Hi, Dateline listeners. My name is Dan Slepian, and I've been a producer at Dateline for nearly 30 years.

I'd like to share a story with you that I think you might find interesting. I've spent much of my

career and my life diving deep into the criminal justice system, and along the

way I've uncovered what I've come to realize is a hidden epidemic, wrongful convictions.

Now, you may have heard parts of this journey on episodes of Dateline or in the podcasts I've hosted

13 alibis and letters from Sing Sing, which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist

this year. But there's so much more to these stories, and I've poured it all into my new book,

The Sing Sing Files. My book is so much bigger than the stories I told on those episodes and in those

podcasts. In The Sing Sing Files, I'll introduce you to

six innocent men, all wrongly imprisoned. From prison visits to court hearings to interviews with

friends, families, lawyers, and witnesses, I investigated the ugly truth of how these men were

condemned, and then the Herkulean struggle to bring the facts

of their innocence to light. This project is deeply personal to me, and when you hear it,

I hope it becomes deeply personal to you too. If you like what you hear in the excerpt and want to

hear more, click the link in the episode notes to order a copy of the book

or audiobook. The Sing Sing Files is also available wherever books and audiobooks are sold.

Today, I'll start from the beginning of the Sing Sing Files.

Introduction, JJ.

It was Thanksgiving Day 2002.

I was at the Greenhaven Correctional facility,

a maximum security prison a couple of hours north of Manhattan, filming a story for NBC's

dateline about two incarcerated men who insisted they'd been wrongfully convicted of murder.

...