A prosecutor for soft-on-crime Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is trying to help spring from prison a murderer he helped send away a decade ago – a move critics say is only possible in the Big Apple’s woke “Bizarro World.”
David Drucker wrote a letter to Gov. Hochul’s Executive Clemency Bureau seeking leniency for rapper Trevell “G. Dep” Coleman, who is serving 15 years to life at upstate Fishkill Correctional Facility for the 1993 cold-blooded shooting death of John Henkel, 32.
“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,” wrote Drucker in the Aug. 3 missive.
“With Mr. Coleman there is no doubt — his remorse is as genuine as any I, or others I have talked to, have ever seen.”
“A decision to release Mr. Coleman now would be a very safe as well as humane decision,” added Drucker in the letter on official office letterhead. “On behalf of the New York County District Attorney’s Office, I strongly urge you to do just that.”
Robert Henkel, the victim’s brother, called Drucker’s clemency push a “farce” and is demanding Hochul reject it.
“This is such a conflict of interest,” Henkel fumed. “The same guy who put him away is now asking for him to get out. It is one thing to seek [clemency] for drug crimes – but not murder.
“Let him rot in jail! Let him do his 15 years and then he can try to get out on parole.”
Coleman isn’t parole eligible until 2025.
In 2012, Drucker was working for then-Manhattan DA Cy Vance when he led a team that helped convict Coleman on second-degree murder charges. Drucker retired in September 2021 but returned to the office two months later as a $100-an-hour part-time prosecutor.
The case would have remained cold had Coleman in 2010 not walked into a 25th Precinct station house in Harlem and confessed to John Henkel’s Oct. 19, 1993 murder.
Coleman was an up-and-coming rap star who signed with Sean “Diddy” Combs’ Bad Boy label in 1999 before moving to Famous Records. He had also racked up more than 25 arrests for drugs, burglary and grand larceny.
He told cops he was riding a bike when he rolled up on Henkel at Park Avenue and East 114th Street to announce a robbery. After Henkel resisted, Colemen said he pulled out a .40-caliber gun and shot his victim three times in the chest. Coleman said he tossed the weapon into the East River.
When detectives reviewed the cold-case file, they were amazed to discover Coleman’s tale matched up.
Coleman said he confessed because his dark secret “weighed on me.”
At Coleman’s sentencing, Drucker said the outcome was fair.
There was “a totally innocent victim,” Drucker said at the time. “The defendant shot him three times in the torso, killing him, and then he biked off leaving the victim to die.”
Brooklyn Councilman Ari Kagan, a longtime Democrat who said he switched to the Republican Party this past week in part because of soft-of-crime tactics lefty pols like Bragg are pushing, called the DA office’s “behavior” in this case “reprehensible.”
“It shows a lack of judgment and complete ignorance of taxpayers’ interest,” he said.
Drucker hauled in an $186,877 lump-sum payout by retiring last year and cashing out unused leave accrued over four decades in the DA’s office. He also earned another $76,690 in salary during the fiscal year that ended on June 30.
“Only in the Bizzaro World do you see an ADA ‘resign’ to take a payout, be rehired, and then work on freeing a convicted killer he helped put behind bars,” barked Councilman Robert Holden (D-Queens). “Not a day goes by without an ethics violation or a case of prosecutorial negligence by the Manhattan DA’s Office. But this is what we’ve come to expect with DA Alvin Bragg, who continues to mock the city’s justice system.”
Since taking office Jan. 1, Bragg has downgraded more than half his office’s felony cases to misdemeanors — while also managing to lose half of the felony cases that do reach court, a sharp decline in the DA’s office performance compared to previous years under Vance.
Hochul spokeswoman Hazel Crampton-Hays said the governor doesn’t comment on pending clemency applications “but is committed to improving justice, fairness, and safety in the criminal justice system, and we are reviewing applications in this context.”
Bragg spokeswoman Emily Tuttle called Drucker a “universally respected career prosecutor who has served with distinction.” She also said his current duties include working “on serious homicide cases, helping train and guide Assistant DAs and providing counsel to the executive team on our most complex investigations.”
“When an esteemed homicide prosecutor such as Mr. Drucker believes that a New Yorker deserves early release, we listen. There is no better person to determine the just outcome for a case, while ensuring the safety of New Yorkers is paramount,” she added.