Jon-Adrian "JJ" Velazquez

Jon-Adrian Velazquez, born on 11 November 1975, was convicted of the January 1998 murder of a retired New York police officer in Harlem and sentenced to 25 years to life, which he served at Sing Sing. Witnesses had first described the shooter as a Black man with braids; Velazquez had short hair, and phone records supported his account that he was on the telephone with his mother at the time. One witness, asked to point out the perpetrator in court, identified a juror.

From around 2002 he wrote to Dateline NBC producer Dan Slepian, whose ten-year investigation aired in February 2012 and was nominated for three Emmys, and who has described Velazquez as his "one man innocence project" inside Sing Sing, helping to free other innocent men. Supported by Martin Sheen, Alfre Woodard, Jason Flom and Roc Nation, he was granted clemency in 2021 and formally exonerated in 2024.

In 2013 he founded Voices From Within, a peer-mentorship programme on gun violence and incarceration. He co-stars with Colman Domingo in the A24 drama Sing Sing, which received three Oscar nominations; his story is told in the podcast Letters from Sing Sing (a 2024 Pulitzer finalist), Slepian's book The Sing Sing Files and the Emmy-winning docuseries The Sing Sing Chronicles, and a feature film is in development.

Sources

Facts in this profile are drawn from the Wikipedia article(s) linked below, consulted on 21 September 2026; the text is original. Wikipedia (English)

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