A Sing-Sing murder inmate whose wrongful-conviction claim was recently rejected by Manhattan prosecutors is now asking that Manhattan judge re-open the case.
Jon-Adrian Velazquez is serving a life sentence for the shooting death of retired police officer Albert Ward during a robbery at an illegal gambling hall in Harlem in 1998.
Velazquez’s wrongful conviction effort has been championed by actor Martin Sheen, who has met with him in prison and appeared at press conferences on his behalf.
“We have filed a formal motion for the purpose of presenting evidence before a judge,” Velazquez’s lawyer, Robert Gottlieb, told reporters today.
Velazqez had been convicted based solely on eye-witness testimony, said Gottlieb and co-counsel Celia Gordon. “There was no DNA, no fingerprints, no blood evidence, nothing except eyewitnesses,” he said.
“Even back then, it’s hard to understand how Jon-Adrian Velazquez was ever convicted,” he said. “It’s the single most greatest cause of wrongful convictions in our nation,” he said experts now know of eyewitness testimony.
Some of the original trial’s eyewitnesses have since recanted or say they are in doubt, and an additional witness has stepped forward to credibly implicate a drug dealer — known only as “Moustapha,” — as the real murderer, Gottlieb said.
Prosecutors today continued to defend their own decision this month — after a two year investigation by the DA Office’s Conviction Integrity Unit — not to re-open the case.
“This lengthy reinvestigation did not uncover evidence sufficient to demonstrate that Mr. Velazquez is innocent of the crime for which he was tried and convicted by a jury,” said DA spokeswoman Erin Duggan.
“This is now a court matter and we will respond in due course to the motion filed today. But it is beyond baffling that these lawyers, who spent many hours with many senior prosecutors working on this reinvestigation, would vilify the District Attorney’s office now that the result is not what they had hoped for.”