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NEW YORK (AP) — Rapper Traval “G. Depp” Coleman, who walked into a New York police precinct in 2010 and confessed to murder in a nearly two-decade-old cold case to clear his conscience, has been The pardon was granted by Gov. Kathy Hochul.
Coleman, now 49, has served 13 of a prison sentence ranging from 15 years to life. With his sentence commuted by the Democratic governor, he will now be allowed to seek parole before his original date of 2025.
Coleman is one of 16 people granted clemency by Hochul in an announcement made Friday. These include 12 pardons and four commutations. This is the third time Hochul has granted clemency in 2023.
“Through the pardon process, it is my solemn responsibility as governor to recognize the efforts individuals have made to improve their lives and to show that redemption is possible,” Hochul said in a written statement.
According to Hochul’s office, the rapper earned an associate’s degree while in prison and facilitated violence prevention and sobriety counseling programs, as well as participated in various educational and rehabilitation classes. His clemency application was supported by the prosecutor in the case and the judge who sentenced him.
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Yes. As Depp, Coleman scored hits with “Special Delivery” and “Let’s Get It” and helped popularize the loose dance called the Harlem Shake in the early 2000s. The rapper was one of the rising stars of hip-hop impresario Sean “Diddy” Combs’s Bad Boy Records label in the late 1990s and early 2000s. But his career declined after his debut album, “Child of the Ghetto,” in 2001, and the rapper became mired in drug use and low-level arrests, his lawyer said in 2011.
Attorney Anthony L. Ricco said at the time that Coleman had been “horrified” by the fatal shooting of Henkel in 1993 and had decided to confess to shooting someone as a teenager during a robbery in East Harlem. Henkel was shot three times in the chest outside an apartment complex.
His brother, Robert Henkel, had called for Hochul to reject prosecutor David Drucker’s request to release Coleman, calling it a “farce.” They told New York Post That “it’s one thing to ask for (clemency) for drug crimes – but not murder.”
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