A man was indicted on Monday for allegedly attacking Jewish men in separate incidents on the Upper West Side in June while making antisemitic remarks, prosecutors said.
He received an executive clemency in 2021 that left him free but not exonerated. His jailhouse lawyering helped lead to new evidence that got the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg Jr., to reinvestigate the case even though the office under his predecessor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., had declined in 2013 to vacate Mr. Velazquez’s conviction and opposed his attempts to raise new evidence.
A New York judge on Monday formally vacated the homicide conviction of a man incarcerated for almost 24 years before starring in the award-winning movie Sing Sing about the rehabilitative effects of a prison arts program.
Manhattan prosecutors joined a motion with Velazquez’s lawyers to vacate his conviction for murdering retired police officer Albert Ward in 1998, a crime that occurred when two people robbed a gambling parlor in Harlem.
A man who served nearly a quarter-century in prison for a retired police officer’s murder had his name cleared Monday thanks to updates in DNA forensic technology, Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg announced.
