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Letters from Sing Sing

Eyewitnesses

Letters from Sing Sing

NBC News

True Crime, Incarceration, Investigative Journalism, Investigative, Dan Slepian, Sing Sing, Prison, Manhattan Da Office, Jj Velazquez, District Attorney, True Crime Podcast, Justice, True Crime Documentary, Guilt, 20 Years, Jon Adrian Velazquez, Convicted, Nbc, Manhattan District Attorney, Journalism, Barry Scheck, True Crime Documentaries, Dateline Nbc, Prisoner, Dateline, Nbc News Studios, Podcast, Murder, Investigation, Innocence, Incarcerated, Two Decades, Nbc News, Criminal Justice, Criminal Justice Reform, Criminal Justice System, Sing Sing Prison, Wrongful Conviction, Documentary, Letters From Sing Sing

4.93.8K Ratings

🗓️ 27 February 2023

⏱️ 40 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Police said five people identified JJ as the man who killed Al Ward. Dan sets out to find them.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

When I first met JJ Velasquez in 2002, he'd been in prison for three years, serving 25

0:13.0

to life. That meant he wouldn't be eligible for parole until he was 48, and getting parole

0:19.5

is never a guarantee. It was possible JJ could spend the rest of his life behind bars.

0:28.2

I saw how JJ lived, locked away in his seven by nine-foot cell. He told me when he was

0:34.0

first sent up state, he fell into the routine of prison life, sleeping in his cell, hanging

0:39.6

out in the prison yard.

0:41.5

I was going through a lot of pain for a long time. I was private about my matters, but after

0:47.1

a while I realized I can't always say, man, I'll let this go. When individuals started

0:52.1

to find out that I was innocent, they said, yo, what are you doing in your own plane?

0:56.3

It's basketball or softball.

0:58.3

You need to be in a law library. Nobody's going to get you out of prison. You need to learn

1:03.7

the law. You need to tell the lawyers what needs to happen in your case. No one cares about

1:09.6

you. You're not a concern. The only way you're going to get out is if you get yourself out.

1:18.0

So JJ told me he started to take matters into his own hands. He'd been assigned new court

1:23.0

appointed attorneys to help with his appeal, but he said he had trouble getting their

1:26.8

attention.

1:28.8

No attorney ever came to see me. Any time I wrote them about my case file, they said they

1:32.9

hadn't received it yet. I was getting nowhere. And meanwhile, I'm sitting up state. So I

1:40.5

had to tell the appellate division that I wanted to proceed pro-say, which means that

1:44.3

I was going to handle my own case just to get my case file. The truth of the matter is

1:50.2

that I realized that the only person who was going to advocate for me the way that I

1:54.6

needed was me. I got my case file September 2000 and it was a big box probably coming

...

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