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A New York City rapper turned himself in for murder 13 years ago, now his prosecutor wants him freed | WNYC | New York Public Radio, Podcasts, Live Streaming Radio, News
No one would have known that Trevell Coleman killed someone in 1993 if he hadn’t walked into an East Harlem police precinct 17 years later and told them he did.
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No one would have known that Trevell Coleman killed someone in 1993 if he hadn’t walked into an East Harlem police precinct 17 years later and told them he did.
Now, more than a decade into his prison sentence, the very prosecutor who argued to put Coleman behind bars and the judge who sentenced him are both asking Gov. Kathy Hochul to release him. His case could serve as a litmus test for a governor who has pledged to reform the state’s clemency process while campaigning against a Republican challenger who has frequently accused her of being soft on crime.
“There are hundreds, if not thousands of others who merit clemency, who should have clemency,” said Steve Zeidman, Coleman’s clemency attorney. “To me, Trevell's case is just a reminder of that.”
15 years to life
For years, Coleman’s mind frequently flashed back to that moment just after 1 a.m. on Oct. 19, 1993. He had dropped out of college and was living in East Harlem, trying to make it as a rapper and selling drugs to get by. In a personal statement attached to his clemency application, Coleman wrote that he had bought a pistol, because that was what all the drug dealers in the neighborhood seemed to do.
That night, Coleman tried to rob a man standing alone beneath the elevated train tracks on Park Avenue. When the man resisted, Coleman fired three shots and fled. He didn’t know if the man had lived or died.
“Did he live? Was he just wounded? Or did I kill someone?” he wrote in his statement. “This was something I would wrestle with for the next 17 years.”
For a while, Coleman tried to put those questions out of his mind. His rap career took off, and he signed a $350,000 contract with Bad Boy Entertainment. He and Sean “Diddy” Combs even appeared in music videos together.
But Coleman couldn’t escape what he had done. For years, he struggled with addiction, cycling in and out of court and jail for dozens of nonviolent charges — mostly related to drugs.
Then, in 2010, Coleman walked into a police precinct and told detectives everything he could remember about the shooting. Police went through the precinct’s log book and found an unsolved homicide case that matched Coleman’s story. He was charged soon after.
In 2012, Coleman was convicted of second-degree murder. The jury foreman asked the judge to be lenient. So did the prosecutor.
“He appears to have no ulterior motive and nothing to gain by coming forward other than within himself,” David Drucker, the assistant Manhattan district attorney, said at sentencing. “That should be a very significant factor the court takes into account in sentencing him.”
The judge gave Coleman the minimum sentence: 15 years to life.
“I was, like, on the verge of a nervous breakdown,” said Crystal Sutton, Coleman’s ex-wife. “When he first went in, I didn't know what to do. So I was actually going to clubs, making DJs play his music.”
Sutton also remembers crying on the floor for days after the trial, unable to eat. She had two little boys to raise while their dad was hundreds of miles away in state prison.
“For weeks, they only ate beefaroni, because that was all I could muster the strength to do,” she said. “I still had to go to work. I still had to make sure I picked them up, took them to school, picked them up from school, and did all of that.”
Tyler and Trevell Sutton-Coleman were little kids when their dad confessed. Now, they’re 19 — older than their dad was when he killed someone. They respect his decision to turn himself in. But they wish it hadn’t meant a childhood without their father.
The twins’ relationship with their dad consists mainly of biweekly phone calls. They haven’t seen their dad in person since before the pandemic.
“Fifteen to 30 [minutes] — it's not a lot you can talk about in that specific timeframe,” Trevell said. “It really hinders our relationship with our father.”
“We keep it light,” Tyler added. “If we had talked about every single problem, then he’d probably want to talk about it, like, forever, forever. And we just don’t have that type of time.”
Governor’s promises for reform
The assistant district attorney who prosecuted Coleman thought that 15 years to life was an excessive sentence for someone who had spent years punishing himself. So, this summer, the Manhattan DA’s office reached out to Zeidman, a clemency attorney at CUNY. The DA’s office declined to comment on the case. But records obtained by Gothamist show the same office that put Coleman in prison now wanted Zeidman to help get him out.
“It came completely out of the blue,” Zeidman said. “Every case I've ever worked on, every case I've ever heard anybody work on for clemency, it's generated by the person inside or their family. So to get a request like this from the prosecutor was unique.”
Both the prosecutor and the judge who presided over the case wrote letters in support of Coleman’s release for his clemency application.
A photo collage from Coleman's clemency application
A photo collage from Coleman's clemency application.
Photo by Coleman's clemency application
“Many defendants display remorse, but it is rarely clear how much they are sorry for their crime and how much they are sorry for getting caught,” Drucker wrote. “With Mr. Coleman there is no doubt — his remorse is as genuine as any I, or others I have talked to, have ever seen.”
Retired Judge Michael J. Obus said he had never submitted a letter in support of a clemency application in his 34 years on the bench. He wrote a separate letter to the state.
“I enthusiastically do so now on behalf of Trevell Coleman,” he wrote.
Clemency is a tool the governor can use to either clear a conviction from someone’s record or to end their sentence early. They typically use this power sparingly — occasionally on Christmas Eve or during their last week in office. Out of thousands of applications submitted in New York in the last decade, only a few hundred have been approved; hardly any were for sentence commutations that allowed people to leave prison early.
Hochul has promised to grant clemency on an “ongoing basis.” At a press conference in July, she said she was “overhauling the system.”
Since her inauguration, Hochul has implemented a few changes to the clemency process. Her office made the application website easier to use and started sending letters to applicants twice a year with status updates. She has also hired two new full-time staffers to review clemency petitions.
But she has only granted clemency to 10 people since taking office more than a year ago — and nine of them were pardons for people who had already been released from prison. Her office says it can’t comment on pending applications.
The victim’s brother, Robert Henkel, does not want Hochul to let Coleman out early. He said she should be “kicked out of office” if she gives clemency to his brother’s killer.
“This guy should do his whole time. He did it. He deserves his time,” he said, adding, “You do the crime, you do the time. Simple as that. You don’t deserve to get out.”
Zeidman thinks the governor “would score a lot of points, left and right,” if she granted Coleman clemency. He acknowledges that there are many unique aspects to Coleman’s story: his rap career, his decision to turn himself in, and the prosecutor and the judge writing letters of support.
But Zeidman notes that the facts of his case are not unique. He is just one of the many people serving a lengthy sentence in a New York prison for a crime he committed as a teenager in the 1990s.
“I don't want to get hung up on the unique circumstances of his case — hard not to because they are extraordinary,” Zeidman said. “But it's also a reminder of how many other people the governor should take a hard look at.”
Advocates for clemency reform want the governor to give people clemency more frequently, and not to limit its use to certain categories of crimes. Jose DiLenola with the Releasing Aging People in Prison Campaign said people who are granted clemency can go on to become violence interrupters or find other ways to give back to their communities.
“There are plenty of people who are ready to come home and assist our communities,” said DiLenola, who spent 26 years in prison for a murder he committed when he was 16.
With Election Day just about one month away, Coleman’s family and attorney don’t know when to expect a decision. But they hope Hochul will follow through on her promise to grant more people clemency for as long as she’s in office.
Coleman’s mother, Cheryl Butler, hopes to get a phone call telling her that her son is coming home.
Trevell, left, with his mother Cheryl Butler.
Trevell, left, with his mother Cheryl Butler.
Photo by Family of Trevell Coleman
“I hope I’m sitting down, because when I get excited, my heart races,” she said.
Butler was 19 when she gave birth and said she and Coleman are as close as brother and sister. Learning that he had killed someone, and then watching him go to prison, has been “horrible.”
Since her son went to prison, Butler has retired from a nearly three-decade career with the MTA. Now, her health is deteriorating. In a letter for her son’s clemency application, she asked the governor to release Coleman from prison so they can spend her golden years together — and so that he can shovel the snow outside her house during the winter.
“His kids need him. I need him. I really need him,” Butler said. “I really need Trevell to be home now.”
A New York City rapper turned himself in for murder 13 years ago, now his prosecutor wants him freed - Gothamist
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