New York’s ‘One-Man Innocence Project’ Is Finally Cleared Himself

Jon-Adrian Velazquez spent years in Sing Sing for a shooting he did not commit. Along the way, he helped others seek their freedom and became the face of a movement.

Jon-Adrian Velazquez is the subject of a new book, a podcast and a coming documentary series.

He has spoken at dozens of justice events and was invited to the White House in 2022 to meet President Biden. He has famous friends like the actor Martin Sheen and played himself alongside the actor Colman Domingo in “Sing Sing,” a film released this summer about a prison theater program.

All while the legal system considered him a convicted killer.

That changed Monday morning, when a judge in Manhattan overturned Mr. Velazquez’s second-degree murder conviction. The charge had caused Mr. Velazquez, 48, to serve nearly 24 years in prison for the 1998 shooting of Albert Ward, a retired police officer, during an attempted robbery of an illegal gambling parlor that Mr. Ward ran in Harlem.

The judge, Abraham Clott, said that in light of new DNA evidence, he would set aside Mr. Velazquez’s verdict, a decision supported by Manhattan prosecutors.

Mr. Velazquez’s face remained stern, despite a jubilant crowd of supporters both inside the courtroom and outside the building.

“This isn’t a celebration,” he said outside, adding, “This is an indictment of the system.” He wore a baseball cap bearing the words “End of an error.”

Ruthless police and prosecutorial tactics during the high-crime, crack-ravaged 1990s in New York City resulted in scores of wrongful convictions. Even decades later, a steady stream of old, flawed cases is still being overturned with the help of advances in DNA testing, innocence groups and conviction review units.

Mr. Velazquez’s unflagging quest for justice stands out among them.

While incarcerated at Sing Sing Correctional Facility, the notorious maximum-security prison on the Hudson River some 30 miles north of New York City, he became well known in New York innocence circles as a model of how to seek freedom while incarcerated, with limited access to phones, computers and legal resources.

He pursued his appeal by becoming a fixture in Sing Sing’s law library and on prison yard phones. He kept a typewriter in his cell and bought stamps and stationery from the lockup’s commissary, all while trying to avoid violence, gangs and run-ins with correction officers.

“I made a law library in my cell,” Mr. Velazquez, who goes by JJ, said in a recent interview. “I had to learn the language they used to take my life from me.”

He received an executive clemency in 2021 that left him free but not exonerated. His jailhouse lawyering helped lead to new evidence that got the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg Jr., to reinvestigate the case even though the office under his predecessor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., had declined in 2013 to vacate Mr. Velazquez’s conviction and opposed his attempts to raise new evidence.

Mr. Bragg’s office decided to support dropping the original charges, which were brought after a heroin dealer identified Mr. Velazquez as the gunman. A new analysis of a betting slip that the killer touched before shooting Mr. Ward shows no DNA from Mr. Velazquez, Mr. Bragg’s office said.

“JJ Velazquez has lived in the shadow of his conviction for more than 25 years, and I hope that today brings with it a new chapter for him,” Mr. Bragg said in a statement on Monday.

Despite numerous denied appeals and roadblocks during his quarter-century crusade, Mr. Velazquez kept looking for new evidence with the help of Dan Slepian, a longtime NBC News producer.

Mr. Slepian produced a Dateline special on Mr. Velazquez in 2012 that raised troubling questions about the conviction and continued his digging in two decades of investigative work that helped force the re-examination of Mr. Velazquez’s case.

Mr. Slepian, who counts more than 200 visits to Sing Sing to see Mr. Velazquez, called his case “Exhibit A in how broken the system is.”

“It’s a travesty that it took this long for a guy with obvious evidence of innocence and a ton of publicity, and it still took an army to get him exonerated,” he said.

With no physical evidence, Mr. Velazquez was convicted primarily on the testimony of eyewitnesses. When Mr. Slepian tracked them down years later, they either expressed doubts to the journalist about their testimony or recanted entirely.

In early 2022, Mr. Velazquez resubmitted his case to the Post-Conviction Justice Unit newly formed by Mr. Vance’s successor, Mr. Bragg.

Mr. Bragg’s office said in a court filing last week that based on its re-investigation of Mr. Velazquez’s case, it would join his application to dismiss the original charges and overturn the conviction.

In the filing, the unit’s head, Terri Rosenblatt, cited “reasonable probability” that the DNA finding, if presented at the 1999 trial, would have yielded “a more favorable outcome” from the jury that convicted Mr. Velazquez, especially when combined with other case weaknesses.

Those include inconsistent eyewitness descriptions and phone records supporting Mr. Velazquez’s alibi that he was at home in the Bronx having a long phone conversation when Mr. Ward was killed in Harlem, the papers said.

The DNA analysis that became the tipping point was something Mr. Velazquez began pursuing while in Sing Sing with the help of his lawyers at the time, Robert C. Gottlieb and Celia Gordon; it was then confirmed by Mr. Bragg’s unit in its re-investigation.

Mr. Slepian called the exoneration long overdue, because, he said, Mr. Velazquez had evidence proving his innocence for more than a decade even without the DNA analysis.

“Anyone who knows the details of this case didn’t need DNA evidence to confirm what has been obvious for years,” he said.

Mr. Ward’s son, Albert Ward Jr., 52, said in a phone interview on Sunday that while he did not know the details of Mr. Velazquez’s appeal, he felt fairly certain that there had been credible eyewitnesses who identified him as the shooter.

“I wasn’t there so I can’t say for sure he did it, but there were some good friends of my father there at the time who identified him who were reliable,” Mr. Ward said. “So I think they identified the right person, but if he is able to get exonerated, it is what it is.”

Mr. Velazquez’s is the fifth murder conviction Mr. Bragg’s unit has moved to overturn since he created it upon taking office in January 2022, his office said.

The National Registry of Exonerations has recorded more than 3,590 people exonerated since 1989, many of them coming out of cases in New York City, which over the past decade has paid out roughly $500 million in compensation settlements to exonerees.

Mr. Velazquez’s case is featured in Mr. Slepian’s new book “The Sing Sing Files” and in “Letters from Sing Sing,” a podcast he released last year that became a Pulitzer Prize finalist. He is also featured in “The Sing Sing Chronicles,” a documentary series directed by Dawn Porter that is scheduled to air this fall on MSNBC.

Inside prison, Mr. Velazquez became a certified paralegal and earned a bachelor’s degree in behavioral science. As a teaching fellow, he was paired with Columbia University instructors giving classes to prisoners.

He won leadership roles in prison programs and nurtured relationships with other inmates and prison officials, including Michael Capra, the now-retired superintendent, who wrote a letter supporting Mr. Velazquez’s application for clemency.

On Monday, Judge Clott cited Mr. Velazquez’s “extraordinary achievements” while incarcerated.

There was no lack of fellow prisoners appealing convictions resulting from New York City’s aggressive policing strategies in the 1980s and ’90s. And Mr. Velazquez’s own quest for innocence expanded into helping fellow prisoners seeks theirs as a “one-man Innocence Project,” Mr. Slepian said.

In the library, prison yard, mess halls, the cellblock, the gym and even in the shower, he traded legal advice with them about their cases. He began receiving letters from prisoners across the country regarding appeals and he introduced Mr. Slepian to other prisoners in Sing Sing with convincing cases. For some, Mr. Slepian was able to track down evidence and witnesses and produce television segments that helped lead to exonerations.

Once free, they repaid Mr. Velazquez by assisting with his appeal: hiring investigators on his behalf and visiting, donating money, raising awareness and even searching for other possible witnesses.

When Mr. Velazquez’s clemency finally came through, Mr. Capra, the superintendent, notified him with a bear hug in his cell. The cellblock shook with roars and cheers from fellow prisoners.

Outside the courthouse on Monday, Mr. Velazquez was joined by several other men who had been exonerated after serving long sentences. Many more people remain in prison who do not belong there, Mr. Velazquez said, adding that he would continue working for the wrongfully convicted.

“I left a lot of innocent people behind,” he said.

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