was killed, shot once in the head. >> immediately upon albert ward dropping to the floor, the twoout to be critical to the case. in the meantime, a retired cop was down. the nypd responded swiftly and with force. >> there's captains. there's lieutenants. there's an enormous police presence. >> the eyewitnesses, the ones who didn't run, gave detectives similar descriptions of the shooter and his accomplice. >> the gunman was a light-skinned male black with braids, and the other individual was a dark-skinned male black. >> at the precinct, eyewitnesses were shown books with hundreds of mug shots, none recognized the shooter, but one eyewitness did pick out a photo of the dark-skinned male, the killer's accomplice. >> the dark-skinned black male was identified as derry daniels who had a long criminal history. >> derry daniels was picked up, placed in a lineup, and after being identified by three eyewitnesses he was charged with murder. next, police focused on finding his accomplice. >> the police artist sketch eds a drawing of what the gunman purportedly looked like. >> this sketch w

there was a struggle and then gunfire. 59-year-old albert ward was killed. shot once in the head.etectives similar descriptions of the shooter and his accomplice. >> the gunman was a light skinned male black with braids. >> lo and behold when they have the lineup, you have jon-adrian velazquez, who is hispanic. >> reporter: did you ever have dreadlocks? >> absolutely not. >> reporter: has there ever been any physical evidence to link you to this crime? >> none whatsoever. >> reporter: you were nowhere close to the scene. why is it that you were picked out? >> luke, that's probably the best question in the world. i don't know the answer. >> reporter: velazquez was found guilty of second degree murder. >> i know i heard my mother. i heard her scream. i don't think i looked back. i don't think i had the heart to look back in my family's eyes. >> reporter: his sentence, 25 years to life. from behind bars, velazquez went to work trying to prove his innocence. "dateline" first heard from velazquez ten years ago when he began writing us letters. >> i needed to be heard. i needed somebody

about 1997 he was charged with murdering a guy named albert ward a retired new york cop.hat said it was an african-american man with dread locks. j.j.valasquez is a hispanic man with short hair and got picked up. the reason was eyewitness identification. at a police precinct all these eyewitnesses who had drug histories of their own, one specific witness after going through hours and hours of photographs even though he had eight pounds of heroin in his own pants and the cops did nothing about that ended up picking out john adrian velazquez and through what we've often seen in the court system denot have the best defense going and ended up convicted for this crime all based on the fact that the jury did not believe he was on the phone with his mother. that was his only alibi. to make a long story short here is somebody that had no dna, no murder weapon ever found, no physical evidence at the scene and has now been in jail for 15 years based solely on eyewitness identification. if you watch our "dateline" special on sunday night at 7:00 p.m. we track down those eyewitnesses