Sing Sing's superintendent tells Dan Slepian that J.J. Velasquez has received executive clemency.
1. Letters from Sing Sing: The Call examines J.J. Velazquez's legal fight and life inside Sing Sing.
2. Dan Slepian reports on J.J. Velazquez, Maria, and the legal advocates involved in his case.
3. The episode asks whether withheld police report DD-593 could have affected J.J. Velazquez's conviction.
4. On January 18, 2018, Judge Abraham Klatt heard arguments about whether DD-593 contained exculpatory and material information.
5. Bob Gottlieb argued that the prosecution's case depended on eyewitnesses who did not know J.J. Velazquez.
6. Gottlieb said the eyewitnesses described a Black man with braids on the day of Al Ward's murder.
7. DD-593 recorded Derry Daniels's father describing a light-skinned Black man with braids who came seeking money.
8. Prosecutor Joel Seidemann argued that the description could fit many people and asked Judge Klatt to uphold the verdict.
9. Seidemann also raised questions about when Dan Slepian had received DD-593 from the Manhattan District Attorney's office.
10. Judge Klatt later ruled that the report did not create a reasonable possibility of a different verdict.
11. Martin Sheen visited Sing Sing twice and publicly called for J.J. Velazquez's release.
12. Jason Flom featured J.J. Velazquez on Wrongful Conviction and helped support a clemency campaign.
13. Steve Zeidman described sentence commutation as the clemency option that can allow someone to go home without erasing a conviction.
14. Zeidman said clemency in New York is difficult to obtain without advocates keeping an applicant's name visible.
15. J.J. Velazquez filed clemency petitions in 2017, 2018, and 2019 without receiving relief.
16. During the 2020 lockdown, J.J. Velazquez reported bleaching his phone booth and washing his hands six to eight times an hour.
17. J.J. said parole could require him to express remorse for a crime he says he did not commit.
18. The episode uses courtroom audio, prison phone calls, interviews, and recorded scenes to follow J.J. Velazquez's case.
19. Listeners following J.J. Velazquez's wrongful-conviction case.
20. Listeners uninterested in J.J. Velazquez's legal appeals.
