Thiruvendran "Thiru" Vignarajah is an American lawyer and politician. He previously was Deputy Attorney General of Maryland. He has also been a federal prosecutor, clerked for Justice Stephen G. Breyer, and was President of the Harvard Law Review. He is now a litigation partner at the law firm DLA Piper in Baltimore. He has also been the lead attorney for the State of Maryland in the post-conviction appeals of Adnan Syed, who was convicted of the high-profile 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee.
After law school, Vignarajah clerked for Judge Guido Calabresi, a federal appellate judge on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, and for Justice Stephen G. Breyer on the Supreme Court of the United States from 2006 to 2007. Following his clerkships, Vignarajah practiced at Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C., before serving as an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Maryland, under Rod J. Rosenstein, and then as Chief of the Major Investigations Unit at the State's Attorney's Office for Baltimore City. In 2015, Vignarajah was named Deputy Attorney General for the State of Maryland. As Deputy Attorney General, Vignarajah was the lead author of statewide guidelines issued by the Maryland Attorney General to end discriminatory profiling by police, making Maryland the first state to answer former Attorney General Eric Holder’s call for states to issue guidelines on profiling. As a prosecutor, Vignarajah handled a number of notable cases in Maryland. He was responsible for prosecuting, among others, the alleged mastermind of a series of armed robberies that resulted in the murder of a Greek businessman in Baltimore; a former nonprofit board director who allegedly set a row home on fire with his mistress and her five-year-old son sleeping inside; and two alleged members of the Black Guerrilla Family who killed a 12-year-old boy and shot three other teenagers. Vignarajah has taught constitutional law, administrative law, and law and education as a member of the adjunct faculty at the University of Baltimore School of Law and the University of Maryland School of Law. He also teaches a course on crime policy at Johns Hopkins University.
The first season of the podcast Serial focused attention on the 1999 murder of Baltimore teen Hae Min Lee. A high school classmate, Adnan Syed, was convicted of her murder in 2000. Vignarajah has handled multiple appeals filed by Syed's legal team. On 29 March 2018, Maryland's Court of Special Appeals upheld a ruling that Syed was entitled to a new trial. On 14 May 2018, Vignarajah appealed the ruling. On 8 March 2019, Maryland's Court of Appeals overturned the ruling and reinstated Syed's original conviction.
Recorded sharing of nonpublic information
While serving as Deputy Attorney General of Maryland, Vignarajah was covertly filmed by conservative political activist James O'Keefe for his organization, Project Veritas. Vignarajah was in a hotel room filmed giving a female Project Veritas reporter information about plans to side with the Environmental Protection Agency against Maryland Governor Hogan. The plan had not yet been announced to the public. A spokesperson for Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh said that “No protected or confidential information was revealed in any discussions.”
Political career
On September 14, 2017, Vignarajah declared his candidacy for Baltimore City State's Attorney as a Democrat. He lost the primary with 23% of the vote against 28% for Ivan Bates and 49% for incumbent Marilyn Mosby. Mosby was unopposed in the general election. After Baltimore Police Commissioner Darryl De Sousa resigned, Vignarajah said the resignation showed the need for the city's top prosecutor to retain the confidence of the public. Ivan Bates, who was one of Vignarajah's opponents in the race for Baltimore City State's attorney, responded that the Project Veritas video shows that Vignarajah lacks the judgment to be State's attorney. Bates and Vignarajah also clashed over the Syed case, with Bates saying that, if elected, he would drop the case against Syed, because he found the evidence against Syed to be unreliable. On April 10, 2019, Vignarajah declared his candidacy for the 2020 election for Mayor of the City of Baltimore as a Democrat. He lost the June 2020 primary, taking 11% of the vote.
Police stop
Vignarajah was pulled over late into the night on September 26, 2019 by Baltimore City Police. Vignarajah was allegedly driving with suspended license plates. During the traffic stop he asked the officer "We are 600 patrol officers down and that’s what you’re doing in Greenmount?", then later asked the officers to turn off their body cameras. City Council President Brandon Scott criticized Vignarajah's behavior during the stop, saying "You get into public service to do good for all, not to get special treatment for yourself". Baltimore Police Sgt Bill Shiflett said that Vignarajah put the officers in a no-win position, because turning the cameras off is against police department policy, and Vignarajah knew it.
