The Sing Sing Files
One Journalist, Six Innocent Men, and a Twenty-Year Fight for Justice
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4.4 • 10 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
An NBC Dateline producer's cinematic account of his two-decade journey navigating the broken criminal justice system to help free six innocent men
In 2002, Dan Slepian, a veteran producer for NBC’s Dateline, received a tip from a Bronx homicide detective that two men were serving twenty-five years to life in prison for a 1990 murder they did not commit.
Haunted by what the detective had told him, Slepian began an investigation of the case that eventually resulted in freedom for the two men and launched Slepian on a two-decade personal and professional journey into a deeply flawed justice system fiercely resistant to rectifying—or even acknowledging—its mistakes and their consequences.
The Sing Sing Files: One Journalist, Six Innocent Men, and a Twenty-Year Fight for Justice is Slepian’s account of challenging that system. The story follows Slepian on years of prison visits, court hearings, and street reporting that led to a series of powerful Dateline episodes and eventually to freedom for four other men and to an especially deep and lasting friendship with one of them, Jon-Adrian “JJ” Velazquez. From his cell in Sing Sing, JJ aided Slepian in his investigations until his own release in 2021 after decades in prison.
Like Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy, The Sing Sing Files is a deeply personal account of wrongful imprisonment and the flaws in our justice system, and a powerful argument for reckoning and accountability. Slepian’s extraordinary book, at once painful and full of hope, shines a light on an injustice whose impact the nation has only begun to confront.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The plight of the wrongfully imprisoned comes into frustratingly clear focus in Dan Slepian’s exposé. As a producer for the television news program Dateline, he was tipped off to the likely innocence of two men serving time in New York’s notorious Sing Sing penitentiary. That led to a prison meeting, which led to meetings with more inmates and finally to his quest to unearth an epidemic of unjust convictions. As a journalist, Slepian knows how to build his case, speaking not only with those convicted but with prosecutors, defenders, law enforcement, and even jurors to show how miscarriages of justice happen. His work on behalf of JJ Velazquez, accused of murdering a retired police officer, offers a heartbreaking example of just how hard overcoming institutional racism and circumstantial evidence is. What The Sing Sing Files shows more than anything is that what’s broken with the U.S. justice system may just be everything.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Dateline producer Slepian debuts with a riveting account of his crusade to free six wrongfully convicted men from New York State's Sing Sing prison. The narrative begins with the 1990 killing of New York City bouncer Markus Peterson, who was shot while working the door at a nightclub. David Lemus and Olmedo Hidalgo, who had prior convictions for riding in a stolen car and carrying an unlicensed gun, respectively, were arrested and sentenced to 25 to life for the crime, despite their persuasive alibis. While shadowing two NYPD detectives for Dateline in 2002, Slepian learned that one firmly believed Lemus and Hidalgo were innocent. That led Slepian to visit Sing Sing and interview both men, which persuaded him of their innocence. Through those interviews, he also learned of several other cases of sketchy convictions at Sing Sing, including those of J.J. Velazquez, a Latino man who was convicted of murdering a former cop based on witness testimony that the killers were Black, and Eric Glisson, who spent 17 years at Sing Sing for killing a cab driver before his release in 2012. With Slepian's help, each man walked free by 2021, and most received multimillion-dollar settlements. Slepian tells his subects' stories with rigor and compassion, and persuasively argues that America's justice system is "designed to easily imprison the innocent" in the name of closing cases quickly. This is difficult to shake.
