The Sing Sing Files

July 15, 2024
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. Agent: Larry Weissman, Larry Weissman Literary.

Starred review from July 15, 2024
A TV producer's journey into the hellish landscape of wrongful convictions. Slepian, a veteran producer ofDateline, narrates his involvement in a series of outrageous cases of wrongful conviction and long-term imprisonment. "My innocence work," he writes, "had become a way into understanding the tragic consequences of America's system of mass incarceration--for the innocent, the guilty, and all of society." Beginning with the notorious Thanksgiving 1990 murder of a Palladium nightclub bouncer, the cases illuminate how, during New York's high-crime years, authorities would overlook exculpatory evidence and dubious prosecutions. This investigation led the author to Sing Sing Prison and to "JJ Velazquez, the soul of this book," who was jailed following witness misidentification in the murder of an ex-cop running a gambling parlor. "When I first met JJ in 2002" while working on a story forDateline, writes the author, "I'd gone into my investigation skeptical of his innocence. By 2011, I was certain of it." His focus intensified as he learned about more inmates at Sing Sing, including the "Bronx Six," railroaded for two 1995 murders: "So many lives ruined, and for what? As I looked at the case, all I could see were bumbling cops hell-bent on making arrests as quickly as possible." As he continued his investigation, Slepian encountered resistance, as damning information emerged about the NYPD bowing to political pressure for convictions. In addition to chronicling the plights of his subjects, the author includes his own perspective and self-deprecating background as a lifelong TV nerd turned outsider advocate, yet the narrative voice is brisk and punchy, contrasting with depictions of New York's "bad old days" and the nightmarish circumstances of the wrongly convicted. The result is a gripping, highly effective true-crime synthesis. An excellent addition to the body of work documenting a pervasive societal injustice.

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