Jon-Adrian “JJ” Velazquez
Voices From Within
Co-Founder & Executive Director
About Jon-Adrian “JJ” Velazquez
Jon-Adrian “JJ” Velazquez is an exoneree, justice reform advocate, nonprofit leader, actor, producer, and speaker whose work is deeply shaped by his own experience with wrongful conviction and incarceration. Wrongfully convicted in 1998, JJ spent nearly 24 years incarcerated for a crime he did not commit before receiving executive clemency in 2021. After continuing his fight to clear his name, he was fully exonerated in 2024.
While incarcerated at Sing Sing Correctional Facility, JJ co-founded Voices From Within, a lived-experience-led organization that uses education, mentorship, leadership development, civic engagement, and storytelling to transform lived experience into leadership and community impact. Today, his work spans wrongful-conviction advocacy, prison programming, youth prevention, public education, media, and storytelling. His own experience has made the integrity of evidence, access to post-conviction review, wrongful-conviction prevention, and the responsible use of forensic science particularly important areas of his advocacy.
Featured Work By this Advocate
Letters from Sing Sing Podcast
JJ’s story and fight for exoneration are the focus of the Pulitzer Prize finalist podcast Letters From Sing Sing, an investigation spanning decades that examines wrongful conviction, evidence, accountability, and the human consequences of failures within the legal system.
Sing Sing - Feature Film
JJ appeared as himself in the Academy Award-nominated feature film Sing Sing, inspired by the real-life work of Rehabilitation Through the Arts inside Sing Sing Correctional Facility. Beyond his role in the film, JJ helped lead the film’s impact campaign during its Oscar campaign and awards-season run, using screenings, conversations, and public engagement around the film to deepen dialogue about incarceration, rehabilitation, human dignity, and the capacity for personal transformation.
The Sing Sing Chronicles Documentary
JJ’s decades-long fight to prove his innocence is at the center of the Emmy Award-winning documentary The Sing Sing Chronicles, which chronicles investigative journalist Dan Slepian’s investigation into JJ’s wrongful conviction and the evidence that ultimately helped establish the truth. Today, JJ is extending the film’s impact through the END OF AN ERROR TOUR, a national screening and conversation initiative that brings The Sing Sing Chronicles into communities around the country as a catalyst for deeper engagement around wrongful convictions, incarceration, evidence, accountability, and legal-system reform. Through curated screenings and conversations with community, education, advocacy, and legal-system partners, the tour is designed to move audiences beyond witnessing a wrongful conviction toward understanding the conditions that allow these failures to occur—and the role people can play in addressing them.