NEW YORK — Rapper Travell “G. Dep” Coleman, who walked into a New York police station in 2010 and admitted to committing a nearly two-decade-old cold case murder to clear his conscience, has been pardoned by Gov. Kathy Hochul.
Now 49, Coleman has served 13 of his 15-year-to-life sentence. Now that his sentence has been commuted by the Democratic governor, he can now apply for parole earlier than the original date of 2025.
Coleman is one of 16 people granted clemency by Hochul in an announcement made Friday. They include 12 pardons and four commutations. It was the third time that Hochul granted clemency in 2023.
“Through the clemency process, it is my solemn responsibility as governor to recognize the efforts individuals have made to improve their lives and show that redemption is possible,” Hochul said in a written statement.
The rapper earned an associate's degree while in prison and facilitated violence prevention and sobriety counseling programs while also participating in a variety of educational and rehabilitation classes, Hochul's office said. His request for leniency was supported by the prosecutor in the case and the judge who sentenced him.
As G. Dep, Coleman had hits with “Special Delivery” and “Let's Get It” and helped popularize a loose-limbed dance called the Harlem shake in the early 2000s. The rapper was one of the rising stars of hip-hop impresario Sean “Diddy” Combs' Bad Boy Records label in the late 1990s and early 2000s. But his career collapsed after his 2001 debut album, “Child of the Ghetto,” and the rapper became embroiled in drug use and low-level arrests, his lawyer said in 2011.
Attorney Anthony L. Ricco said at the time that Coleman was “haunted” by the fatal shooting of John Henkel in 1993 and decided to confess to shooting someone during a robbery in East Harlem as a teenager. Henkel was shot three times in the chest outside an apartment complex.
His brother, Robert Henkel, had demanded Hochul reject prosecutor David Drucker's exhortations to release Coleman, calling it a “farce.” He told the New York Post that “it's one thing to seek leniency for drug crimes, but not murder.”