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Dateline Originals

Letters from Sing Sing - Ep. 4: Peer Pressure

Dateline Originals

NBC News

True Crime

4.6773 Ratings

🗓️ 29 August 2024

⏱️ 37 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Dan talks to two jurors from JJ’s trial and tracks down the alleged accomplice. JJ’s story finally goes public.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Just start by telling me your first and last name in spelling.

0:09.0

My name is Ramon A.Viles, R-A-M-O-N-A-E-L-E-L-E-L-E-S.

0:16.0

What juror number were you?

0:18.0

I was juror number six.

0:25.7

Juror number six.

0:31.0

He was the one who that 84-year-old witness, Dorothy Kennedy, picked out as the gunman.

0:35.4

To me, it was one of the strangest moments in JJ's trial.

0:41.5

I got in touch with Ramon in 2011, more than a decade after JJ's conviction.

0:43.9

And he still remembered that moment.

0:53.5

She pointed me out, which was something I never expected, but it was laughed at it. It was funny, in a sense.

0:56.0

I caught onto it because I saw the other jurors looking at me.

0:59.0

And when I realized, I went, whoa, did she just pick me out?

1:04.0

It was like, now there's something wrong with that, you know?

1:08.0

I mean, she's at the witness stand, and she's pointing at the jury box.

1:13.6

After that happens, and you're in a deliberation room, how do you vote guilty?

1:20.2

That's a tough one. That's definitely a tough one. It kept coming back to the girlfriend.

1:27.3

Ramon told me some of the jurors didn't believe JJ's girlfriend, Vanessa,

1:30.9

when she testified that he'd been at home talking with his mother the morning of the murder.

1:35.6

They thought Vanessa was covering for JJ.

1:38.5

And once they doubted Vanessa's story, they had trouble believing JJ and his mom, too.

1:43.5

What was the first vote? Do you remember the first vote?

1:45.0

It was pretty much split in the middle, almost.

...

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