About Jon-Adrian · Life and leadership
Who Is Jon-Adrian “JJ” Velazquez?
JJ’s family ties, education, leadership during wrongful incarceration, service, and innocence advocacy—updated through release and exoneration.
Father, student, and advocate
JJ is a father of two who maintained close family relationships through decades of wrongful imprisonment. Rather than allow his wrongful incarceration to end his development, he built a life of service around education, peer support, and the belief that people can make healthier choices.
Leadership inside
During his wrongful incarceration, JJ lived on Sing Sing’s Honor Block and served in elected and appointed roles connecting incarcerated people with the administration. His work included the Inmate Liaison Committee, Family Reunion Program, Youth Assistance Program, Hudson Link, and community initiatives created by incarcerated leaders.
He earned an associate degree in 2012 and a bachelor’s degree in Behavioral Science in 2014, became a certified paralegal, assisted college students, and helped other incarcerated people research cases and pursue relief. That legal work earned him a reputation as a “one-man innocence project.”
The cases around him
JJ pursued his own innocence claim while helping other incarcerated men organize records, identify legal issues, and communicate with lawyers and journalists. The National Registry of Exonerations credits his advice and support with playing a role in the exonerations of Johnny Hincapie, Eric Glisson, and Richard Rosario. The outcomes and legal teams differed, but the pattern was consistent: JJ used the knowledge he had gained under pressure to help other people make their cases legible outside prison.
Building institutions across prison walls
JJ helped establish programs connecting incarcerated leaders with educators, young people, clergy, elected officials, and community organizations. The program-by-program record—including Forgotten Voices, Voices From Within, CHOICES, mutual aid, and TEDx Sing Sing—is preserved on the work JJ built across prison walls.
Theater became another part of that work. Through Rehabilitation Through the Arts, JJ helped build the ensemble culture later dramatized in SING SING. In a first-person account for The Marshall Project, he describes performance as a place where incarcerated men could practice trust, vulnerability, and responsibility—skills that also shaped his organizing and mentoring.
The case he carried while helping others
JJ voluntarily appeared for a lineup on February 2, 1998, after learning police wanted to question him about the killing of retired NYPD officer Albert Ward during a robbery inside an illegal Harlem gambling joint. He did not match the original shooter description, and no physical evidence linked him to the crime. He maintained his innocence from the beginning.
Freedom and the work now
JJ left Sing Sing on September 9, 2021, after exactly 23 years, 7 months, and 8 days of wrongful incarceration. The Associated Press reported on the 2021 clemency grant. He continued the fight to clear his name while leading prison visits, public education, media projects, and justice advocacy. The Frederick Douglass Project biography documents that continuing work. On September 30, 2024, the court vacated his conviction and dismissed the indictment.