On the last Monday in April, Bruce Bryant woke up in his cell in New York's Sing Sing Correctional Facility one final time. Hours later, he'd watch the large brick building, perched on a hill overlooking the Hudson River, fade from the rearview window of his family's car as they drove him home after nearly three decades in prison.

For Bryant, who was granted clemency by Gov. Kathy Hochul in December and paroled in February, it was a day that came after years of work. He first applied for clemency in 2019, with a packet of more than 300 pages of recommendation letters from nonprofit leaders around New York State, a pastor and even a prison warden, all singing Bryant's praises. Steve Zeidman, director of the Second Look Project at the City University of New York School of Law, called him "the poster child for clemency." But three Christmases came and went, and he remained incarcerated for a murder he has always maintained he didn't commit.

The hope that had kept Bryant alive all those years in prison came to fruition on April 24, 2023. The day was more than just a homecoming: It was the day Bruce Bryant died, and Bruce Bryan was reborn.

The "t" at the end of Bryan's name was a clerical error, tacked onto his surname when it was entered into the system in 1993. He was 24 years old. Now at 53, he's ready to shed the name that New York State gave him.

"We're the Bryans — they took that from him, but now we're getting it back," Bryan's sister Jestina Collins said as she shed joyful tears at his homecoming celebration that Monday at a buzzing recreation center in Brooklyn. "It's over. It's happiness forever now."

Having spent three decades isolated from society, Bryan experienced a lot of firsts that Monday: his first Uber, his first Starbucks, his first cellphone, which he said he's been "catching hell trying to figure out." It's been surreal, but not overwhelming, Bryan told Law360.

"I'm never overwhelmed," he said. "In fact, I try not to even use that term. I'm never overpowered by the environment. It feels like this is what I'm supposed to be. You know, prison felt abnormal, my whole 29 years. This feels normal."

The same day Bryan was released, Stanley Bellamy, who had served more than 37 years of a 62½-year-to-life sentence, was also sent home. Both had applied for clemency with the help of Zeidman, and were released on parole after Hochul used her executive powers to cut their sentences short.

They were among 13 convicts who were granted clemency just before Christmas. And on April 7, Hochul approved seven more clemency applications, granting five pardons and two commutations, or shortened sentences.

It's common for New York governors to grant a handful of clemency applications every year around the holidays, but it's far more unusual for an executive to use that power throughout the year. The April announcement signals that Hochul's office, which has tapped six experts to serve on a Clemency Advisory Panel, is beginning to make good on its December 2021 promise that New York's clemency process would get an overhaul.

"As governor of New York, it is my responsibility to exercise the power of clemency to show that change and redemption are possible," Hochul said in a statement last month. "I am proud that we have dedicated the resources necessary to begin to grant clemency on a rolling basis, and I am committed to continuing our efforts to reform the process to best serve New Yorkers."

Many of those pardoned as part of Hochul's clemency announcement last month were convicted under the Rockefeller drug laws, which heavily increased sentences for drug-related crimes in the 1980s. People like Georgia Weir-Demercado, 49, Asdrubal Gonzalez, 64, and Ashan Grant, 46, had already served 20 or 30 years for non-violent crimes.

Hochul also commuted the sentence of Joaquin Winfield, 58, whose sentence of 37½ years to life is now among the longest of any in New York stemming from a drug-related conviction. Having already served more than 26 years, Winfield would not have seen the Board of Parole until 2034 if his sentence had not been commuted.

There's still much more for the Clemency Advisory Panel to sift through. There are currently 894 pardon requests and 553 commutation requests pending, according to the governor's office.

Coming Home

Bryan's first day home would unfold at breakneck speed as he weaved through New York City. Welcoming him at different stops along the way was a legion of family members, pen pals, nonprofit leaders and friends who had all played a role in securing his freedom.

He picked up a new phone and laptop, provided by Hudson Link, a nonprofit that offers college education and reentry support for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people. Co-founding member Sean Pica was one of dozens of nonprofit leaders around the state who wrote a letter recommending that Bryan be released.

Then Bryan picked out an outfit at Hudson Link's boutique across the street. It was an impressive selection, remarked Bryan's brother Rupert, and Bryan gravitated toward a rack of brightly colored shirts, a stark contrast to the dull green he'd worn inside Sing Sing. He put on a bright yellow button-down, and they headed to the bank.

Once logistics were handled, Bryan could celebrate, and, most importantly, eat. He had two catered parties planned — one in the afternoon at a bar in Brooklyn and another in the evening in the large gym inside the Brooklyn location of Children of Promise, a nonprofit that provides after-school care and other programming for children with incarcerated parents. Bryan helped raise money and run backpack drives for the organization while in prison.

The group's founder, Sharon Content, also wrote a letter for Bryan's clemency application. They met in person outside prison walls for the first time. As Content's playlist of early 2000s R&B hits blared in the background, she eagerly showed Bryan around the recreation center he had been aiding from afar for years.

An eclectic crowd showed up to welcome Bryan home. His five older siblings and one younger half-brother, nieces and nephews and grandnieces and grandnephews spread out around the tables, many of them surrounding his mother, Gwen, whom Bryan would go on to stay with that night in his childhood home in Jamaica, Queens. His siblings all worked to get a room ready for him upstairs.

By the end of the day, Gwen was tired, but the good kind of tired, she said.

"It was a beautiful day," she said. "The circle of all my children is finally complete."

Bryan sent dozens of emails a day while he was inside Sing Sing and penned piles of handwritten letters, reaching out to people he'd read about or had heard speak on the radio. Many of those he corresponded with traveled to meet him on the outside April 24.

Ayesha Hoda, who founded an organization called Justice by the Pen and formed a yearslong friendship with Bryan mostly through email, traveled with her family from Boston just to welcome him home.

Lynn Easterling, vice president and deputy general counsel for Cisco Systems Inc., brought her family up from North Carolina. After reading about Bryan last year in Law360, Easterling said, she felt compelled to reach out to him, so she wrote him a letter. They formed a bond that she said changed the direction of her family's lives. As she looks towards retirement, Easterling said, her friendship with Bryan encouraged her to pursue advocacy around incarceration.

"He's a magnificent person," she said.

Also in attendance was Bailey Domingos, director of business development and client relations at Boston-based intellectual property firm Caldwell IP.

Domingos and firm founder Keegan Caldwell have been helping Bryan secure a patent as a part of a firm pro bono program providing entrepreneurial support to people recently released from prison. Bryan said he was working on building a platform designed to help inmates or former inmates pursue wrongful-conviction claims by providing a database of all parties involved in previously overturned cases, including prosecutors, judges and public defenders.

"So that in the future, if their names are ever mentioned in anything, we know to look closely at what they're doing because they have a history of doing this," Bryan said.

Bryan himself is still working on proving his innocence. Throughout his 29 years in prison, Bryan has maintained that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time during an October 1993 shootout in which 11-year-old Travis Lilley was killed by a stray bullet that sailed through a barbershop window. While Bryan was identified by police as one of the shooters, he said he didn't have a gun and was in the area buying a Halloween costume for his niece.

His trial in 1996 was, at best, flawed. A key witness later recanted his statement. Bryan's lawyer admitted under oath to suffering from PTSD he had developed after representing a former client at the time of Bryan's trial, resulting in him having, as he said, a "a different attitude towards clients." And the prosecutor on the case, John Scarpa, who later moved into private practice as defense counsel, was found guilty of bribing a witness in a 2015 double homicide trial and sentenced to two years in prison.

Bryan is hoping that all of this will prompt the court to take a second look at his conviction. He's working with Alfonzo Riley, a paralegal in the Legal Aid Society's wrongful-conviction unit. Riley himself was released from a New York prison after being granted clemency in 2019.

"I'll feel freer when I get this thing exonerated," Bryan said.

As a mix-and-match group of people, connected by their devotion to Bryan, mingled into the late Brooklyn evening, his sister weaved her way through the room, holding Bruce's new cellphone in her hand. She was building up his contact list, entering numbers into the phone one by one. The next day, she'd drive Bruce to get his driver's license— with the correct spelling of his name on it. She'd help him apply for a passport so he could travel with their family to Costa Rica this summer.

He's her baby brother, Collins said. She's his protector. She watched him from across the room, taking pictures with all of his guests. His smile hadn't retreated the whole night.

"I just love to see him happy," she said. "He's got so much love to give, so how could you not just give it back?"

--Editing by Karin Roberts.

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