The People Who Carried the Story

Maria Velazquez · steadfast mother and principal advocate

Maria Velazquez sustained the freedom campaign from its beginning. She testified about the 74-minute telephone call that supported JJ’s alibi, kept family relationships intact across prison walls, attended legal and public events, spoke to reporters, and repeatedly insisted that she would return until her son was free. On exoneration day, she stood beside JJ and told the public that the family could finally breathe.

Dan Slepian · the reporter who stayed with the truth

Dan Slepian, an award-winning investigative producer at NBC News, first encountered JJ’s story in 2002. NBC describes the reporting journey as beginning with a letter JJ sent during his wrongful incarceration and developing across visits and material recorded in real time. Slepian and his colleagues tracked witnesses, examined the record, and brought the identification failures and innocence claim to a national audience through Dateline’s “Conviction” in February 2012.

He continued after the broadcast—through the Letters from Sing Sing podcast, The Sing Sing Files, and The Sing Sing Chronicles—until the case ended in exoneration. His reporting did more than break the story; it stayed with the people and the evidence long enough to see the public record corrected. NBC News Studios documented the reporting history when it launched Letters from Sing Sing and later The Sing Sing Chronicles, a Dawn Porter-directed series drawn from more than 1,000 hours of footage and following six men whose cases became linked through the reporting. The Meet the Moment interview preserves JJ and Slepian’s post-exoneration conversation, and NBC’s book page includes The Sing Sing Files. The podcast was named a 2024 Pulitzer Prize finalist. Read Dan Slepian’s professional biography.

Robert C. Gottlieb and Celia Gordon · principal post-conviction attorneys

Robert C. Gottlieb and Celia Gordon were JJ’s principal post-conviction attorneys for more than a decade. Gottlieb’s firm identifies JJ as a client beginning in 2010. Together, Gottlieb and Gordon investigated the witness identifications and recantations, presented the innocence claim to the Manhattan District Attorney’s new conviction-integrity operation, filed and argued state post-conviction motions, and continued returning to court after repeated denials.

Their role is documented in the legal record. The official 2016 appellate decision names Robert C. Gottlieb, Celia Gordon, and Justin Heinrich as counsel for JJ. NBC News reported on Gottlieb and Gordon’s motion asking the court to vacate the conviction, including the recantations, identification evidence, and alternate account they placed before the court. In 2017, they returned with a police report they argued contained potentially exculpatory information concerning a different suspect; prosecutors disputed the nondisclosure claim. Their sustained representation helped keep the legal record alive through the years before clemency and the final DNA reinvestigation. Visit Robert C. Gottlieb’s firm.

The later clemency and exoneration team · the final legal chapter

Attorneys at Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP represented JJ through critical stages of the fight for clemency and exoneration. The firm identifies Jonathan Abady, Earl Ward, Sam Shapiro, and Nick Bourland among the lawyers who worked on his clemency effort. The team later worked with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Post-Conviction Justice Unit on the reinvestigation and joint motion that vacated the conviction. Read the legal team’s exoneration statement or visit ECBAWM.

Digital advocacy · keeping the record available

For nearly 14 years, through JJ’s September 2021 release from wrongful incarceration, Dylan Wood maintained the Free Jon-Adrian Velazquez website and supported its social-media and petition campaigns. He later brought that digital work to Voices From Within, where he serves on the technology advisory board and helped develop the organization’s website.

This local archive continues that quieter part of advocacy: preserving the record so the work of the family, reporters, attorneys, organizers, and supporters does not disappear when a campaign enters a new chapter. The Associated Press’s exoneration report records Maria standing with JJ outside court, while the legal team’s statement names the attorneys who carried the final reinvestigation and motion.