Dan Slepian was skeptical from the get started.
In December of 2002, the longtime NBC News investigative producer received a letter from Jon-Adrian “JJ” Velazquez, a male serving a 25-many years-to-daily life jail sentence for a criminal offense he swears he did not commit. In the letter, Velazquez asks Slepian, whose reporting on the legal justice system has served exonerate several innocent persons, to glimpse into his circumstance.
Slepian set out to demonstrate Velazquez’s guilt, but every thing he located pointed toward his innocence.
In a new podcast from NBC News Studios — “Letters from Sing Sing” — Slepian normally takes listeners on his personalized journey exploring the 1998 murder of retired NYPD officer Albert Ward.
Ward was killed at his illegal gambling business in Harlem in the course of an evident attempted theft.
Slepian paperwork Velazquez’s quest for flexibility with real-time recordings and exposes systemic breakdowns in the criminal justice procedure alongside the way.
And the case is still unfolding. In 2021, immediately after far more than 23 many years driving bars at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, New York, Velazquez was granted clemency by then-New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Even with President Joe Biden apologizing to Velazquez “on behalf of all culture” at a presidential discussion board very last Oct, Velazquez has nevertheless to be exonerated.
Slepian spoke with NBC about his partnership with Velazquez and some key moments in his investigation.
Slepian’s responses have been edited for duration and clarity.
Could you describe the second you 1st met JJ Velazquez’s mother and youngsters at Sing Sing?
It was Thanksgiving Day of 2002. I was performing on a different tale of a guy who was wrongfully convicted of a murder that happened on Thanksgiving Working day in 1990, so I was filming that guy’s mom exterior the jail.
JJ’s mother and this guy’s mother understood each other since the person in jail and JJ knew just about every other. JJ instructed his mom to hold out for me. When I walked into the lobby, this lady was standing there keeping the arms of these two minimal boys. I am going to hardly ever fail to remember it. The more mature a single was to her waist on her right aspect. The more youthful a person was on her left, just underneath her midsection — he was 4 or 5 yrs previous. He had these enormous eyes seeking up at me, and there was this sadness on his confront.
His mom stated, ‘My son is harmless. Can you assistance us?’ I experienced no concept what her son’s title was, but I will never ever neglect looking into that minor boy’s eyes, contemplating, ‘Even if his dad is responsible, this minor boy need to not be in a jail on Thanksgiving early morning.’ And that touched me in a sense. I was thinking about starting to be a father myself about that time.
You very first read from Velazquez himself as a result of a letter. Why was that letter substantial, and what created it different from other conversation you have received from persons at the rear of bars saying they’re harmless and asking for support?
The letter itself, in the starting, was just yet another letter from someone incarcerated who was proclaiming that they were being innocent. But what was unique about this letter was how it was published. Normally, I get letters from folks in prison that are a tiny little bit all around the area, perhaps by means of no fault of their have.
This letter was composed like a law firm experienced penned it. It was meticulous. It was comprehensive. It was immediate. It was distinct. He wrote, ‘My trial transcript is 2,044 internet pages, and I assume you only have 1,689 internet pages of it.’ That letter sparked a 20-12 months journey that I could have never ever imagined, equally personally with him and my deep dive into the abyss of what it indicates to be wrongfully convicted in America when you are hoping to get out.
How did your connection with Velazquez build above time? In the initial episode, you tension the importance of honesty. Did you and Velazquez have a superior foundation of trust?
Honesty is the critical to our relationship. I was very skeptical of JJ’s innocence for a extended time for the reason that I had just been doing work on one more innocence scenario, and I believed it was just one in a million. When I met JJ, law enforcement and prosecutors ended up expressing five eyewitnesses had picked him out — that is a huge hill to triumph over. It was a strictly and purely professional relationship among a journalist and a matter professing he was innocent.
Every thing modified around 12 or 13 a long time into recognizing him when I saw how folks who have been in the procedure had been managing the investigation of his scenario in a way that was not certainly truthful and objective. He experienced published me a letter 12 a long time after he wrote me his initially letter when an appeal was denied, and he said, ‘It is with excellent regret that I have to sit right here at this lonely hour and notify you that justice has no spot in my everyday living.’
It was the to start with time in my 28-year profession at NBC that I had to make a final decision: do I keep battling for what I feel is proper, or do I just enable the system engage in out the way it’s heading to play out? JJ is this kind of an fantastic human staying, and I thought he was an harmless guy, so I felt a human moral obligation not to abandon him.
You were incredibly skeptical. When was the initially second you understood he did not acquire a reasonable investigation?
I generally default to guilt. I usually default to the DA’s place of work. If I experienced to decide 1 second that I was like, ‘OK, you will find anything wrong below,’ it truly is when I interviewed the essential eyewitness to the criminal offense — the particular person that brought JJ into the circumstance.
He was a heroin dealer who was picked up two times immediately after the crime. He explained the shooter as a Black man. JJ is Puerto Rican. He had 10 luggage of heroin on the desk in entrance of him in the law enforcement station. He was questioned for hrs, appeared at 1,800 mug photographs and sooner or later picked out JJ. He was allowed to depart the precinct with his heroin.
When I interviewed him 10 decades soon after the conviction, he essentially advised me he picked JJ out randomly due to the fact he was fearful and desired to get out of the precinct. When a person who looks very little like the description of the shooter turns into your suspect, every thing soon after that is questionable.
Why was it critical for you to have a connection with Velazquez’s mother and youngsters?
When you’re in jail, it is not just you remaining afflicted. It’s your young children, your parents, your cousins and your neighborhood. There’s this ripple result of incarceration. That’s genuine for everyone, whether you are guilty or harmless.
But when you are harmless, there is an elevated level of emotionality and despair. For so numerous yrs, I watched JJ’s mom suffer. JJ is her only son. When I came to my own moral certainty that he was harmless, I felt compelled to continue on a relationship with her to enable her know that I would stay with this, whether it was in the act of journalism or an act of friendship. I believed observing what a mother has to go as a result of was an important section of the story.
I met his young children when they were eight and five. They are now 28 and 25. I’ve recognised them for 20 a long time. When his more mature son was 16, I was there when he bought out of his 1st midway house. In his twenties, he went to prison for two decades. JJ predicted what would transpire since there is this cycle of incarceration — it is not just JJ. I wanted to adhere to that other component of the story to display the consequences of wrongful conviction and incarceration on all family members.
What is the most important takeaway from this story?
This is much more than just a wrongful conviction story. If you have a write-up-conviction assert of innocence with benefit, you need a bolt of lightning to strike the jailhouse door, even to have a prospect of getting your scenario listened to once again. It truly is an epidemic. There are at least tens of 1000’s of persons blocked away from their families and are residing in a cell for anything they did not do.
If you have a publish-conviction declare of innocence with benefit, you need a bolt of lightning to strike the jailhouse doorway, even to have a chance of owning your scenario read once again.
Dan Slepian
If the program is 95% suitable, that indicates there are 100,000 innocent individuals in prison right now. Still, in in excess of 30 several years, just over 3,000 persons have been exonerated. Why? Since the system isn’t really developed to get persons out. It is created to place them in and continue to keep them in.
A couple of months back, the president of the United States sat throughout from JJ in the White Home and apologized to him ‘on behalf of modern society.’ As we sit below today, JJ has a curfew due to the fact he is under parole. He desires papers from the parole business just to cross condition traces. He is even now not vindicated. What does it consider?
You can pay attention to “Letters from Sing Sing” now, where ever you get your podcasts. New episodes will drop each and every Monday by March 27, 2023.
