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Mr. Glisson claimed in the letter that he had been wrongfully imprisoned for the 1995 murder of a cabdriver in the Bronx, and that he had heard that the killing was carried out by members of a narcotics gang called Sex Money and Murder, or S.M.M.

He ultimately discovered that two former S.M.M. members, who years earlier became government cooperators in a separate case, had admitted to fatally shooting a livery cab driver in a case that matched Mr. Diop’s murder.

Mr. Glisson and Ms. Watkins gained influential support a few months ago after Mr. Glisson wrote to federal prosecutors in Manhattan saying that he thought members of a gang called Sex Money and Murder, or S.M.M., had killed Mr. Diop.

Mr. O’Malley remembered that two former S.M.M. members, Jose Rodriguez and Gilbert Vega, who had agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors against the gang, had told him that they had shot an African livery driver in Soundview in late 1994 or early 1995.

In 1997, Mr. O’Malley had been involved in an investigation of the gang, also known as S.M.M., which operated in the Soundview section of the Bronx, and of its leader, Peter Rollock.