Trevell Coleman with his former wife Crystal and their two sons.Photograph by Katlyn Winegardner

特雷维尔· 科尔曼前妻与克里斯特尔和他们的两个儿子。摄影: Katlyn Winegardner

Twelve years ago, Trevell Coleman walked into a police precinct in East Harlem and confessed to a shooting. The crime, which was unsolved, had occurred in 1993. The case hadn’t been touched in more than a decade, and Coleman had never been a suspect. He was eighteen when he had fired three shots at a stranger in a botched robbery attempt, fleeing before he could determine whether his target had lived or died. In the seventeen years since, Coleman had had three children and a prolific rap career. He had made music with Puff Daddy, released his own albums, and helped to popularize the “Harlem Shake.” But, gradually, guilt overtook his success. He turned to drugs and lost his recording contract. He wanted to atone, but he first needed to know what had happened to the man he had tried to rob. After consulting the homicide logbook, detectives were able to give Coleman an answer. He had shot—and killed—a thirty-two-year-old named John Henkel.

十二年前,特雷维尔·科尔曼走进东哈莱姆区的一个警察局,供认了一起枪击事件。这起尚未破获的罪行发生在1993年,已有十多年没有被触及,而科尔曼也从未成为过嫌疑人。十八岁时,他在一次拙劣的抢劫未遂中向一位陌生人开了三枪,在目标生死未卜前逃之夭夭。在那之后的十七年里,科尔曼有了三个孩子,说唱生涯收获颇丰。他曾与吹牛老爹一起作音乐,发行了自己的专辑,并帮助推广“哈莱姆摇摆”。 但是,渐渐的,内疚压垮了他的成功。他开始拥抱毒品,失去了他的录音合同。他想赎罪,但首先得知道他试图抢劫的那个人究竟怎样。在查阅了凶杀案日志后,侦探们给了科尔曼一个答案。他开枪打死了一位名叫约翰·汉可的三十二岁男子。

The judge at Coleman’s sentencing acknowledged that confessing had been “the right thing to do.” Even the prosecutor displayed an unusual amount of sympathy, he remarked upon the “great disparity between the crime itself and the person who committed it.” But Coleman was clearly guilty. He was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to fifteen years to life. His wife, Crystal Sutton, a former airline hostess with whom he had two young children, was sitting directly behind him in the courtroom. Before the verdict was read out, a wall of uniformed officers surrounded Coleman, shielding him from her sight, before leading him off in handcuffs.

科尔曼的判决法官承认认罪是“正确的做法”。就连检察官也表现出了不同寻常的同情,他说“犯罪本身与罪犯之间存在巨大差异”。但科尔曼显然是有罪的。他被判犯有二级谋杀罪,并被判处十五年无期徒刑。他的妻子克里斯特尔·萨顿(Crystal Sutton)是一名前航空公司空姐,与他生了两个年幼的孩子,在法庭上坐在他的正后方。在宣读判决书之前,一堵穿制服的警察人墙包围了科尔曼,将他挡在她的视线之外,然后用手铐将他带走。

On a sunny day this fall, I met Sutton, who is now divorced from Coleman, at a picnic table in Central Park. (She works nearby as an office manager for the Parks Department.) Sutton is warm and stylish; her caramel braids, spun high in passion twists, matched her suede boots. Back in the early two-thousands, when Coleman first told her about the shooting, she suggested that he confess to a priest. But Coleman, who had attended Catholic school and grew up praying with his mother and grandmother, felt that God would find such an attempt at atonement half-hearted. Sutton sometimes pictured him as one of the flagellants: devout Christians in the Middle Ages who would whip themselves in penance. “That’s how Trevell was beating himself down,” she told me. He became addicted to PCP. He was repeatedly arrested on drug charges and hospitalized. He lost his town house in the New Jersey suburbs and moved back to his old neighborhood.

今年一个阳光明媚的秋日,我在中央公园里的野餐桌上见到了萨顿,如今她已与科尔曼离婚。她在附近工作,担任公园部门的办公室经理。萨顿很温和,打扮时髦,她的焦糖色发辫热情甩动高旋,与她的绒面革靴子相映成辉。早在2000年初,当科尔曼第一次告诉她枪击事件时,她建议他向牧师坦白。不过,科尔曼尽管上过天主教学校,从小就与母亲和祖母一起祈祷,他觉得上帝会发现这种赎罪半心半意。萨顿有时把他描绘成一种自我鞭笞者:中世纪虔诚的基督徒,他们会通过鞭打自己而忏悔。“特雷维尔就是这样打败自己的,”她告诉我。他开始沉迷PCP(一类迷幻药)。他因毒品指控再次被捕并入院。他失去了在新泽西郊区的联排别墅,搬回了自己的老街坊。
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Sutton’s sons, Tyler and Trevell, Jr., joined us in the park. They were seven when their father turned himself in. Nineteen now, they have few memories of Coleman beyond the pancakes he would serve them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. “I don’t know if he can make actual food,” Tyler told me. “We’re all going to eat some pancakes once he gets out.”

萨顿的儿子泰勒和小特雷维尔来到公园加入了我们的谈话。他们七岁时,父亲自首了。 现在十九岁,对科尔曼的记忆很少,除了他曾在早餐、午餐和晚餐时为他们摊煎饼。“我不知道他会不会做真正的食物,”泰勒告诉我。“一等他出去,我们就会出门吃煎饼。”

For the first time, getting out is starting to feel like a realistic prospect. Coleman has now served twelve years of his sentence and will be eligible for parole in three. But New York’s parole board, composed of fifteen people appointed by the governor with approval by the State Senate, is opaque and unpredictable—there is no guarantee that he will be released at the minimum end of his sentence, if ever. There’s one other option: clemency, a form of institutional grace usually dispensed as a pardon (the forgiveness of a conviction) or as a commutation (the alteration of a sentence). The process can be as impenetrable as parole. Years ago, Sutton tried to put together a clemency petition for Coleman, but found it too confusing to complete on her own.

有史以来第一次,出狱开始成为一个触手可及的愿景。科尔曼现已服刑十二年,有资格在三年内获得假释。但纽约的平等委员会由州长任命的十五人组成,不透明也不可预测——无法保证他将在最短刑期内被释放,如果有的话。 还有另一种选择:宽赦处理,一种通常作为赦免(宽恕罪行)或减刑(改变判决)的形式分配的制度性恩典。这个过程可能像假释一样难以理解。多年前,萨顿试图为科尔曼提交一份宽恕请愿书,但发现要独立完成申请实在太复杂难懂。

One day this spring, Coleman called Sutton from prison. (He speaks with her and the boys about twice a month.) He told her that Steve Zeidman, arguably New York’s most well-known clemency lawyer, was planning to take on his case. Zeidman gets letters every day from incarcerated people asking for help with their petitions. But he had never heard from Coleman. In what Zeidman describes as one of the most unusual moments of his career, he had been contacted by David Drucker, the prosecutor who had put Coleman away—and who now wanted to free the man whom he had rightfully convicted.

今年春天的某天,科尔曼从监狱里打电话给萨顿。他大约每月与她和男孩们通话两次。他告诉她,史蒂夫·蔡德曼(Steve Zeidman),据称是新约尔克最著名的宽赦律师,正计划接手他的案子。 蔡德曼每天都会收到被监禁者的来信向他求助请愿。但他从未收到过科尔曼的来信。蔡德曼描述他职业生涯中最不寻常的事情之一,就是大卫·德鲁克(David Drucker)联系了他,这位曾将科尔曼抛弃的检察官,如今却想释放这个被他正义定罪的人。

Applying for clemency is an amorphous undertaking; there is no standardized application. There are a few widely understood benchmarks for commutations in New York, including the requirement that applicants cannot be within one year of parole eligibility, and they should have completed at least half of their minimum sentence. According to the state’s clemency application Web site, the governor takes into account the length of time someone has served, a record of good conduct and rehabilitation, and a reëntry plan with evidence of a strong support system. The opacity of the process can sometimes make Zeidman’s role seem like divination. “If I could answer what makes someone a successful candidate,” he told me, “we could do a much better job of getting people clemency.”

申请宽赦处理是一项无形的工作,没有标准的操作程序。 纽约有一些广为人知的减刑基准,包括要求申请人一年内不得获释,并且他们应至少完成最低刑期的一半。根据该州的宽赦申请网站,州长会考虑某人服役的时长、行为端正和康复记录,以及具有强力证据体系支撑的重新审核计划。这个过程的不透明性有时会使蔡德曼的角色像一名占卜师。“如果我知道是什么让候选人成功,”他告诉我,“那我们就可以更顺利地使更多人获得宽赦了。”
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Zeidman, who co-directs the Defenders Clinic at cuny’s law school, began compiling documents about Coleman’s past and present into a petition—court records, family photographs, press reports—along with dozens of letters from relatives, politicians, and community members, including Drucker and Michael J. Obus, the judge who had presided over the case. In his letter to the state’s Executive Clemency Bureau, which reviews clemency applications before submitting them to the governor for a final determination, Zeidman wrote that it is “unheard of for both the trial prosecutor and trial judge to support clemency so ardently for the person they prosecuted and sentenced.”

身为纽约市立大学法学院捍卫者诊所的联合负责人,蔡德曼开始将有关科尔曼过去和现在的文件汇编成一份请愿书——法庭记录、家庭照片、新闻报道——以及数十封亲戚、政治家和社区成员的来信,包括德鲁克和主持此案的迈克尔· 奥布斯法官。蔡德曼在给该州行政赦免局的信中写道,“审判检察官和审判法官如此罕见地热情支持宽恕这名被他们判决的人,这是前所未闻的。”

Even with such support, it is unclear whether Coleman’s request will be granted. The governor’s power to bestow clemency is virtually unfettered, but it is rarely used. Between 1914 and 1924, according to a recent report, New York dispensed some seventy commutations a year—roughly the equivalent of the total number granted between 1990 and 2019. The largest obstacle seems to be political blowback: a fear that voters will blame a governor if someone commits another crime after being released. New York’s Executive Clemency Bureau does not assess or recommend applicants, so any criticism rests on the shoulders of the governor, who makes the decision alone. (In other states, such as Nevada and South Carolina, significant decision-making power lies in the hands of boards. The states that grant clemency at the highest rates often rely largely on these boards’ recommendations or require the governor to consult them.) More than twelve hundred incarcerated New Yorkers—and more than seventeen thousand people in federal prisons—have pending petitions for commutations and pardons.

即使有这样的支持,目前仍不清楚科尔曼的请求是否会得到批准。州长对宽赦处理的权力几乎不受约束,但很少使用。根据最近的一份报告,从1914年到1924年,纽约每年发放约70次减刑,大致相当于1990年至2019年间减免总量。最大的障碍似乎是不良政治影响:选民担心如果有人获释后再次犯罪会责怪州长。纽约行政赦免局不评估或推荐申请人,州长独力做出决定,因此任何批评都落在州长肩上。(在其他州,例如内华达州和南卡罗来纳州,重要决策权掌握在董事会手中。以最高比率给予宽恕的州通常在很大程度上依赖于这些委员会的建议或州长寻求他们的咨询。超过一千二百名被监禁的纽约人以及超过一万七千名在联邦监狱的人正在等待减刑和赦免的请愿。

How a Notorious D.E.A. Informant Busted Criminals

臭名昭著的D.E.A.线人如何捣毁罪犯

“What I keep saying to the governor’s people is that if ever there were a case where there was no political risk, this is the one,” Zeidman told me. Governor Kathy Hochul “could stand up at a press conference and say, ‘He turned himself in, the judge is urging this, the prosecutor is urging this.’ ” At the same time, Zeidman sees a danger in holding Coleman up as a kind of gold standard. If the requirement for obtaining clemency is having turned oneself in, who else would ever be eligible? The circumstances of Trevell’s confession are “beyond unique,” he said, “but his case for clemency is not. My concern is that someone’s takeaway would be that people who deserve clemency are one in a million. That was my only, slight hesitation in getting involved.”

“我一直对州长的人说,如果还有没有政治风险的案例,那就是这个案子了,”蔡德曼告诉我。州长凯西·霍楚尔“可以在新闻发布会上站处来说,'他自首了,法官正在敦促这件事,检察官也在敦促。’”与此同时,蔡德曼也明白将科尔曼视为一种黄金标准的风险。如果得到宽赦的要求是自首,那么还有谁有资格?他说,特雷维尔认罪的情况“极其独特”,但他的宽赦处理理由并非如此。我担忧的是,得到宽恕的人仅仅为百万分之一。这是我参与这件事的唯一犹豫。
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In many cases, such as wrongful convictions or nonviolent offenses, the argument for clemency can seem easy to make. With violent acts, clearly committed, the situation becomes more complicated. Henkel’s brother, Robert, declined to speak to me, but has said that he does not believe Coleman’s petition should be granted. He told the New York Post, “It is one thing to seek [clemency] for drug crimes—but not murder.” (At the time of the trial, he said that he had “mixed emotions” about Coleman’s confession. Coleman had a young family, and he “might have made something of his life.”)

在许多情况下,例如错误定罪或非暴力犯罪,宽恕的论点似乎很容易提出。而有明显犯下的暴力行为,情况就变得更加复杂了。汉可的兄弟罗伯特拒绝与我交谈,但他说他不相信科尔曼的请愿书会被批准。他告诉《纽约邮报》,“为毒品犯罪寻求[宽赦处理]是一回事,但谋杀不是。在审判时,他说他对科尔曼的供词情绪复杂”。科尔曼有一个年轻的家庭,“他的生活也许已经改变”。

In The American Conservative, Chase Madar, a New York-based attorney and writer, has argued that the “Rule of Law” is America’s civic religion. This creates a “tendency to treat all legal codes as if they were handed down from Mount Sinai, no matter how unreasonable or cruel they may be.” Madar goes on, “Overall, the thrust of American legalism militates against executive clemency, which seems to many a kind of short circuit, a deus ex machina, an insult to the rule of law.” If we believe that the criminal-justice system is sacrosanct, any deviation becomes a violation.

在《美国保守党》(The American Conservative)一书中,纽约作家蔡斯·马达尔(Chase Madar)认为,“法治”是美国的民间宗教。这造成了一种“将所有法典视为从西奈山传下来的倾向,无论它们多么不合理或残酷。 马达尔接着说,“总的来说,美国法律主义的主旨不利于行政宽赦,在许多人看来,行政宽赦似乎是一种短路,如有神助,这是对法治的侮辱。如果我们认为刑事司法制度是神圣不可侵犯的,那么任何偏离都将成为违法行为。

“Clemency is increasingly being cast as an act of mercy, as opposed to what I think is a gubernatorial obligation,” Zeidman told me. “To me, clemency is about saying to the governor, ‘This system gave me fifty years to life when I was sixteen, and you have the power to rectify that.’ There are more than seven thousand people in New York serving life max sentences. What’s the best way to begin addressing that? Mercy?” Zeidman wants to build in mechanisms that revise sentences as attitudes and mores change. One possibility is “second look” legislation, a category of reforms which can give incarcerated people the opportunity to reduce their sentences after serving a certain length of time. (Advocates have also managed to make some progress via front-end sentencing reform, but those changes rarely apply retroactively.) Last year, in a paperadvocating for more “second look” laws, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers noted the trade-offs embedded in what Zeidman calls our “pathological impulse to punish in perpetuity.” The N.A.C.D.L. wrote, “Society as a whole ultimately bears the substantial monetary and human costs of its decision to warehouse human beings.”

“宽赦正越来越多地被视为一种仁慈的行为,而我不认为这是州长的义务,”蔡德曼对我说。“对我来说,宽赦就是对州长说,'这个制度让我在十六岁的时候被判五十年监禁,你有权纠正这一点。纽约有七千多人在服无期徒刑。开始解决这个问题的最佳方法是什么?怜悯?”蔡德曼希望建立一个随着事态与更多变化而修复判决的机制。一种可能性是“第二眼”立法,这是一类改革,可以让被监禁者在服刑一定时间后获得减刑的机会。倡导者也设法通过前端量刑改革取得了一些进展,但这些变化很少追溯适用。去年,在一篇倡导更多“第二眼”法律的论文中,全国刑事辩护律师协会指出了蔡德曼所说的“永久惩罚的病态冲动”所需要的权衡。N.A.C.D.L.写道,“社会整体最终要承担巨大的财力与人力成本。”
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The shooting didn’t just fracture Coleman’s life and end Henkel’s; Coleman’s confession had consequences of its own. For his sons, making peace with their father’s decision has been a long process. “In the past, I was very angry, very confused,” Trevell, Jr., told me. “Because it’s, like, you just left your entire family to repent for your sins, and we have a single mother who takes care of both of us. I was very mad about that because it left mom in a terrible state.”

枪击事件不仅瓦解了科尔曼的生活,也终结了汉可的生命。科尔曼的认罪有自己的后果。对他的儿子们来说,与父亲的决定和解是一个漫长的过程。“过去,我非常生气,非常困惑,”小特雷维尔告诉我。“因为,这就像是你让全家为你的罪孽忏悔,而我们只有一个照顾我俩的单身母亲。我对此非常愤怒,因为这让妈妈处于一种可怕的状态。

Sutton had dealt with Coleman’s arrests before; he had once gone out to get her a slice of red velvet cake and been carted off to Rikers for jumping a subway turnstile. But, after he was convicted of Henkel’s death, it was clear that he was going away for a long time. “My sons do the time with him, and they need that time back,” Sutton said. “He took that away from me, too—the life I thought I was going to have.” She went on, “We’ve all lost something. Henkel’s family, they’ve lost a brother, who can never come back. My children have lost their father, but now they have a chance to rebuild that.”

萨顿以前处理过科尔曼的逮捕,他曾出门给她买一块红色天鹅绒蛋糕,并因跳地铁旋转门而被带到里克斯监狱。但是,在他因汉可的死而被定罪后,显然将离开很长时间。“我的儿子们和他共同生活过,他们需要弥补那段时光,”萨顿说。“他也把它从我身边夺走了——我以为我会拥有的生活。她接着说,“我们都失去了一些东西。汉可的家人,他们失去了一个永远无法复活的兄弟。我的孩子们失去了他们的父亲,但现在他们有机会重新修复。”

I recently corresponded with Coleman, who is at Fishkill Correctional Facility, about seventy miles north of New York City. In one letter, he wrote, “The thing with atonement, at least for me, is you have to simultaneously feel forgiven and forgive yourself.” Like many of Zeidman’s clients, he is not seeking to be absolved from guilt. Coleman seems to hope that the law can acknowledge that he has been punished enough, and that society might be better off if he were free.

我最近与科尔曼通信,他在纽约以北约七十英里的菲什基尔惩教所。他在一封信中写道:“至少对我来说,赎罪这事是你必须同时被原谅并原谅你自己。”如同蔡德曼的许多客户,他并不寻求被免除罪责。科尔曼似乎希望法律承认他受的惩罚已经足够了, 如果他获得自由,社会可能变得更好。

Clemency decisions are usually made around Christmas, and on Wednesday Governor Hochul granted clemency to thirteen people. Coleman was not among them, but neither was his petition denied. Last December, the Governor said that she planned to overhaul the clemency system, in part by making decisions on a rolling basis. Zeidman noted that two of his clients—men for whom he had filed petitions in previous years—were just granted clemency. He is hopeful that Coleman’s application is “still alive.” As Coleman’s family waits, they have begun to imagine what a future with him might look like. Trevell, Jr., and Tyler are both self-taught animators; over the years, they’ve made thousands of 2-D cartoons, 3-D renderings, even stop-motion shorts using toilet paper. Trevell composes his own music, which often features in his productions; in one, he narrates the story of a small animated cat named Butterbean, who saves the Earth from a comet. Sutton showed me a video on her phone of the boys in middle school, presenting early animations: simpler sequences of balls travelling through mazes. (“I gotta mom,” she said.) But Coleman has only ever heard about the boys’ art—he hasn’t been able to view it through the prison e-mail system. If he’s released, his sons are excited to show him their work—even the old, rudimentary stuff, so that he can see how much they’ve grown. ♦

宽赦决定通常在圣诞节前后做出,周三,霍楚尔州长对十三个人给予了宽赦处理。科尔曼不在其中,但他的请愿也没有被拒绝。去年12月,州长说,她计划彻底改革宽恕制度,部分是通过循环处理作出决定。蔡德曼指出,他的两个客户——几年前他为这些人提交过请愿书——刚刚获得了宽赦处理。他希望科尔曼的申请“还存活着”。科尔曼的家人等待着,他们已开始想象他的未来将会如何。小特雷维尔和泰勒都是自学成才的动画师,多年来他们已经制作了数千部2D卡通、3D渲染,甚至用卫生纸做定格短片。特雷维尔创作了自己的音乐,这些音乐经常出现在他的作品中。在其中一首歌中,他讲述了一只名叫巴特比恩的卡通小猫的故事,它把地球从彗星那儿拯救出来。萨顿给我看了一段手机里男孩中学时期的视频,展示了他们的早期动画:球穿过迷宫的简单序列。(“我得做一个妈妈,“她说。但科尔曼只听说过男孩们的艺术——他无法通过监狱电子邮件系统观看它。假如他被释放,他的儿子们会兴奋地向他展示他们的作品——即使那是古老简陋的东西,这样他就能看到他们成长得有多快。♦