Sing Sing actor JJ Velazquez exonerated after serving 23 years in prison for wrongful murder conviction

Jon-Adrian ‘JJ’ Velazquez was wrongfully convicted in 1998 of murdering a retired New York police officer

Colman Domingo’s Sing Sing co-star Jon-Adrian “JJ” Velazquez has been officially exonerated after serving nearly 24 years in prison for a wrongful murder conviction.

On Monday (September 30), Velazquez, 48, who was convicted of murdering a retired New York police officer in 1998, was formally cleared of charges by a Manhattan judge.

Following the judge’s ruling, a teary-eyed Velazquez was seen hugging friends and family as he pounded his chest and pumped his fist in the air, according to Variety.

“I was kidnapped by this country and enslaved,” he told the press as he left the courthouse. “This is not a celebration. This is an indictment of the system.”

Velazquez appeared as himself in A24’s 2023 drama about a man (Domingo) imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit. While there, he joins the prison’s theater group and finds community alongside other incarcerated men.

Sing Sing is based on the real-life Rehabilitation Through the Arts program at New York State’s Sing Sing Maximum Security Prison, where Velazquez was falsely imprisoned.

In 1998, Velazquez was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison despite not matching the suspect’s description. At the time, witnesses described the shooter as being a light-skinned Black man. Velazquez is Latino. He also had an alibi that was corroborated by phone records.

JJ Velazquez was wrongfully convicted of murdering a retired New York police officer in 1998 (Getty Images)

NBC’s Dateline began an investigation into Velazquez’s case in 2002. A decade later, the news program aired a broadcast that introduced new physical evidence in Velazquez’s favor.

The episode led the Manhattan District Attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit to reinvestigate the case, but the DA eventually said it did not find “sufficient evidence” to demonstrate Velazquez was innocent.

JJ Velazquez (far right) and the cast of ‘Sing Sing’ at the 2023 Toronto Internation Film Festival (Getty Images)

Another revinstigation was launched years later. It was found that Velazquez’s DNA did not match the DNA discovered on a betting slip that the shooter handled before killing the police officer.

It wasn’t until August 2021 that Velazquez was granted executive clemency by then-New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. The next month, he was released from prison after serving 23 years, eight months and seven days.

During a criminal legal reform forum in October 2022, President Joe Biden issued an apology to Velazquez “on behalf of all society.”

Speaking to Variety ahead of his exoneration, Velazquez said: “It’s a lot deeper than discrimination. It comes down to diminishing a person’s human dignity.

“I’m getting a part of my dignity back. There’s nothing that they can do to give me back the 24 years I lost, and all of the tribulations to incur as a result. There’s a spirit of vindication, but there’s still a lot of trauma that’s unaddressed – that the system refuses to address.”

While in prison, Velazquez obtained a Bachelor of Science Degree in Behavioral Science from Mercy College. He now works as a criminal legal reform activist.