Luke Russert, NBC’s congressional correspondent, has been moonlighting at NBC News recently. He’s reporting his first “Dateline NBC” story that will air as an hour-long investigation two weeks from tonight.
And while it’s Russert’s first “Dateline,” this is a story producers have been working on for a decade.
Ten years ago, Dateline producer Dan Slepian started getting letters from an inmate named Jon-Adrian Velazquez. Valazquez is serving 25 years to life in Sing Sing prison for killing a retired NYPD police officer — a murder he says he did not commit.
Russert interviews Velazquez, his mother, his former girlfriend, his attorneys — now two years on the case — and a witness who picked Velazquez out of a lineup. That man, August Brown tells Russert, “I don’t know if I picked out the right person.”
The “Dateline” investigation airs Sunday, Feb. 12 at 7pmET/6pmCT.