
The Sing Sing Files
One Journalist, Six Innocent Men, and a Twenty-Year Fight for Justice
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Narrated by:
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Dan Slepian
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By:
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Dan Slepian
Long-listed, Amazon.com Best Books of the Year, 2024
Long-listed, Audible.com Best of the Year, 2024
“Bristling with urgency, empathy, and determination…this is investigative journalism at its best and most necessary.”—AudioFile
The author's podcast, Letters from Sing Sing, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.
This program is read by the author and features sound design and original archival sound recordings from Sing Sing maximum-security prison, including letters written to the author. It also includes commentary from formerly incarcerated men.
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.
A Macmillan Audio production from Celadon Books.
©2024 Dan Slepian (P)2024 Macmillan AudioListeners also enjoyed...




















Critic reviews
"Dan Slepian has written a book that is as informative as it is enraging. In these gripping case studies of innocent men wrongfully convicted, you learn how and why the truth often does not prevail in the American justice system. You also get a glimpse of the strength of the human spirit and of heroic efforts to right these wrongs. The stories are inspiring and so is the author. He has spent a career 'given the buried voice sound,' as one incarcerated man put it. This volume is on full blast with this tour-de-force. This is a must-read for anyone who cares about criminal justice, mass incarceration, or humanity."—Rachel Barkow, author of Prisoners of Politics: Breaking the Cycle of Mass Incarceration and Professor at NYU, School of Law
"This passionate, gripping, and moving chronicle of a skeptical journalist’s twenty year journey investigating injustice leads him, remarkably, to six innocent men, close friends, and a nuanced understanding of the humanity, resilience, and limitless potential of those we imprison, guilty or innocent. Dan Slepian’s engrossing insider’s narrative lays bare the infuriating incapacity and willful blindness of New York prosecutors, police, defense lawyers, and judges to recognize and correct wrongful convictions. The Sing Sing Files is a vitally important book that inspires hope that we can and will do better."—Barry Scheck, Co-Founder and Special Counsel, the Innocence Project
“While recounting his heroic efforts to free six wrongfully convicted men,
Dan Slepian uncovers the tremendous obstacles to truth and justice that plague our criminal legal system. He shows that the problems are both systemic and personal, as institutions and actors protect their own reputations rather than fix the egregious mistakes and wrongdoings that have ruined the lives of countless people and their families. The Sing Sing Files should inspire readers to create a new generation of leaders who will genuinely pursue justice.”—Marc Howard, director of the Prisons and Justice Initiative at Georgetown University
Interview: Dan Slepian’s "The Sing Sing Files" is a must-listen on the horrors of the criminal justice system
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Extra extraordinary and captivating Read!
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Dan Slepian has my utmost respect, not just as a journalist, but as a human being. It takes a special person to be able to see convicted prisoners as more than statistics. It should not be that way, but unfortunately, it is.
JJ Velasquez is the true hero of this story. It is a testament to his character and resilience that he was able to not only survive his ordeal, but turn it into an opportunity to help others. The world needs more people like Dan and JJ.
If you think these injustices don’t apply to you, you’re wrong. Any one of us is just an accident away from winding up on the wrong side of the law. This book is a must-read/listen for anyone interested in justice and reform.
A Powerful Exposé on Justice and Reform
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Good listen
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One of the book’s most striking revelations is how the legal system disproportionately affects those who lack financial resources. Many of the cases Slepian highlights involve individuals who could not afford private legal counsel and had to rely on public defenders—lawyers who were often talented and well-meaning but overburdened with enormous caseloads. The book makes it painfully clear how the deck is stacked against defendants in these high-stakes cases, particularly in big cities like New York, where evidence can be flawed, trials move quickly, and juries often place great trust in law enforcement narratives.
Slepian also brings to light the systemic bias in policing, especially against minority communities. At the same time, he doesn’t demonize law enforcement; instead, he paints a nuanced picture of officers struggling under the weight of overwhelming caseloads and the pressure to secure convictions. The book doesn’t excuse misconduct, but it does humanize the people working within a broken system.
Perhaps the most haunting takeaway from The Sing Sing Files is the near-impossibility of getting out once you are inside the prison system. The bureaucracy of incarceration is portrayed as rigid, unyielding, and often more concerned with preserving its own authority than with ensuring actual justice. The analogy that came to mind as I was reading was that of a roach motel—once you’re in, there’s no easy way out. Even in cases where new evidence surfaces or doubts emerge about a conviction, the institutional resistance to reconsidering past mistakes is staggering.
Beyond the legal mechanics, Slepian does an exceptional job illustrating the devastating human cost of incarceration. The book highlights how imprisonment shatters families—children growing up without parents, relationships severed, and entire communities destabilized by the absence of those caught in the system. The sheer isolation of incarceration, the inhumane treatment, and the often vindictive nature of the punishment system make it hard to see how anyone truly "benefits" from these sentences. More than justice, the system seems to demand a form of ritual payment—where the punishment itself is more important than whether it serves any rehabilitative or corrective purpose.
For me, The Sing Sing Files was both eye-opening and deeply unsettling. It left me disturbed not just by the stories Slepian tells, but by the larger implications: How many more people are sitting in prison, unseen, unheard, and without a real path to justice? It’s a book that forces you to question not just the failures of the system but the very purpose of incarceration in America. A powerful, necessary read.
A powerful, necessary read
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The storyline was compelling.
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Outstanding performance, thought provoking, page turner
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Heartbreaking and Hopeful
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Eye Opening Cases
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Excellent story!!
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Heart wrenching but the research has been done!
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