JJ Velazquez on Finding Freedom, From Sing Sing to Sing Sing

Over Thanksgiving of 2002, an NBC Dateline producer named Dan Slepian paid a visit to Greenhaven Correctional Facility, a couple hours north of New York City, to see David Lemus. That year, while planning a series in which he followed New York detectives solving murders, Slepian had learned of Lemus’ wrongful conviction. “I knew nothing about false imprisonment, wrongful convictions, innocence. I was a middle class kid growing up in Westchester who thought the criminal legal system worked just the way it should,” he says. “That was my baptism into this world.” 

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But although he was there to see Lemus—who would be exonerated five years later thanks to Slepian’s work—another man’s story entered Slepian’s field of vision that day and never left it. Jon-Adrian “JJ” Velazquez, who happened to share a cell wall with Lemus, was receiving visitors that day, too—his mother Maria and two sons, John Junior and Jacob, then 8 and 5, respectively. Velazquez knew Lemus’ case had gained traction by way of Slepian’s efforts—this was Slepian’s tenth or so visit—so his mother approached the producer to support her son’s “mission to be heard.” Walking up to Slepian, she shared that her son was innocent. “I just felt like this panging in my chest,” Slepian says of their encounter. “This father could be the Son of Sam and I didn’t care, because these little boys should not be in prison on Thanksgiving morning.”

And so it was that, days later, Velazquez found himself allotting one of his five free weekly letters to Slepian, rather than to one of the many legal firms to which he normally addressed them. “I was pouring my soul out to anybody who would listen at the time,” he says. His missives typically included a synopsis of his case with a cover letter detailing that in 1998, he had been sentenced to 25 years to life for a crime he didn’t commit. 

This correspondence with Slepian set a precedent for how investigative journalism and media would eventually play a crucial role in Velazquez’s exoneration. Over the next two decades, Velazquez, with the help of Slepian, tapped into as many channels as possible to share his story and ultimately, this past September, realize his freedom. The result is a roster of thoughtful, revealing stories that question the efficacy of the United States’ criminal legal system, from A24’s Sing Sing to a Pulitzer Prize-nominated podcast, Letters from Sing Sing, to director Dawn Porter’s four-part documentary series The Sing Sing Chronicles, which premiered at DOC NYC on Nov. 16 and airs on MSNBC on Nov. 23 and 24.

Read more: The Critical Need to Teach the History of Mass Incarceration

A long delayed exoneration

After 22 years, nearly 250 visits from Slepian, and tens of thousands of case documents, Velazquez’s innocence has finally been recognized by the Manhattan courts. On the last Monday of September in New York, the Bronx native wore a black, New Era-branded cap that read “END OF AN ERROR” while addressing a crowd of legal colleagues, fellow advocates, formerly incarcerated peers, and loved ones, including Slepian (whom he now considers “like blood”). “Right now is an emotional moment, and I don’t want to mince words,” he started, “because the judge didn’t allow us to speak in the courtroom.”

Velazquez, 48, later explained that even on a day that was “supposed to be the happiest moment of my life,” the system found a way to impose control. According to Velazquez, at the last minute, the judge changed his hearing from 9:30 to 9:15 AM, preventing more people from attending on time. That morning, the judge had also let attorneys know he expected no one to share sentiments after he addressed the room asking if anyone had objections or something to add. “The way the hearing was conducted was really disturbing,” Velazquez says. “We’re talking about 27 years of damage starting with me, then trickling down to my family and the community [who] has been waiting for this day of justice. To close [the hearing] in four minutes—how do you do that? And without an apology?” When Velazquez left the courtroom to breakouts of applause, he recalls that the judge eventually said, “All right with the celebrations.” “But this is not a celebration,” Velazquez reflected in an interview three days after the hearing. “This is an indictment of the system, because even in its closing, it was not dealt with appropriately.” 

As soon as Velazquez surrounded himself with those there to embrace him, he says, “it was like I could breathe again.” He adds: “It was a monumental moment not just for me, but for the hundreds of thousands of people just like me that are watching the TV, finding hope when they see the next exoneree.” He and an estimated 100 guests wrapped the day on the entire second floor of the Pier 17 Jean-Georges restaurant, The Fulton, which overlooks the Brooklyn Bridge. Three days after the hearing and this gathering, Velazquez still had 231 missed calls, 482 unread text messages, and upwards of 30,000 unopened emails combined from community members expressing their support.

In the two-plus decades Velazquez endured the violent reality of incarceration, he has worn many hats. He is a jailhouse lawyer who taught himself the ins and outs of the criminal legal system in order to effectively collaborate with Slepian through the many unlawful discoveries of his case—from erroneous lineup methods like “suspect shopping” that increase the likelihood of misidentification and wrongful convictions to a detective who changed Velazquez’s race in the database from “Hispanic” to “Black Hispanic” to match eyewitness descriptions. He is a freedom fighter, what Slepian refers to as a “one-man innocence project,” who also introduced Slepian to three more men who were eventually exonerated. And, perhaps the deepest thread in all of his work as a community organizer, he is a leader who seeks to shift society’s narrative around those impacted by incarceration. 

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Sing Sing brings these stories to the masses

The most recent demonstration of this work is Velazquez’s role in A24’s Sing Sing, the film starring Colman Domingo that follows a group of actors in a theater troupe as they put on an original production inside Sing Sing Correctional Facility. The film, released in July and proving to have significant staying power, is based on an existing program, Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA). Thirteen of its alumni are prominent cast members who play versions of themselves, including Velazquez. In fact, it was only 10 months after his release from the actual Sing Sing, to which he was eventually transferred from Greenhaven, that he stepped onto set at a decommissioned prison in Fishkill, NY, to film. At that point, Velazquez had been granted executive clemency by Governor Andrew Cuomo but more roadwork remained before him to be exonerated. “As hard as I fought to get out, I had to wrestle with myself to throw myself right back into that mindset,” Velazquez says. “But [Sing Sing] gave us the opportunity to take this negative stereotype and try to humanize it in a way that people can accept. So nothing could stop me from putting those greens on.”

Sing Sing’s director Greg Kwedar immediately recognized Velazquez as a “natural, values-driven leader that has presence” when he sets foot in a room. “It was one of the [auditions] where, as soon as the Zoom was off, we were like, OK, he’s going on the board,’” Kwedar says. In fact, it was that “quiet confidence” that encouraged Kwedar and the rest of the production team to cast Velazquez as part of the theater troupe’s steering committee, the group of men inside who selected new members, chose RTA’s plays, and even finalized the cast. Throughout their time filming, Kwedar says he got to know a man who was “a student in the literal sense, but also a student of people and of systems, engaging with the world with both eyes fully open. He has very clear principles and stands behind them, and that’s quite comforting to be around.” 

It’s these principles that feel almost contagious when you meet Velazquez. When discussing Sing Sing and his time in prison, he somehow remains hopeful—despite years of being forced to spend hours in a 6 ft. by 9 ft. cell, every moment prescribed by people who referred to him as a number. Velazquez is focused on “promoting [Sing Sing] as a tool for humanity,” intent on continuing the conversation around the harms of mass incarceration and the power of healing. “I want the world to realize that this film is speaking a universal truth of human dignity,” he says. “A lot of the cast members on the film lost a huge portion of their lives, and it takes a huge loss to recognize what the real gifts in humanity are—love, redemption, relationships. If those of us doing decades in prison can come to a place where we live our lives with appreciation and gratitude, then everybody can learn to be grateful for each moment and each breath.”

His current priority is building out an impact campaign for the film alongside fellow RTA alumni and Sing Sing actors Dario Peña and John “Divine G” Whitfield; the latter is the real-life inspiration for the film’s protagonist, played by Colman Domingo. With A24 behind them, Velazquez and team hope to bring the film to more prisons across the country while simultaneously building out similar programming to what RTA provides. “We’re saying, OK, we’re ready to give you guys the blueprint on how to create this, how to structure it, and how to continuously follow up [with us] so that [your programming] becomes a sufficient process of healing.” Because, while garnering Oscar buzz and receiving praise from the likes of Regina King and Sebastian Stan are affirming responses to the film, Velazquez is focused on reaching more people who can see themselves reflected in Sing Sing’s cast. “It’s hard for guys who have been through [incarceration] to express themselves to society,” he shares. “This movie depicts sincerity and softens the opportunity for somebody else who may not be in the film to have that conversation.” For Velazquez, while it’s great if the movie can reach as many viewers as possible in general, the film was ultimately “made for people that are incarcerated.” 

A multimedia campaign centered on empathy

Over the course of his work, Velazquez has also become a bridge between those most proximate to the criminal legal system and those for whom incarceration is merely a plot point in entertainment, or a sensational headline in the news. His friendship with Slepian has resulted in a myriad of media stories, including but not limited to a 2012 NBC special proving his innocence, Porter’s The Sing Sing Chronicles, a Pulitzer Prize-nominated podcast, and Slepian’s new book The Sing Sing Files. Velazquez has thoughtfully leveraged these various media channels as tools for his freedom in collaboration with trusted partners who have invested in his story—rather than commodified it. With each of these storytelling opportunities, Velazquez seeks to “create pathways for communities to see the humanity in others who may not necessarily even be innocent, but who are just as deserving of opportunities.” Slepian shares that it is Velazquez who “opened the door for me to the irrationality, pathology, and perversity of mass incarceration as a whole.” 

Velazquez’s work, most of which he laid the foundation for while incarcerated in Sing Sing Correctional Facility, is an uphill battle in a sociopolitical landscape that still uses dehumanizing labels like “inmate” “felon” or “convict.” That has only exonerated 3,591 people since 1989 in the United States, even when experts have confirmed a 5% error rate in convictions and estimate the number is in fact much higher. That, in September alone, saw five people executed by their states. With 2 million people incarcerated in this country, the growing network of advocates committed to decarceration have a lot of work ahead. That explains why Velazquez juggles many projects, including serving as Program Director at The Frederick Douglass Project for Justice, Board member of A Second U Foundation, and Founding member of Voices from Within. He founded the latter with fellow incarcerated peers inside Sing Sing (and Slepian) based on the belief that “guys inside are the ambassadors that can help change the world.” 

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When asked about what he envisions when it comes to alternatives to our current systems, Velazquez underscores collective efficacy: the idea that mitigating harm and reducing crime comes from community members taking care of each other and their environment. This model is in direct opposition to the 1980s Broken Windows Theory, which posits that visible disorder (e.g. broken windows, graffiti, abandoned buildings) in a neighborhood is an indicator of more violent crime to come. (Not only did this theory lead to over-policing of Black, brown, and low-income neighborhoods, but it has since been debunked). “When we drive through neighborhoods and see these broken windows and vandalism and litter, it’s because the community is speaking and saying, ‘We don’t feel like we belong here, so we don’t care to tend to this place,’” Velazquez shares. “Our response is to make community members feel like this is their neighborhood, bringing them together and building respect through, say, painting the community center—not shunning them and putting Scarlet letters on them.” 

Velazquez has long lived out collective efficacy alongside his incarcerated peers in an effort to “redefine what it means to pay a debt to society”; and this type of imagination for a different future is particularly evident in Sing Sing, where archaic tropes about incarcerated people à la handcuffs and belly chains are replaced with moments of tenderness, humor, passion, and love. In Kwedar’s words, “If you can imagine a theater program in prison, you can imagine many other things being different too, right? Maybe that prison not even existing anymore.”

Fierce determination to keep spreading the message

Velazquez’s story is defined by the impact he has had on his community, but also by unfathomable loss. For one: those young boys Slepian met in the prison lobby all those years ago? They’re now 27 and 30, having missed an entire childhood with their father. And while Velazquez’s exoneration on Sept. 30 is a major milestone, it took a diverse media platform and resources beyond the capabilities of one person inside a prison to get here. 

“It’s a problem when people inside are trying to reach the television producer,” says Slepian as he reflects on how many individuals have reached out to him to support their innocence. “And if it takes a guy like JJ, whose IQ is about 590, whose emotional intelligence is off the charts, who is a kind, smart, loving soul, who had never been convicted before, who is clearly innocent, who has an hour-long television documentary proving his innocence, nominated for three awards, who has celebrities like Martin Sheen and Alfre Woodard visiting him, a Pulitzer finalist podcast about his case, and a meeting with President Biden in which he apologized to JJ— if it takes all that and more to to be exonerated? God help everybody else.” 

It won’t be easy, but this is why Velazquez will keep working toward the freedom and healing of his community. “I have the ability to utilize my platform to help other innocent people and guilty people who deserve to be free. I’m going to leverage it in every way I can—in the media, in front of the Senate, whoever and however,” he says. “The biggest message I want to get out to the world is how easy it is to imprison the poor and how hard it is to free the innocent.”