Lawyer Jeffrey Deskovic innocently asks if playing John “Divine G” Whitfield in A24’s “Sing Sing” is actor Colman Domingo’s biggest role. Next to him sits the real John Whitfield, who thinks deeply and factors performances in films like “Rustin” and “The Color Purple.”
There’s certainly a possibility, he concludes. Domingo scored an Oscar nomination for Best Actor this year for playing Whitfield. He joins Denzel Washington as the only Black actors nominated for the category in back-to-back years.
However, the performance is undoubtedly the most important to Whitfield and Deskovic, who met with the AmNews on Feb. 5 at Manhattan’s Angelika Film Center, where the movie was re-released. “Sing Sing” follows a “based on a true story” play production put on by Rehabilitation Through the Arts, a prison theater program Whitfield helped establish in the mid-90s. The true plot, however, lies in Domingo’s version of Whitfield, who unravels between rehearsals as his once-confident claim to innocence meets endless roadblocks.
That same claim to innocence for a 1988 second-degree murder in Canarsie reached the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Conviction Review Unit (CRU) in real life more than seven years ago. An ex-staff attorney from Deskovic’s eponymous Deskovic Foundation initially filed the application, seeking consideration for Whitfield’s exoneration. They still await a decision.
They call him ‘Divine from Brooklyn’
Court documents show witnesses did not know of a John Whitfield — but they all knew “Divine G” from the neighborhood.
Born May 16, 1964, in East New York, Whitfield spent most of his early life in Brooklyn’s Canarsie neighborhood on the straight and narrow. His childhood was spent recording and selling homemade karate films, unaware he would one day walk the Oscar red carpet.
The Brooklynite later rose to local prominence in his teen years as a DJ and through a semi-pro dance crew called Realism. As mentioned in “Sing Sing,” Whitfield was on track to join the NYPD as a police officer, but his family could not lose another adult man in the household. Worried about the risks of patrolling New York City in the 1980s, Whitfield withdrew his candidacy. He recalls his recruitment officer saying he would regret the decision.
A car accident left Whitfield with a limp and no professional opportunities. He tried his hand at delivering pizzas but quit due to his injury. In a story all too common in 1980s Brooklyn, he fell into hustling.
“My whole life, I stayed away from all that, and was one of them good kids that just never really went off-track,” said Whitfield. “Then I started selling drugs to try to help my family out. Got caught literally within a month or two, because I’m in an area I had no business in [and] didn’t know what the hell I was doing. To make a long story short, I ended up copping out to a one to three [-year sentence].”
While serving his sentence upstate, Whitfield was accused of murder. “The movie talks about me going to prison for a crime I didn’t commit, and that’s that particular crime,” he said. The killing occurred near his Canarsie home, standing out due to an atypically white victim. Authorities brought him back down to New York City for trial, holding him on Rikers Island.
Trial by ambush
Whitfield’s current lawyers Deskovic and Oscar Michelen say the entire conviction was built on a lone witness: Richard Doyle. Initially, would-be co-defendant Wesley Harold seemingly implicated Whitfield in the murder, but he took his life before trial.
“We were just left in limbo for a year and change,” said Whitfield. “[I] don’t know who’s accusing me, how I’m being accused, why I’m being accused, and then a day or two before the actual trial, we finally discover who [is] accusing me.”
Due to New York State’s “Blindfold Law,” which was only repealed in 2020 through discovery reforms, prosecutors could withhold evidence until the day of trial, including witness identities. Doyle testified during the trial that he saw Whitfield and Harold running near NYCHA’s Breukelen Houses, better known as the Brookline Projects, on March 23, 1998.
In his testimony, Doyle claimed he saw the victim come through a fence, followed by sparks and gunshots. Then the shooters allegedly ran toward Whitfield’s apartment and a car he later learned belonged to Whitfield was double-parked near the scene. He then claimed he returned to the murder scene with a man named Wayne Harris.
“This was a case that came down to the credibility of one particular witness,” said Michelen last October. “This is a shooting in front of a building, obviously, decades and decades ago. [It’s] always hard to try to recreate these old crimes, particularly [when] you don’t have the kind of video footage that you might have now.”
No DNA or forensic evidence backed such claims, nor did any other witness corroborate them. In fact, Harris denied seeing Doyle at all that night and tried to testify to that in court. The prosecutor ordered his arrest for what amounted to witness intimidation. A jury convicted Whitfield of second-degree murder.
Divine’s Intervention
“Basically, I was found guilty, went upstate, and lived in the prison law library,” said Whitfield. “[I] started learning certain elements about FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests, how to do motions, [CPL] 440s, Article 78, and became quite effective in it, and eventually, I started coming across evidence of my innocence.”
With the Legal Aid Society’s help, Whitfield tracked down potentially exonerating witnesses and evidence. Whitfield also learned more about Doyle, who testified in five other cases and boasted a substantial rap sheet. Those findings unearthed details about a fateful Father’s Day spent in a holding cell, which the first of many attempts to vacate the conviction centered on.
Police arrested and charged Doyle and co-defendant Scott Bell for burglary on June 19, 1988. The two were then held at the Brooklyn Criminal Court lockup, where they recognized Harold. They were later released and their charges dismissed without ever seeing a judge for arraignment.
Doyle actually mentioned the incident during Whitfield’s trial when asked about police interaction after the murder. He claimed the homeowner set him and Bell up for an inside job. His version painted a wrongful arrest and subsequently, a rightful release. The murder trial’s court minutes also confirm that Doyle encountered Harold in lockup.
But Bell, who vouched for Whitfield in a 1993 sworn statement, provided a different account. He recalled a prosecutor first approaching Harold, who indicated Doyle knew something. The three spoke extensively. Then the prosecutor beckoned Bell to ask about an incident “at the projects”; specifically, what he knew about John Whitfield’s involvement. Bell said he “did not know what he was talking about.” Then he recounted the following conversation in his affidavit:
“Doyle told me that I should have said I knew John Whitfield was involved in the incident the D.A. asked about,” wrote Bell. “He said that he did not like Whitfield and that he was blaming him for an incident that occurred in the projects. He also said I did not ‘need to worry’ about the burglary charge against us, and that we would be home later that day. Doyle never mentioned that he was blaming Whitfield for a homicide.”
Another sworn statement came from the owner of the home Doyle and Bell were accused of burglarizing in 1994. The owner wrote about going to press charges against them a day after the incident, only to learn the suspects were no longer in custody.
Using Bell’s testimony, the Legal Aid Society filed a CPL 440, New York State’s motion to vacate a conviction, for Whitfield in the mid-1990s. He received an evidentiary hearing. “[To] make a long story short, the judge denied that motion,” said Whitfield.
His digging led to a voluntary disclosure form revealing a potential tape related to the case. Whitfield and the Legal Aid Society disagreed on next steps. He wanted to pursue the tape; the Legal Aid Society planned to skip the recording and seek federal habeas corpus relief, which challenges the legality of a person’s imprisonment. Whitfield ultimately ended the relationship and pursued the tape on his own without legal counsel.
A pivotal “Sing Sing” scene depicts Domingo’s version of Whitfield presenting the audio evidence during his clemency hearing. His co-defendant Harold was the voice on the tape, speaking to an ATF agent after a gun arrest at the 73rd Precinct in Brownsville less than two months after the murder. In hopes of entering witness protection, he admits to the killing on the tape with the same TEC-9 seized by the feds.
There was, indeed, another man on the scene based on Harold’s claims, but he pointed to a “Patrick” from Queens, who he said he was forced to fire a round into the victim so he would not remain an uninvolved witness. The investigator also asked if Whitfield ordered the hit. “No, he didn’t order it,” the transcript reads.
Blossoming behind bars
Whitfield’s fight for freedom dragged on after another failed 440 motion based on the tape, so Whitfield channeled “Whitman” to stay busy. All the litigation fashioned him into a capable writer. While getting Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) off the ground, he began writing plays.
“That was right about the time we came up with an idea to use theater arts as a way of therapy, as a way of life, skills, and a way of helping individuals,” said Whitfield. “I gravitated toward the writing component. We had playwrights [who were] coming in, teaching us how to write plays. And I started writing plays … I had no clue I was a good writer.”
Whitfield soon took another step in writing books. His memoir, “The Whitfield Files,” won a PEN America award. He also mastered writing fiction, publishing several urban-action adventure novels. He applied tighter narrative structure and literary panache to the generally unpolished genre about gangsters and drug dealers.
The novels became a hit in prison. The real John Whitfield actually has a small cameo appearance in “Sing Sing,” asking Colman Domingo’s portrayal to autograph a copy of “Money Grip,” one of his most popular books.
“That actually happened — I had multiple prisoners approaching me, asking me to sign the autograph,” he said. “And every time I saw the book, the book was beat up to the core — like ‘how many people [did you have] reading this book?’ It would come to me with pages falling out. I think with one book, everybody in the cell block [had] read that book.”
Coming home
Whitfield eventually served his minimum time and qualified for parole, remaining behind bars after a prospective pardon from then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer fell through shortly before his abrupt 2008 resignation. He enlisted Deskovic, who established his foundation after DNA evidence exonerated him from the wrongful imprisonment of a schoolmate’s murder.
Outlying factors like race and original crime have a disproportionate impact on parole decisions, but hearings ultimately center on the ability to return to society. Whitfield’s prolific engagement with the arts in prison gave him a fighting chance. However, he still faced the “innocent prisoner’s dilemma,” with a better shot at release by showing remorse to the parole board over the murder for which he maintains his innocence.
“Either you falsely admit guilt, which is only going to slightly increase your chances, but in the process of that, you’re creating additional false evidence [against yourself],” said Deskovic “So if your case gets reversed but you have to go back to trial, whatever you said [at] that parole board [hearing] can be used to try to convict you again. Or do you instead maintain your innocence and thereby risk extending an already unjust prison sentence?”
Ultimately, Whitfield became the first person freed from prison by the Deskovic Foundation. Letters advocating for his release factored heavily in the decision, he recalled from his hearing. He spent 25 years in prison for the conviction.
Whitfield returned to a very different world from the late 1980s. Back during his DJing days, he took youngsters under his wing. “They used to get my records from me,” he recalled. “They’d always get the records wrong. I said, ‘Yo, give me ‘Dance to the Drummer’s Beat.’ They’d give me ‘Bongo Rock.’”
One of those youngsters grew up to work with Lil Wayne and approached Whitfield about taking a job on the rapper’s next tour. His parole officer was not keen on the idea. Whitfield filed an Article 78, which challenges agency decisions in New York state. It worked: Whitfield traveled internationally for the first time in his life, visiting seven European countries, including France, Germany, and the Netherlands.
“Had I not filed that Article 78, I would have never [gone] on that tour,” he said. “And let me tell you something: It was one of the best experiences of my life.”
More evidence surfaces
While Whitfield gained his freedom, the murder remained on his conviction record, so he continued pursuing avenues for exoneration. Initially, Deskovic assigned a staff attorney to the case because he was still applying for law school at the time. Throughout the 2010s, other witnesses provided sworn statements about the murder (some of whom the AmNews attempted to reach but could not interview due to the pending CRU review).
A White Castle employee recounted hearing the shots and smelling the gunpowder to Deskovic’s investigators — Harold’s taped confession seemed to identify her as a woman in an army jacket. Like Doyle, she claimed to see two men run from the scene, but she said with certainty that neither man was Whitfield, whom she knew from the neighborhood.
Harold’s brother Ralph, a.k.a. Essence, also attested to Whitfield’s innocence in a 2014 sworn statement from prison. He corroborated hearing from Wesley about the involvement of “a Patrick from Queens” with the murder.
Another affidavit came from Bryant Devery, claiming he and Whitfield were hanging out with a girl they picked up when the shooting happened. “John Whitfield did not commit that crime, he did not shoot the white man because he was with me since 12 noon or 1 p.m. of that day until at least 1 a.m. of the next morning,” he wrote.
The new evidence went toward the application for the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Conviction Review Unit to consider the innocence claim, filed by the staff attorney after her departure from the foundation amid funding shortages.
Whitfield remained close with Deskovic despite a new firm representing him. He began volunteering for the foundation as a photographer and videographer, responsible for uploading an “uncountable” amount of Youtube videos. Deskovic recalled those contributions by imitating Whitfield’s gruff voice. “Just send over the metadata,” he says. Not quite Domingo’s performance, to be clear.
Deskovic, now a lawyer, ultimately took on Whitfield’s case personally two years ago. He also enlisted Michelen — a well-known wrongful convictions expert who serves on the foundation’s board.. They take on cases pro bono until the point of exoneration so they have to be picky about which ones they pursue.
“We’re not going to spend that time on a case [that] we think is a procedural issue,” said Michelen. “There are appellate lawyers for that … I don’t do criminal appeal. This is not a criminal appeal. We think this person is innocent.”
‘I’m never going to stop fighting’
The Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office declined to comment due to an open investigation, but confirmed the case remains under review by the CRU. Deskovic said they can refile another 440 on Whitfield’s behalf if they get a rejection, but the process will take about another two years and “the road is fraught going the litigation route.”
The conviction continues to affect Whitfield today. He missed the British Academy Film Awards earlier this month because the United Kingdom denied his entry due to his felony record.
Yet sky seems the limit for Whitfield at age 60. While employment remains a major obstacle for returning citizens (particularly those with violent felony records), he boasts a stable union job as an MTA conductor. He’s off parole. He enjoys success as an executive producer of “Sing Sing.” Why go through all the trouble still?
“Man, doing 25 years, waking up every morning asking yourself, ‘How the hell did this happen?,’” said Whitfield. “I’m never going to stop fighting. I did not do this, and I deserved my day in court, my justice. I deserve to have my name cleared. I don’t want that to be a part of my legacy.”
A petition to support exoneration for Divine G can be found at: https://www.change.org/p/free-john-divine-g-whitfield-from-a-wrongful-conviction-now
Tandy Lau is a Report for America (RFA) corps member who writes about public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.
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