NJ Spotlight News January 1, 2025

NJ Spotlight News with Briana Vannozzi

Happy New Year …. welcome to a special edition of NJ Spotlight News. This past year NJSN lost a dear friend, a colleague, and a beloved respected journalist Michael Aron. He was dubbed the Dean of the State House press corps and covered every major political story of our state dating back to the days of Gov. Brendan Byrne. Michael was a dogged reporter who had a phrase about covering our state, "New Jersey never lets you down." While politics was the core of his career, one story that spanned a decade of it was that of then 19-year-old Quincy Spruell. Spruell was charged in 1985 with killing Leonard Thompson, an East Orange drug dealer. It took years of reporting, but Michael uncovered his wrongful conviction and Quincy walked out of Northern State Prison in Newark a free man after serving more than 24 years of a 30-year jail term for murder. Last night if you tuned in you saw the first half of Michael’s documentary that aired in 1996 entitled "A Call for Justice” – This is part two, it starts off just after the state supreme court turned down Quincy’s appeal for a new trial base on new evidence. And then a chat with Quincy Spruell.