(sirens blaring)
(suspenseful music)
- There are countless people doing hard time
in American prisons for crimes they didn't commit.
I've interviewed dozens of them for my podcast.
Now, we're bringing these powerful stories
to your screens each week.
I'm Jason Flom and this is Wrongful Conviction.
(suspenseful music)
- Jon-Adrian or JJ Velazquez was convicted
of the murder of a retired NYPD officer in 1998
during a botched robbery of a bookie joint.
Despite not matching the description of the shooter,
having phone records to back up his alibi,
and having witnesses recanting their statements,
JJ still sits behind bars in Sing Sing Prison,
serving a 25 to life sentence
while maintaining his innocence.
This is his story.
- I was young.
I was in my early twenties.
I had one child, the second child on the way
and I was trying to figure out how to put life together.
Before that opportunity came to fruition,
I received a phone call
and that phone call had basically blew my mind
because it informed me that I would be a suspect
for a crime I had no idea that took place.
- My father was a police officer.
- This place, it's worth noting, is basically populated by
most of the people are sort of
either drug addicts, drug dealers.
That's who's really in this spot at the moment.
And then at that point, this man takes out a gun,
tells them to let the second person in and a robbery ensues.
- They're a lot of things about this case that are maddening
and one of them of course is the fact
that Jon-Adrian Velazquez doesn't and never did
match anything like the description.
- One constant description kept coming up:
That is the description
that kept being repeated over and over.
The cops pick up Augustus Brown.
Augustus Brown has 10 bags of heroin in his underwear.
They bring him in to the precinct to hear him tell it.
They basically threatened him with charging him
with involvement in this crime.
They've got him in a situation
where he's got drugs on his person,
they're threatening to put a murder on him,
and they're telling him we're gonna show you photos.
You tell us who the guy is.
- The lineup should've consisted of individuals
that were consistent with the descriptions provided
by the eyewitnesses.
You don't change the makeup of a lineup to suit a suspect
that you're bringing in.
- [Sam] JJ and all the fillers were forced to wear a hat.
No one can see his hair.
One of the key descriptive features
that all these witnesses have given.
- What would have happened if I had not taken it upon myself
to go into that precinct?
Would somebody else have taken my place?
Because obviously what was taking place here
was that there was a retired member of service
who worked in this neighborhood,
who was shot in broad daylight
and there had to be an answer.
And I don't really think that the police cared
who that answer was
'cause they certainly
And there's a 74-minute conversation
that took place between my mother and I.
My mother and I have both taken polygraph reports.
It is the examiner's conclusion that the recorded responses
to the relevant questions are not indicative of deception.
- The prosecution's theory was that the call
was between Vanessa, who was JJ's then girlfriend,
and his mother.
JJ's mother is adamant that she was speaking to JJ.
You know, the prosecution made all these absurd suggestions,
including in closing arguments
that young men don't talk on the phone with their mother
for that long and just absurd stuff.
- I was not at Harlem at a number spot
when Albert Ward was killed.
I didn't even know it existed.
I don't know who Albert Ward was, never met him.
I was in the Bronx where I belonged.
I was a father.
I had two children.
That's where I was when this crime occurred.
Attorneys are so overwhelmed in New York,
particularly in the '90s.
It's clear to me, either they didn't care
or they didn't have the time to look at all the evidence.
Spent two years on Rikers Island, spent two years upstate
and realized that
if I don't start learning the law and doing my own work.
I looked through every page.
- That guy who was with Derry Daniels,
someone who exactly meets
the description the eyewitness gave.
It would have, I think, certainly impacted jurors view here.
There was another person who met the description
of the shooter, who was out there hanging out
with Derry Daniels.
Jurors should have known that.
Philip Jones signed an affidavit
recanting his identification,
saying "I got the wrong guy."
Augustus Brown makes it clear
that he also did not identify the correct shooter.
He got the wrong guy too.
And he tells the DA's office the exact same thing.
That's remarkable.
That's two out of the four eyewitnesses
who are now recanting.
- At this point, I've been fighting the courts
all the way through.
I've presented all of this evidence.
I've had lawyers come forward.
I've had media come forward.
I've had celebrities come forward.
Everybody knows the truth.
The truth is Jon-Adrian Velazquez is an innocent man
whose rights have been violated.
- [Jason] The evidence against JJ is
You have four people who identified him in court.
Two of whom have recanted their identifications.
Two of whom have questioned whether
what they said in court was in fact true.
JJ did not match the description
that was given by every eyewitness.
JJ did not know the man who pleaded guilty
to taking part in this robbery.
He had no connection to him whatsoever.
And that man was seen hours before the murder
with someone who looked exactly like the description
that eyewitnesses gave of the shooter.
to suggest that JJ is guilty.
- We're working on two tracks.
Obviously we're hoping, you know, the governor
will see fit to grant clemency.
We're also appealing to people in DA's office.
He's had letters of support from the superintendent,
from the secretary of state of New York.
On the legal side,
I know that there are still a couple of cards left to play,
so can you talk about that?
- What we're hoping might be the most promising
is a DNA card.
There's no DNA connecting JJ to this crime whatsoever.
No forensic evidence at all, no fingerprints, nothing.
- No video?
- No video, nothing, right.
It's only the eyewitnesses.
The goal here, in an ideal world, would be to uncover
an investigative profile.
A profile of someone that we could, hopefully,
run through a database.
- We've been able to obtain DNA through new technology
based on that betting slip that this individual is stating
was filled out by the shooter.
Doctor Mark Perlin, the founder of Cybergenetics TrueAllele,
has scientifically excluded me
as a contributor to this evidence.
We are now trying to see
through an order recently given by the judge
to see if Dr. Perlin can come up with what he calls
an investigative DNA profile
that we may be able to enter into the database
to find out who the real killer is.
- [Jason] It's a tragedy on several layers.
The impact it's had on his family.
- So some stories are told best through pictures.
And I would state that because I was
I've essentially lived my children's lives through pictures.
Christmases, they set up plates for me at Thanksgiving
even though I'm not there, there's a seat there for me.
This is Martin Sheen in this room coming to visit me.
He's visited me several times.
The same day he came to visit me,
he actually went to the courts and held a rally.
My mother on Mother's Day, she took a walk
from a park in Harlem all the way up to Albany.
It took her a week to do this walk.
She was not alone.
It was the mothers of the wrongfully convicted.
My mother and Yusef Salaam
from the Central Park Five's mother, led this walk.
There they are.
All the way up to Albany.
I've endured
I've had to raise my children from prison
which isn't something that's normal.
Being sentenced to 25 years to life, the intention of that
may have been for me to
but I believe that society deserves a better return
on their investment.
I believe that
So I decided to invest my time in prison.
- [Sam] Everything he has done
from the moment this crime happened
shows not only his innocence,
but his upstanding character.
He's never lost faith.
He's educated himself.
He's taken on a leadership role in that prison.
He's a remarkable man and it's
that he is stuck behind bars.
- The 22 years I've lost can never be replaced.
No sum of money, nothing in this world,
can give that time back to us.
The time that my children lost,
I can't get back.
If I were to die before I was released,
I would like to at least be able to say
that I lived for a purpose
and that people can learn from what happened to me.
People can learn from what happened to my son.
People can learn from what happened to my mother.
Our lives were destroyed,
but at least we can use our experiences
to try to save somebody else.