The Sing Sing Files: One Journalist, Six Innocent Men, and a Twenty-Year Fight for Justice

An NBC Dateline producer’s cinematic account of his two-decade journey navigating the broken criminal justice system to help free six innocent men

In 2002, Dan Slepian, a veteran producer for NBC’s Dateline, received a tip from a Bronx homicide detective that two men were serving twenty-five years to life in prison for a 1990 murder they did not commit.

Haunted by what the detective had told him, Slepian began an investigation of the case that eventually resulted in freedom for the two men and launched Slepian on a two-decade personal and professional journey into a deeply flawed justice system fiercely resistant to rectifying--or even acknowledging--its mistakes and their consequences.

The Sing Sing Files: One Journalist, Six Innocent Men, and a Twenty-Year Fight for Justice is Slepian’s account of challenging that system. The story follows Slepian on years of prison visits, court hearings, and street reporting that led to a series of powerful Dateline episodes and eventually to freedom for four other men and to an especially deep and lasting friendship with one of them, Jon-Adrian ＂JJ＂ Velazquez. From his cell in Sing Sing, JJ aided Slepian in his investigations until his own release in 2021 after decades in prison.

Like Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy, The Sing Sing Files is a deeply personal account of wrongful imprisonment and the flaws in our justice system, and a powerful argument for reckoning and accountability. Slepian’s extraordinary book, at once painful and full of hope, shines a light on an injustice whose impact the nation has only begun to confront.

Dan Slepian is an award-winning journalist at NBC News and a veteran producer of its signature
newsmagazine, Dateline. Over more than two decades at NBC, Slepian has spearheaded dozens
of documentaries, hidden camera investigations, and is known for his in-depth reporting about the criminal legal system and specifically, wrongful convictions.

His documentaries on the topic have earned him a total of twelve Emmy nominations and in February 2023, NBC News released ＂Letters From Sing Sing,＂ an eight-episode award-winning podcast hosted by Slepian that hit #1 on Apple’s top charts the day of its release.