The Sing Sing Files: One Journalist, Six Innocent Men, and a 20-Year Fight for Justice

Dateline producer Slepian debuts with a riveting account of his crusade to free six wrongfully convicted men from New York State’s Sing Sing prison. The narrative begins with the 1990 killing of New York City bouncer Markus Peterson, who was shot while working the door at a nightclub. David Lemus and Olmedo Hidalgo, who had prior convictions for riding in a stolen car and carrying an unlicensed gun, respectively, were arrested and sentenced to 25 to life for the crime, despite their persuasive alibis. While shadowing two NYPD detectives for Dateline in 2002, Slepian learned that one firmly believed Lemus and Hidalgo were innocent. That led Slepian to visit Sing Sing and interview both men, which persuaded him of their innocence. Through those interviews, he also learned of several other cases of sketchy convictions at Sing Sing, including those of J.J. Velazquez, a Latino man who was convicted of murdering a former cop based on witness testimony that the killers were Black, and Eric Glisson, who spent 17 years at Sing Sing for killing a cab driver before his release in 2012. With Slepian’s help, each man walked free by 2021, and most received multimillion-dollar settlements. Slepian tells his subects’ stories with rigor and compassion, and persuasively argues that America’s justice system is “designed to easily imprison the innocent” in the name of closing cases quickly. This is difficult to shake. Agent: Larry Weissman, Larry Weissman Literary. (Sept.)