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Oct. 11 (UPI) -- Baltimore prosecutors dropped charges against Adnan Syed on Tuesday for the 1999 murder of his former girlfriend, weeks after his murder conviction was overturned. Syed was sentenced to life in prison in 2000 for the murder Hae Min Lee and his case gained national attention more than a decade later in 2014 as the subject of the podcast "Serial."
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On Sept. 19, his conviction was overturned and Syed was released without bail and placed on home detention with GPS monitoring while prosecutors were given 30 days to decide whether to move for a new trial or drop the case.
The Baltimore City State Attorney's Office said Tuesday that the charges were dropped.
"Finally Syed is able to live as a free man," Erica Suter, Syed's attorney and director of the Innocence Project Clinic at the University of Baltimore Law School, said.
The Maryland Office of the Public Defender said in a statement that the decision to drop the charges was made after DNA testing "excluded Mr. Syed from the DNA recovered at the scene."
"The DNA results confirm what we have already known and what underlies all of the current proceedings: that Adnan is innocent and lost 23 years of his life serving time for a crime he did not commit," Suter said.
Syed, who was 17 at the time of his arrest, has maintained his innocence in the killing of the 18-year-old Lee, his classmate and ex-girlfriend, who was strangled to death and found buried in a park in Baltimore County in 1999.
Prosecutors last month recommended that Syed's conviction be vacated and that he be granted a new trial, as the state "no longer has confidence in the integrity of the conviction."
Prosecutors said that a yearlong investigation into the case had produced evidence suggesting the involvement of two "alternative suspects."
One of the suspects, prosecutors said, threatened Lee, saying "he would make her disappear" and "would kill her."
Prosecutors described one of the suspects as a serial rapist, who was convicted in a series of sexual assaults after Syed's trial. They said police discovered Lee's car near one of the suspect's residences.
In addition, prosecutors said the investigation identified "significant reliability issues regarding the most critical pieces of evidence" used to convict Syed.
They highlighted inconsistent statements from Jay Wilds, Syed's co-defendant, who testified that he helped Syed bury Lee's body. Moreover, cellphone location data that was used to corroborate Wild's testimony by showing Syed had been in the area of the park has been found to be unreliable.
Lee's brother, Young Lee, said during the hearing that he felt "betrayed" and "blindsided" by the motion to vacate.
"Whenever I think it's over and has ended, it always comes back," Lee said of the case. "It's killing me and killing my mother."
Lee's family has announced plans to appeal the vacated conviction.
