"It wasn't the September 11 attacks or the murders he'd investigated for the NYPD that haunted him, the detective told journalist Dan Slepian, but a 1990 case where two men were sentenced to twenty-five years to life in prison for a murder they didn't commit. When Slepian, a veteran producer for NBC's Dateline, asked how he knew, the cop replied, "Because I know who the real killers are." Slepian couldn't shake what the detective had told him-and what it said about the criminal justice system. It began atwo-decade-long personal and professional odyssey in which Slepian used his investigative skills to prove the innocence of not just those two men, but of four others also falsely convicted of murder by New York courts. The Sing Sing Files: One Journalist, Six Innocent Men, and a Twenty-Year Fight for Justice is Slepian's cinematic account of challenging a system fiercely resistant to rectifying or even acknowledging its mistakes and their consequences. The reader follows Slepian on prison visits, street reporting, and during his interactions with prosecutors, defense attorneys, witnesses, and police for the Dateline stories that eventually led to freedom for the imprisoned men. At the book's center is the friendship that developed between Slepian and Jon-Adrian "JJ" Velazquez, who, from his cell at Sing Sing, directed Slepian to other innocent men until he, too, was finally released in 2021 after serving decades in prison. Like Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy, The Sing Sing Files is a powerful account of addressing wrongful imprisonment but in the nation's largest city, not the rural South. Slepian's extraordinary book, at once infuriating and full of hope, shines a light on an injustice whose impact the nation has only begun to confront"--
An NBC Dateline producer's cinematic account of two decades navigating a broken criminal justice system to help free six innocent men.
In 2002, Dan Slepian, a veteran producer for NBCs Dateline, received a tip from a Bronx homicide detective that would change his life. Two men were serving twenty-five years to life in prison for a murder in 1990, the cop said, and he knew for a fact that they did not commit that crime.
Haunted by what he had heard, Slepian began an investigation that eventually led to freedom for those two men, and launched him on a two-decade personal and professional journey through a system fiercely resistant to rectifyingor even acknowledgingits mistakes and their consequences.
The Sing Sing Files: One Journalist, Six Innocent Men, and a Twenty-Year Fight for Justice is an investigative journalists account of how he took on that system and of the years of prison visits, court hearings and powerful Dateline reporting it took to bring justice to those two men and four others imprisoned for crimes they did not commit. It is also the story of the deep and lasting friendships Slepian formed with the men whose cases he pursued, and how one of themJon-Adrian JJ Velazquezprovided aid and counsel to him from his cell in Sing Sing prison until his own release in 2021 after decades behind bars.
Like Bryan Stevensons Just Mercy, The Sing Sing Files is a deeply personal account of wrongful imprisonment and the enormous effort required to redress it, and a powerful argument for reckoning and accountability. This extraordinary book, at once painful and full of hope, shines a light on a kind of injustice whose consequences we have only begun to confront.
