Dateline Originals - Letters from Sing Sing - Last Stop on the Road to Freedom

Episode Date: October 2, 2024

In this bonus episode of the award-winning Letters from Sing Sing podcast, veteran producer Dan Slepian reflects on the final chapter in J.J. Velazquez’s hard-fought path to full exoneration after being wrongfully convicted of murder over two decades ago.  Dan and J.J. join Kristen Welker on Meet the Press for a “Meet the Moment” conversation to detail their 20+ year path to overturning J.J.’s conviction.

Hi there, Letters from Sing Sing listeners. This is Dan Slepian. It's hard to believe that more than a year has passed since this podcast first launched, and so much has happened since then. First, we are enormously humbled that the podcast, along with the incredible team behind it at NBC News Studios, has been honored with several prestigious journalism awards, including being named a Pulitzer Prize finalist. And just a few weeks ago, my book, The Sing Sing Files,

One Journalist, Six Innocent Men, and a 20-Year Fight for Justice was published, which details not only JJ's case, but also the stories of several other men JJ introduced me to at Sing Sing. All people who, like JJ, were wrongfully convicted and ultimately exonerated after years of tireless efforts. And on November 23rd and 24th, The Sing Sing Chronicles, a documentary series produced by NBC News Studios about some of those men, including JJ, will air on MSNBC. Stay tuned to this feed for more on that to come. This podcast and the recognition it received publishing the book, the upcoming documentary series, all of it has been deeply meaningful. But none of it compares to what happened earlier this week. On Monday, September 30th, after nearly 27 years,

J.J. Velasquez was finally exonerated. As many of you know, J.J. was wrongfully convicted in 1999 of killing retired police officer Albert Ward. For more than two decades, JJ fought from inside Sing Sing, never wavering in his claims of innocence. I've had the privilege and honor of walking alongside him for more than 20 years, documenting his journey every step of the way. As you might remember from the last episode, I was there with him in 2021 when he was released after the governor granted him clemency. But despite his release,

one thing eluded JJ, full exoneration. His conviction was never overturned, even with the overwhelming evidence proving his innocence. That all changed this week after a new Manhattan DA's office did its own investigation and tested DNA evidence proving J.J. wasn't there. After all the years of fighting, after the relentless pursuit of justice, J.J.'s name was finally cleared in a New York City courtroom. The people do not believe they are in a position to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt. I am granting that application, so this matter is dismissed. That is the sound of a judge giving J.J. his full freedom. Monday was one of the most emotional, important, and validating days of my life,

marking the end of JJ's long journey to clear his name. Before the exoneration, JJ and I had the opportunity to sit down with Kristen Welker on Meet the Press for a meet-the-moment conversation to reflect on JJ's story, his struggle, and what this moment means. Here's that conversation. I hope you enjoy it. And now a closer look at our criminal justice system. Veteran Dateline producer Dan Slepian first met John Adrian Velasquez, or JJ, in 2002 when he was already serving time

for a 1998 murder he did not commit. From his cell in Sing Sing, J.J. aided Slepian in his own investigation until he was granted clemency and released in 2021 after more than two decades in prison. The Sing Sing files, one journalist, six innocent men, and a 20-year fight for justice tells the deeply personal story of their relationship, their fight to overturn wrongful convictions and to reform the legal system. I sat down with Slepian and Velazquez for a meet the moment conversation. Thank you both so much for being here. Welcome to meet the press and Slepian,

JJ Velazquez, a real honor to talk to both of you. Thank you for having us. Dan, let me start with you. You're a Dateline producer. You were initially focused on telling crime stories. And then you became focused on telling the stories of those who were wrongfully convicted. And meeting JJ, who is sitting here today, was a turning point for you. What was that first meeting like? With JJ? who is sitting here today was a turning point for you. What was that first meeting like? With J.J.?

Well, meeting J.J. was the turning point of my life. There is no question about that. But as a Dateline producer, I was covering crime just the way I thought justice worked. And it was through the prism of police officers. It was through the prism of the NYPD when I was embedded with the NYPD, where a detective and a prosecutor in the city of New York were telling me that they knew two innocent guys were in prison

because they knew who did it and they couldn't get anybody to listen to them. And I was like, huh, aren't all these guys on the same team? And what I came to find out and what that turned into is that that man who was innocent in that case shared a wall with JJ in prison. And so it was only through him I learned about JJ. And what ended up happening was this sort of game of surreal game of human dominoes where one innocent person led me to the next. And what it did was it made me look deep into the abyss of what the criminal justice system really is. And JJ and I talk about this often. We don't even call it the criminal justice system.

We call it the criminal legal system. It's an adversarial system. So meeting JJ, to answer your question, was the turning point for me. I didn't know if he was innocent. I didn't know if he was guilty. And I said to him what I say to everybody who says that they're innocent to me. I said to him, look, I don't know if you're guilty or you're innocent. I am not your friend. I am not your advocate. All I care about is the truth. And if I find evidence of your guilt, it's coming out. JJ, what was it like from your perspective when you first met Dan and you heard those words

that he wasn't ready to accept off the bat that you were innocent. And he was very clear he was going to approach learning about your case, investigating it as a reporter, as a journalist. Well, much like Dan just shared, meeting him was also a turning point for me as well. Initially, you know, it's always painful when you're telling the truth to someone and they're not trying to hear you. Right. But it's also expected because of the circumstances that I was under. I'm being accused for taking a police officer's or former police officer's life, which is one of the most heinous crimes someone can be charged with. And so as a young journalist, which Dan was when we first met 22 years ago, you know, I can't expect him to just not know me from anywhere and not have any credible sources and just expect what I'm saying is the truth, right?

So the reality was in that moment, as he was saying that, the only thing that I could come up with in my mind was like, how do I get this guy to really believe that I'm not playing with this, that I'm serious, I'm innocent and I need help. And so I challenged him to prove me guilty. And that's what caught him. Let's talk a little bit about the details of the case. Sure. The fact that your mugshot was even included in the other potential mugshots when there was this murder that was being investigated that you were wrongfully accused of. Take us back to the beginning of how this happened, because you had a strong alibi, and no one believed you. Yes.

And you didn't even look like the person who witnesses said had committed the crime. Thank you, Kristen. I mean, that's really where it all starts. Like, you know, I grew up believing in the system. My father was a police officer. You know, I knew police officers. They sat at my dinner table. I grew up believing in the system. My father was a police officer. You know, I knew police officers. They sat at my dinner table. I grew up around them.

And so I had no reason to not believe in the system. The problem was that my father died 10 months before I was accused. And so I had nobody to protect me anymore. And so I had to face this as a man of color on his own, facing a system that really wasn't what I thought it was. Right. And so the reality is, is that like. How do you take an individual who's considered because of our human barriers? We consider people, you know, other than human, we consider people either black, white, Latino, etc. Like, my whole life,

everybody's always known that I was Puerto Rican or at least Latino, right? This was the first time I've ever been confused as a black person. And then a black person with dreads. I understand I'm a person of color. That's who witnesses said the shooter looked like, had dreads. Right. And so I understand as a person of color, maybe someone who is not a person of color might not be able to distinguish the differences. But the real situation here was that we're talking about eight witnesses that

were all African-American males or females that are in their 50s and 60s, which means that they went through a life period where racism was prevalent in their life. And so they knew what they saw that day. They saw two black people. That's what they said. One was dark skin. One was light skin. Neither one of them were me. And there's science to this. As JJ mentioned, all of the eyewitnesses were black. And that's an important fact when we talk about eyewitness identification. It's called cross-racial identification.

Cross-racial bias. Cross-racial bias. People who are of the same race and color are more inclined to identify someone of their same race as opposed to someone as an opposite race. So all of the eyewitnesses said the shooter was a light-skinned black man. The way J.J. became a suspect, check this out. There was a drug dealer in the numbers parlor run by the victim who was a former cop running an illegal numbers game in Harlem within the confines of the precinct that he used to work in. There was a drug deal going down between a 20-year-old and a 45-year-old. The 20-year-old's name was Augustus Brown, selling heroin. He ran away after the crime,

after the shooting. Two days later, cops pick him up. He has 10 bags of heroin in his underwear. They bring him to the precinct. They put it on the table in front of him. They question him for hours. They threaten him with arrest, saying, we're going to arrest you for the murder unless you pick somebody out. He looks at 18. He describes the shooter as a light-skinned black man. Like everyone else. He looks at 1,800 mugshots of people who had been arrested in that area. JJ had been arrested because he was picked up for shoplifting that he did not commit. He had receipts.

But the cop used it as a pretense to search his car and found a little amount of drugs. It was deemed an illegal search and seizure. The case was thrown out. His picture should have been expunged. It shouldn't have even been in the database. In fact, when Augustus Brown pointed his picture, I later find out at random, they unseal his picture to show it to other witnesses. And get this, once he's identified, the lead detective on his photo, on that mugshot says light-skinned Hispanic.

Once he's arrested, the detective changes his race and says he's black Hispanic. What does the fact that that could happen say about the justice system? That he was even in the lineup, Dan. So this was the beginning for me. This was my baptism into how this is the way the system works. That's right. The question is, is not how can it happen? The question is, is why does it happen all the time? And once we know it happens, why can't we fix it? We can't fix it. This is a huge epidemic in this country. One of the points in your book that is frankly so stunning, and as a follow-up to what you're saying, it's not just that you're a singular case. You started covering the wrongful conviction of, again, someone who you were in jail with, David Lemus, who was also wrongfully convicted.

And you were in disbelief that there could be two people in such close proximity. It was a one in a million case. And he was accused, wrongfully convicted, in the Palladium murder of the 1990s in New York, a murder at a nightclub. On Thanksgiving night. How was explained that link? So what happened was, is David was convicted of the murder,

as you say, the Palladium nightclub on Thanksgiving night, 1990. Two detectives and a prosecutor believed he was innocent. We know who who the real killer confessed to me at Rockefeller Center. Right. So we know we know who committed this crime. But when I came to my own moral certainty that David Lemus was probably innocent, I visited him at the prison he was at on Thanksgiving Day on the anniversary for the murder for which he was wrongfully convicted.

I knew nothing about wrongful convictions other than this case. I thought this was a one in a million case. Like, what? Like, cops say he's innocent. Why is he still there? Like, huh? My God, little did I know about this system. But I walk into the lobby that day, and I see a woman holding the hands of two little boys,

and she stops me and says, Are you Dan? I hate to tell this part of the story, bro. Because you could see those two little boys. Yeah. I wasn't there, and I could see them. JJ's older son was on Maria's right side, John Jr., and Jacob, the littler one, was on her left side.

He, like, came up to her waist, you know? And I didn't know who these people were. And Maria says, my son, JJ, he's innocent. Can you help us? And I didn't believe her. But it was the little boy, Jacob, who looked up at me with these eyes, these huge, beautiful saucer eyes.

And my daughter, my wife wasn't even pregnant yet. I was about to be a father. I mean, I've known JJ longer than I've known my daughter, who's in college. And I looked at that boy's eyes. And my immediate thought was, I don't care if his father's innocent or guilty. This little kid should not be in a prison on Thanksgiving morning. And it was for that reason that I said to Maria, send me whatever you want and I'll read it. And I even said to her, it's not going to happen anytime soon.

It's going to take a long time. And you know what? She was relieved. She was relieved. She was relieved. Because you listened to her. Because no one was listening to her. A television producer who she's standing, waiting in a lobby of a prison

to try and get somebody's attention. That was the beginning for me. And what happened from there were letters from JJ and a relationship that ensued that today, 22 years later, I would put myself in front of a train for him. I would take a bullet for him. I know it's emotional. He's among the closest people in my life

jj and i want to talk about your relationship but i want to talk about those little boys because from that moment on you were in you were behind bars for another 20 years. What was taken from them in that time and how hard was it for you to be away from them? What kept you going at that time? Great questions. Thank you for them. I would say it starts with the fact that what they took from both of us. They took the right to be a father from me.

And they took the right to have a father present from them. Our lives were lived in pictures, not in real time. The only real time we had was on visits where you can barely do anything. And for the first 10 years of my children's life, as a father, I'm scarred because they spent five days in school and one day in prison and only had one day to build their social lives.

And that's just not the life for a child. They deserve better. Through all of that pain, JJ, you never gave up. You continued to give every piece of evidence you could to Dan for his investigations. You continued to ask for retrial after retrial. You were never granted freedom at that moment. How did you keep going?

Hope, purpose, hope for a better day. Hope for the opportunity to be reunited with my family. Hope that the truth would one day come out and vindicate me and restore me unfortunately i've learned there's not going to be any restoration in my life i just have to deal with what you know with the hand i've been dealt and then purpose you know um one of one of during the early part of my incarceration i read this book by victorl, and it's called Man's Search for Meaning. It's a very thin book, but it's so powerful. It was about Viktor Frankl himself, who was

at the concentration camps. And he was studying the people around him. And what he found was that the people who survived the Holocaust survived because they were tied to a sense of purpose. And so that led me to believe that I had to find the sense of purpose while I was in prison. And it took a while for me to figure it out. But when my mother approached me on a visit one day, she was just like, I can see you slipping.

I see that you're changing. Don't let this place change you. You need to grow where you're planted. They can lock up your body, but they can't lock up your mind. And that led me to another book that I was reading because reading was my escape from the madness, right? And I read another book called The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. And what he taught me is that between a stimulus and a response, you have the freedom to choose. Right?

And so at that point, I realized it's not what happens to us that matters. It's how we respond to that. And that's where we're able to exercise our freedom, even in the worst conditions. Dan writes about how horrifying life is in a prison cell. But you lived it. Absolutely.

What do you remember about what it was like to be alone in a cold, dark cell by yourself? Well, I'll tell you the first thing. There's lifelong trauma that I'm still battling right now, right? Shortly after I blew trial on this case, and that happened in 1999, so somewhere in the early part of 2000, I lost the ability to remember my dreams. And I know why it happened.

It was a defense mechanism, because all I was having was nightmares about my trial and what that meant for my dreams. And I know why it happened. It was a defense mechanism because all I was having was nightmares about my trial and what that meant for my future. And I fought so hard not to remember that, that I can literally actively try to remember what I'm dreaming about as soon as I wake up and I can't. And I understand that that's a part of a defense mechanism inside of me that has buried it so deep so that it can't you know and and i understand that that's a part of a defense mechanism inside of me that has buried it so deep so that it can't hurt me so there's a lot about my life that i've shared with them but i kind of like try to share it and then let it go right and in sharing it as long as it leads to a sense of purpose and can help someone else, then it can

become cathartic for me, where I can feel like there is a sense of purpose behind sharing that pain, because it's not always easy to share that pain. Dan, you talk about the fact that you were not going to give up. But as you referenced, you didn't even have your daughter when you met JJ. You poured through thousands of pages of testimony, of legal documents. You didn't give up either. What kept you going to fight for someone who was not family? Well, first of all, in my early cocky young days when he challenged me, I'm like, OK. I'm going to prove you guilty.

And the more that I set out, every single thing that I was finding was only pointing to his innocence. Now, in the case that I had done right before his, I had two active duty NYPD police officers and a Manhattan prosecutor saying the guys in prison were innocent and they couldn't move the needle. In JJ's case, he had nobody in authority. And police and prosecutors were telling me that five eyewitnesses and his co-defendant pled guilty, saying they did the crime with him. That's a huge... I

had no idea how he or I would ever overcome that. But there's only one way to eat an elephant. So I started at the beginning and I went through every witness i i wore hidden cameras in my these are witnesses that were all either involved with drugs or had their own convictions all very shaky witnesses were you scared dan because you take us along this journey and i felt scared reading frankly when you're knocking on the door. I mean, I brought armed guards with me to speak to suspects. But I got to a point where I felt that I was learning enough about the system and how broken it is because he became so obviously innocent to me. Anybody with any intellectual honesty that looks at the details

of his case can only come to one conclusion. So as a, it is my responsibility. I saw a quote the other day, which really resonated with me, which is that we all have our own responsibility to be more ethical than the society we grew up in. And so when I came to my own moral certainty that he was innocent, it was my job. I have a platform. We have a platform. So this is not something I was looking for. This is something that found me. And so when I came to the conclusion and I'm looking, I'm sitting in a chair. I'm not sitting on an elephant. This is a fact.

The earth is round. It is not flat. These are facts. All I cared about was truth and facts. And when the facts became apparent and clear that he was innocent, I had no choice but to not turn away. But what became increasingly difficult for me, and we did a story about J.J. on Dateline in 2012, and it aired, and he and I thought, that's it. He's getting out. He spent another decade in prison after that. And led me to three other people that I did stories about that helped get them out.

That may have been part of his purpose. But the second decade was what was really hard for me. Because as journalists, you and I and other journalists, we have responsibility to NBC or our careers. I have worked very hard my entire career to maintain a rigorous detachment from subjects so I can be fair, objective, unbiased. But it came to a point with JJ's case where there weren't any two sides anymore. There was only one reality. JJ was innocent. And the people in prison, I'm sorry, the guardians of the system, who are responsible for making sure justice is done, not convictions, justice,

people who have control over whether you or I go to prison, when those people start ignoring facts like they don't exist. I have a responsibility to be more of a human. I don't want to say journalists aren't human, but my humanity. Comes before anything else, and JJ had become someone I love. His family became my family. So I made it clear to everybody that I could no longer report effectively and objectively on him because I believe he was innocent. And our relationship changed after that. And over the past decade, I mean, I visited JJ at Sing Sing over the past

two decades about 250 times. JJ, in reading your story, it's hard to believe that you found the inner strength and the purpose to keep going for that length of time. But in 2021, you did learn that Governor Cuomo granted you clemency. This is not a full pardon. So in the eyes of New York, you are still a convicted criminal. But what was that moment like when the gates opened and you walked outside a free man? I don't know. I've had a lot of milestones since I've been released.

I used to think that that was like the best moment of my life. I do believe that it was definitely one of the best moments because it was the birth of a new beginning and the end of an era. The end of the biggest error of my life that I had to, you know, deal with. And, of course, still dealing with. But when that gate opened, my purpose was right in front of me because my family was waiting for me right there. My children, my mother. That was my hope. That was my purpose.

Dan became a part of the family and he became the hope and the purpose. But Dan met me in my cell and walked me out. So it was a little bit different. But when that gate opened, my soul definitely felt a sense of relief because I knew that when I went out that gate, the only way I was going to come back is as a volunteer. And... Which you have done.

Yes, I have. Which is just such an incredible act of selflessness. What motivates you to go back to this place where you have experienced so much pain, JJ? How do you go back? Much like what Dan says, and he knows I'll argue against it, but I'm going to actually agree with him on this, because my whole programming and educational factors

that I share with people revolves around choices. But I didn't make a choice to go to prison for a crime I didn't commit. I didn't make a choice to suffer all that time, but I did make a choice to utilize that as an educational platform. And I realized that since I was spending a life bid in prison, which is actually what I've done, right? They gave me 25 to life. I spent almost 24 years in there.

So they didn't do me any favors with that. But in spending that time, and I credit this a lot to Dan. Dan used to always tell me how important it was to actually be an observer, like in the third person, like watching the people that are watching the people, right? And being able to share that with the world. He basically put it on me maybe about 15, 20 years ago and said that this was going to be my responsibility to educate the world through my experience. And I've accepted that. And I believe that that was a part of purpose. And it kept me strong enough to be here.

And my belief in him and the work that he was doing, as much as my disbelief in the system, had overpowered that. Because there were plenty of times where he thought it was it. And I told him, it's not going to happen. These people play games too much. You know, there were a lot of letdowns, but I think that as hard as it is for me to swallow

what I'm about to say, I've realized that as much as I've been through, there was a need for me to go through that, to be in the position that I am right now, to have this conversation with you, and to be able to touch the world. Because I am not an anomaly. There are hundreds of thousands of wrongfully convicted people on this earth, and they are suffering just like I suffered, and they're not being heard. We do have to say that you helped Dan identify three other people who were wrongfully convicted. If both of you could speak to policymakers, to people who would have an impact on the criminal justice system, JJ, what would you say to them? I would say it's time to start having these town hall meetings, having these discussions,

getting the wrongfully convicted people in the room with the policymakers and spending time and becoming proximate so that they can realize the damage that's being done. Let the families come in. Let the people that are the lawmakers stare the families that they've broken in their face and hope that they have an ounce of pure humanity inside of them to help them change how they see what's going on. Because I've realized that a lot of people that have gone into law enforcement and government went into it with the right ideas, with the right interests, with, you know, like... They went in with one idea,

the same way Dan went into journalism with one idea, and came out another. And sometimes culture is the problem. There is a culture inside of these offices where it's more important to get the win than to seek the truth. And that's where the problem starts the win than to seek the truth. And that's where the problem starts, because everybody wants to be successful.

And so, in a sense, the culture is saying for you to be successful, you may have to bend the rules here and there. But it's okay, because it's in the interest of justice. And it's the biggest lie that's ever been told to anybody with a law degree. Dan, what's your message? I have two, without getting into any specific policy proposal, because there's all sorts of things that we know will reduce the chances of eyewitness misidentification or false confessions.

Most police departments haven't done that yet. So those are policies without getting into details. But two just general thoughts. One is, unlike the EPA, where they decide how much arsenic should be in our drinking water, we don't vote on that. We vote on criminal justice policy because politicians believe

they're being tough on crime. We need to remove emotion from these decisions. It is emotion that makes people believe things that aren't true. It creates an us versus them mentality that you are less than you are bad, right? Proximity, as JJ said, changed that for me. That's number one, because we know I've been to prisons in Germany and Norway. I know what works. I wouldn't put my dogs in a cage that he had for a weekend that he had to live in for 24 years in this warehouse of human beings, right? So when it comes to mass incarceration as a whole, when it comes to policy, take emotion and put it on the side because emotion doesn't dictate what's best for society. The second thing that I would say, and I've learned this because of JJ, part of my DNA,

that we look at people with a scarlet letter who have been through what he has been through. And what I now know, I don't believe, I know that the people that society has once considered the problem are the solution. JJ rose like a phoenix from the ashes. He's a special guy. His emotional intelligence, I've been telling him for two decades, is higher than anybody I've ever met. I have walked through Sing Sing. I cannot count how many people who have said to me, if it wasn't for JJ, if it wasn't for

JJ, getting him into school. He was in there year after year, like a prize fighter in training to do what he's doing right now. He's a special case. But I have met scores of people in prison. Their incapacitation is their punishment. Right? We don't have to treat people like animals. And when people have to live through that suffering, there's a lot of solutions that are formed in those environments. And we don't spend enough time focusing on that. Instead, what we do is when people get out of prison, we don't allow them to get jobs. We don't allow them to get loans. We don't allow them to get

housing. They have to go to parole. They don't have an ID. We make it impossible. It is literally irrational and pathological by definition what we're doing. So we know it works. It's just having the emotional strength to do it. Talking about emotional strength, I want to ask you about one of, quite frankly, the most horrifying revelations of this entire book, which is the conversation that you have with the juror who shares with you that she regretted her vote for a guilty verdict all of those years, JJ, that you were in prison. She shares that there was a lot of skepticism among the jury pool, but there was also, they were sequestered, a desire to get home. It was Halloween. People wanted to get home to see their kids. And she told you, Dan, that she regretted

the guilty verdict ever since she cast it. What was that conversation like for you? Unsettling. She walked into the room and she started crying. She said that she always believed JJ was innocent from the beginning. She said she was weak and young. The jury was exhausted, sequestered for three days. They were going into Halloween. The family, everybody wanted to go to see their kids.

And she caved along with another juror. And they both went back to the judge that day and said, we think we made a mistake. And the judge said, nope, you did the right thing. Not only that, by the way, one of the eyewitnesses during his trial pointed, was asked to point to the defendant sitting at the table. We've all seen law and order. We know who the defendant is. She pointed to juror number six. Even that guy voted guilty when he believed that he made a mistake and he tried to take back his verdict. So it was a revelation that when you think about the system as a whole, it's not just police, it's not just prosecutors, it's not just defense attorneys, it's not just prosecutors. It's not just defense attorneys. It's not just investigators. It is you and me. It is all of us. Our responsibility as Americans is to pay taxes, vote and serve on a jury. Really? Right. Yeah. If we're being asked to do that,

why are we being put in those positions when people's lives and fate are on the line and by the way i'm glad you brought up that as the most the conversation because there was another conversation in there that i was hoping you didn't bring up which was the one which was the one where i had this mantra that i kept saying to jj but we won't talk about that. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. Well, no, but I think I know what you're referencing. The mantra that you said to JJ, kind of the official line in journalism, and you said it to him. I'll tell you the story.

And that was a turning point because you realized, that was the moment you realized that you no longer questioned his guilt or innocence, that you could no longer proceed just as a journalist. So this is an important moment for me. And when you asked me before what it was like to meet JJ was a turning point. Yes, meeting him was a turning point, but I didn't know it then. The real turning point in our relationship came about a decade ago when I had this mantra that I said to JJ all the time, like I do everybody.

I'm a journalist. I'm not your friend. If I find anything that proves your guilt, it's coming out. I even said to him, even the color of your underwear, right? We have this pact to this day. We do not lie to each other. And so I did a show in 2012. It came out. I humbly say, and not because of pride, that it was nominated for three Emmys.

And I only say that because the world of journalism saw it as an act of journalism. It proved his innocence. And what the DA's office did after that was horrendous. And people could read the book to learn what happened. But it got to the point where J.J. was as innocent as he was alive. And he was a good man, an exceptionally, an exceptional human being. And we were friends at that point. And it was about 2014, and we thought that a decision was going to come in his favor

from a judge, and I was in the courtroom. And it didn't. He got denied. At that point, I had known him for 12 years. And I was coming down the elevator, and he had called me from Sing Sing, and I delivered the bad news, and I heard the disappointment in his voice. And there was a prosecutor standing a few feet away from me now I know all my phone calls are recorded from Sing Sing I was always very careful because I said to him I'm going to say this to you on the phone I don't want them because they were coming after me too right so I saw this prosecutor and to put my objectivity on display I said Jay just so you know if anything comes out proving your guilt I'm gonna report it

and there was this long silence and he said three words to me. Really, Dan? Now? It is so painful for me to think about that, because for a few reasons. What it did to him, he wouldn't even, he was in prison. He wouldn't even talk to me. He wouldn't even talk to me he wouldn't even call he would not talk to me so what it did to him what how i made him feel devastated me but it also made me think about something on a much deeper level jj was innocent there weren't two sides to this. And what I was doing is I was playing the game.

I was putting my objectivity on display in a way that I was taught I should. And that's why people are wrongfully convicted in the first place. JJ, what was that moment like for you when he repeated that journalistic mantra that in that moment felt like a betrayal to you, it sounds like. You said the words exactly. And in that moment, it did feel like a betrayal. And you know, like, when Dan and I, when I was able to get past my emotions, because I know that emotions cloud good judgment,

he came on a visit, and we had a real talk. It was just like, if you ever say that to me again, I'm never going to talk to you again. And it was the hardest thing to do, because at that point, I already loved him like a brother. And it was just real. I'm sorry I did that. I'm sorry.

It was real hard, because at that point, he took me. And the way I had digested it was like, you just diminished my humanity to a story. You're telling me I'm a story. This is real. Like, I really don't belong here. How can you say that to me for them? For anyone.

At that point, it was too real for me for you to even... You know more about my case than me. You know I'm innocent. For you to say that is disrespectful. But I did understand that it came from a sense of training. It came from the position that he was in. It took me a while to see that. But he taught me that I have a responsibility to be more of a human.

My humanity was not on display that day. And that came second to my own desire, my own need to feel like I was doing the right thing for other people, not what was right. And you know what? I've never said that to him again, ever. And I never will, obviously. It's kind of why he asked for permission to say it. Yeah.

That makes sense. But it's a powerful story. And I think it's important for people to hear it, to understand this incredible relationship and bond you both have now. And I know you're both still fighting. You are fighting because you do want to be pardoned, because you did not commit the crime that you were convicted of. Do you have hope, J.J., that you will be pardoned? Well, right now, we're three years into a reinvestigation in the Manhattan D.A.'s office. There's a new prosecutor. I've been through three prosecutors, from Robert Morgenthau to Cyrus Vance

to now Alvin Bragg. But the investigation has been a pretty open investigation, and we have all the reason to believe that they're going to do the right thing and that they'll be doing it soon. I'm the reporter here. What can you tell me?

What I'll say is that I have a lot of sources in the city and in the DA's office, and their investigation is over. And the inclination, I believe, is that his conviction will be vacated. They cannot do that. A judge needs to do that. There is no specific date on the calendar now, but I would be surprised if it didn't happen sometime within the next four to six weeks. Sitting with the two of you, I read about it in your book, Dan, but I can feel the bond between the two of you, that you write that you're family, but sitting with you, that's so clear. Dan, what does JJ mean to you?

Every, JJ, JJ has, this is what makes me uncomfortable, is that people say, look what you did for JJ. I hate, I mean, I understand it comes from a good place. I don't want to diminish people saying that. But the reason I feel uncomfortable is because JJ has done so much more for me than I have ever done for him. He has taught me so much about so many different things that I didn't know about myself, about the world, about a society that I didn't even know existed. He taught me what loyalty

means. He taught me what it means to be human, what it means to be a good friend, what it means to be a better journalist. He also helped other people. He led me to three other people. These conversations that we're having now about that moment, that turning point, was before I did all these other cases. It got worse and worse and worse. And what I think when people read this book, and I hope that they read it or listen to it or whatever. When I was recording the book, I spent 20 years living this. I spent thousands of hours writing that. I'm recording the book.

I'm reading it. He said he was in Florida and he had 13 alibi. I look up at the, I'm like, do you believe this? Like, like it's the first time I have my outrage only increases with time. No one is ever held accountable. There is no accountability, zero. All of the stories in this book where these men were railroaded in the face of obvious innocence. Those detectives are still getting their pensions. No one is ever all across America until there's accountability, until people start seeing this for what it is. And by the way, it affects everyone, not just the people who are in prison.

If you think it doesn't affect you because you're never going to end up like that, guess what? You're wrong. I've done stories about people who have been plucked from the street, kidnapped from their lives, never been convicted before. And if it doesn't affect them, it affects their kids. And by the way, if you don't know one of those people, you know what it does affect? Your wallet. JJ, you referred to Dan as your brother.

You hear him using this powerful word, innocent. What does that word mean to you? What does innocent mean to you? Unfortunately, innocent is a word that I don't believe society respects. You know, like, there are a lot of people doing time right now in prison that don't deserve to be there. And, you know, there's this, I think he said it best earlier, Dan said it, about the emotional piece, this idea that society has about retribution. Like, we're filled with hatred. Politics is fueling hatred in our country. Division, right? Because it's so much easier to control us

when we're like that. I mean, I can't really speak to the word innocent because words in our, like the way we use words today, they don't even have, they're not backed by meaning. It's like money that's not backed by gold. We just say what sounds right or what we think people want to hear. But we're not really getting anywhere because people aren't paying attention to what's really happening. JJ, what do you want people to know about your relationship with Dan?

What he means to you? Besides my mother, Dan's my hero. He's my brother. I love your brother. I mean... I feel like I'm three years old in a new world, right? I've just been reborn. I don't know much, but what I do know

is that this is real. Yeah, 100%. You know, I got my wife, my daughter, and JJ. And E, E. We got E and David. Eric Listen is the guy in the book. Me, JJ, and Eric hang out, and we call each other three the hard way. That's our little name for each other. Yeah, but the relationship between

Dan has been a redefining moment for me because I've never been so close to somebody who is not my actual blood. Well, it is just an honor and deeply humbling to talk to both of you. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us. Thank you for doing this because people who listen to this, particularly people who are in prison, are going to be heard. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you both so much.