By Willow Higgins and Curtis Brodner | New York Focus

This story originally appeared in New York Focus , a nonprofit news publication investigating power in New York. Sign up for their newsletter here .

Anthony DiPippo was in his prison cell one day in 2014 when he spotted a letter on the floor, lying beyond his reach on the other side of the bars. He noticed a logo: the New York Attorney General’s Office.

That’s the one , DiPippo thought.

Nearly two decades earlier, as a teen in the Hudson Valley, DiPippo was convicted of a high-profile rape and murder that he swore he didn’t commit. He spent the next 17 years fighting those convictions, turning his street smarts into a legal prowess that impressed his attorneys.

The attorney general’s letter was just a couple sentences

See Full Page