to take away my future... Now it’s a lot different, you know, cause I don’t really have anything they can take away.” Needless to say, Syed did not accept the plea.

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