A “Sing Sing” actor has ushered in the “end of an error” after New York prosecutors decided he was wrongfully convicted of murdering a retired police officer in the 1990s.
Manhattan Dist. Atty. Alvin Bragg announced Monday that his office would vacate actor Jon-Adrian “JJ” Velazquez’s murder conviction, citing “newly discovered DNA evidence” that prosecutors said proved his innocence. “JJ Velazquez has lived in the shadow of his conviction for more than 25 years, and I hope that today brings with it a new chapter for him,” Bragg said.
Velazquez, 48, was convicted in 1999 of shooting retired police officer Albert Ward. Ward was shot and killed in 1998 when he tried to thwart an armed robbery and fired at two suspects, including the shooter, in an underground betting parlor in Harlem. Velazquez, who said he was in the Bronx and on the phone with his mom at the time of the shooting, was sentenced to 25 years to life in the Sing Sing Correctional Facility. He was granted early release and clemency in 2021 by then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
The district attorney‘s office, which said it had rejected motions to vacate Velazquez’s conviction in 2014 and 2018, said Monday that it had finally revisited the actor’s case, prompting the chief medical examiner to compare the actor’s DNA with DNA on a betting slip that belonged to the shooter.
“The testing found that Velazquez’s DNA was excluded — or not found — from a mixture of the DNA on the betting slip handled by the shooter,” Monday’s release said, adding that “this type of DNA comparison was not available” at the time of the actor’s trial in the ’90s.
The district attorney’s move to clear his name this week “isn’t a celebration,” Velaquez told members of the media outside a courthouse. Surrounded by loved ones and wearing a black cap that read “End of an error,” Velazquez told reporters that this moment was “an indictment of the system.”
Velazquez shares the screen with Colman Domingo and Paul Raci in Greg Kwedar’s drama “Sing Sing.” The film spotlights the Rehabilitation Through the Arts theater program for men incarcerated at the New York prison. “Sing Sing” also stars former incarcerated actors Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, Sean “Dino” Johnson, David “Dap” Giraudy and Patrick “Preme” Griffin as themselves. In her review for the L.A. Times, critic Katie Walsh praised their “damn good performances.”
“‘Sing Sing’ is a powerful argument for the existence of humanity within a space designed to dehumanize,” Walsh wrote.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.