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Jon-Adrian Velazquez sits in an upstate prison wrongfully convicted of murder. Mr. Velazquez has lost fourteen years of his life after a jury convicted him of murder in the second degree on nothing more than eyewitness identifications. He is an innocent man.He's now petitioning the New York County District Attorney to review his case, the evidence that was presented to the jury and the results of post conviction investigation for the purpose of undoing the grave injustice that has robbed Mr. Velazquez of his freedom while the real killer escaped and was never brought to justice.

A recent investigation has uncovered significant new evidence which includes eyewitness recantations and changes in eyewitnesses' trial testimony that confirm the unreliability of the initial eyewitness identifications. Recent scientific studies have raised serious doubts about the accuracy of eyewitness identifications in general and in this case in particular. The eyewitness identifications in this case must now be seen as having very little probative value, highly unreliable, and grossly insufficient to support a guilty verdict in the absence of any other evidence to indicate that Mr. Velazquez was involved in the murder.

Mr. Velazquez's conviction must be vacated for the following reasons:
--- Mr. Velazquez was wrongfully convicted based solely on eyewitness misidentification
---There are no physical or DNA evidence against Mr. Velazquez
---The police failed to pursue and investigate an individual by the name of "Mustafa" who was identified to law enforcement by multiple sources as the shooter and the person responsible for the death of Albert Ward
---Witnesses have recanted their identifications and charged their trial testimony.

An objective review of the record in this case, the police investigation, and the additional new information that's been provided overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that Jon-Adrian Velazquez was wrongfully convicted. We are confident that upon reinvestigation and evaluation of all the facts and circumstances of this case, you will conclude:

• This case is the classic example of how an innocent person can be found guilty based on mistaken eyewitness identifications.
• The police procedures utilized in the identification process unduly influenced the eyewitnesses and were replete with highly suggestive statements and conduct rendering the identificationn meaningless. The procedures used were neither double blind nor sequential, which are two methods available to minimize the chances of a detective intentionally or uniintentionally influencing the eyewitnesses' decision.
• The scientific literature and recent studies reflect a broad consensus that the reliability of eyewitness testimony is highly dependent on police procedures used in conducting lineups (System variables) and other particular characteristics of the events, witnesses and perpetrators that are beyond the control of law enforcement personnel and procedures (Estimator variables). In this case, both the System variables and Estimator variabled render the eyewitness identifications utterly useless and unreliable.
• The identifications made by witnesses reflect cross racial bias. All the eyewitnesses were black and Jon-Adrian Velazquez is Hispanic.
• The police failed to fill the lineup with individuals who even remotely reflected the physical and racial characteristics of the person described by eyewitnesses prior to their viewing the lineup. Every eyewitness initially described the shooter to the police as "male black". However, the lineup consisted of six men including Jon-Adrian Velazquez who is Hispanic. The five fillers were all Hispanic and three of the five appear Caucasian.
• Of the four eyewitnesses who identified Mr. Velazquez, two have since recanted their identifications and the two remaining eyewitnesses have substantially qualified their identifications so as to render them inconclusive and hardly sufficient to prove guilt.
• The police failed to conduct a thorough investigation of "Mustafa", a person identified as the shooter by multiple sources, or other men whose names were provided to the police as involved in the murder. There exists substantial evidence that "Mustafa" was the shooter, not Mr. Velazquez and this really cries out for further investigation;
• There are additional areas that require further investigation utilizing more sophisticated tecniques and procedures than were available in 1998 including but not limited to examination of latent fingerprints and handwriting analysis of the policy slip on which the name "Tee" was written and vouchered as evidence.

In this case, justice cries out for Mr. Velazquez's complete and unequivocal exoneration. Every day Mr. Velazquez spends incarcerated is a miscarriage of justice and grossly undermines any true concept of American justice because Jon-Adrian Velazquez is actually an innocent man.