Diddy’s former protegee Travell ‘G. Dep’ Coleman has been released from prison after serving a 13 year sentence for murder.
The rapper, now 49, documented his release on his Instagram page on Thursday which showed him emotionally greeting his friends and family – four months after he was granted clemency by New York governor Kathy Hochul.
Records from the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision obtained by TMZ show Dep was released under the prison’s Limited Credit Time Allowance program, which allows eligible inmates a six-month credit on their existing sentences.
He will have to ‘check in with his parole officer, refrain from possessing weapons and drugs without medical authorization, and will have to get permission to leave the State of New York’.
Coleman turned himself in for a nearly two-decade-old cold murder case in 2010 – and was convicted in 2012 for the murder of John Henkel,
The rapper was one of the rising stars of hip-hop impresario Sean ‘Diddy‘ Combs´ Bad Boy Records label in the late 1990s.
He 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.
But his career slumped by late 2010, with at least a dozen arrests on drug, trespassing and other charges.
Attorney Anthony L. Ricco said at the time that Coleman ‘had been haunted’ by the 1993 fatal shooting of Henkel and decided to confess to it.
The rapper showed up at the police precinct on December 15, 2010, and admitted to killing Henkel, a father of three, outside a Harlem apartment complex around 1 am on October 19, 1993.
Coleman calmly explained that he had shot someone after demanding money on a street corner when he was 18 years old, two detectives said at a court hearing in 2012.
‘He said that he felt bad and that it was eating him up,’ Detective Dave Feliciano said.
In December he was granted clemency by New York Governor Kathy Hochul.
Two years ahead of his original parole eligibility in 2025, his sentence was commuted by the Democratic governor, who also granted clemency to 15 other individuals.
Governor Hochul granted 12 pardons and four commutations ahead of the holiday weekend, marking the third time Hochul has granted clemency in 2023.
The victim’s brother, Robert Henkel, had demanded Hochul reject the urgings by prosecutor David Drucker to release Coleman, calling it a ‘farce.’
He told the New York Post that ‘it is one thing to seek (clemency) for drug crimes – but not murder.’
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