THE SING SING FILES

A TV producer’s journey into the hellish landscape of wrongful convictions.

Slepian, a veteran producer of Dateline, 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 for Dateline, 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.