Home for the holidays: when freedom is still a struggle

Being released from prison after serving nearly three decades is a blessing. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy.

January 3, 2024 Reuven Blau, THE CITY

David Herion poses for a portrait in East New York after being released from Sing Sing prison. Photo: Alex Krales, THE CITY

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After 27 years in state prison, David Herion was overjoyed as he made the trek from Sing Sing to his aunt’s apartment in Brooklyn in September, when Gov. Kathy Hohcul commuted his sentence.

But he, like many others newly freed from prisons, has struggled to acclimate to day-to-day life in mid-2020s America.

Even Christmas gift giving posed a whole series of tasks he needed to discover and master, including using a smartphone.

“The first two weeks it was like teaching a baby how to walk,” recalled his daughter, Taquira Brooks, who is 29 and has two children. “It was so hard. He was asking the same question over five times. He didn’t understand it.”

Criminal justice advocates point out that it’s standard for people released from prison, many who have been locked away for decades, to be given little-to-no support for food, medical care, or clothes.

“We do a pitiful job,” said Steve Zeidman, an attorney handling multiple pending clemency cases. “To me, it’s an extension of giving people these massive sentences where we send them upstate out of sight, out of mind, and then when they come home, it’s the same thing continued.”

Herion was sent to a series of upstate prisons after prosecutors said he and a co-defendant fired a stray bullet that struck the head of Carolyn Jones, injuring her as she walked out of a Bedford-Stuyvesant church in September 1996.

Three months ago, Hochul commuted his sentence after Herion and his supporters — including Jones herself — spent years lobbying for his release. He wouldn’t have been eligible for parole until at least 2035.

Herion has long argued his innocence and his case is pending before the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Conviction Review Unit, according to multiple people familiar with his appeal.

He’s one of 14 people Hochul has either commuted this year, including four incarcerated men on Dec. 22. All told, Hochul has granted clemency to 19 people since she took over in 2021.

Advocates are pushing her to free more people, including those convicted of murder, on a rolling basis.

‘On a Bad Path’

As for Herion, before his arrest, he was a drug dealer who never used his own name — as a way to avoid accountability — and got into beefs with rival groups.

“I was living a street lifestyle and on a bad path,” he recalled in his commutation appeal. “That was just what we knew. I didn’t know any better.”

But he maintains he never committed any violent crimes and was not involved in the Jones shooting — and was actually at St. John’s Interfaith Hospital in Bed-Stuy visiting a friend who was shot at the time.

In prison, he took part in numerous vocational programs while he pressed for an appeal or commutation from the governor.

He worked as a health attendant for other prisoners, a “blood spill” cleaner after fights or medical emergencies, a food porter, a storehouse and dock worker, a mess hall cook, a laundry machine operator, and gym recreational aid.

“I have the qualifications,” he said.

On the outside, he’s desperately seeking work.

But most of the jobs he’s seeking — like a gig with the U.S. Postal Service or Federal Express — require a driver’s license.

David Herion poses with his daughter and grandchild. Photo: Courtesy of Herion Family

He’s got his driver’s permit and is practicing for an upcoming driver’s test.

But his new career and hopeful pathway towards independence remains in park until that happens.

“I’m just waiting whenever they are going to schedule me,” he said from his aunt’s two-bedroom apartment where he’s currently residing.

In the meantime, friends and family have helped with clothes and food and a cell phone.

When he first came back, some pals took him shopping for a new wardrobe. Others have since taken him to get additional gear, like new shoes.

“My girlfriend and the people around kept me abreast of all the new fashion trends,” he said.

The holidays have been a whirlwind of family time.

For Thanksgiving, he was invited to multiple get togethers hosted by different friends in the neighborhood.

He was excited about hopping from party to party.

But he ate so much at his aunt’s house where many of his family showed up that he ended up falling asleep on the couch after the meal.

“He was so tired,” his daughter recalled.

The food included barbecue ribs, ham, turkey, fried chicken, yams, baked macaroni and cheese.

“I had a feast,” he told THE CITY a few weeks later. “We had a good time.”

In prison, Herion said he never went to the “mess hall” to eat what was served.

“I literally made my own meals,” he recalled. “I’d make my own macaroni and cheese. I’d fry the chicken I bought from the commissary.”

Good People All Around

He has slowly learned to text and is proudly in the process of figuring out other apps on the phone.

“I’ve got a lot of good people in my corner teaching me,” he said. “Even my grandson, who is 7, knows what he’s doing.”

He’s used Facebook and Google searches to find his older sister who he had lost touch with for years. The two met days before Christmas outside a homeless shelter she’s living in.

“She came running to me,” he said. “I cried.”

For Christmas gifts, people “understood” that it was difficult for him to get anyone presents.

But he recently bought his grandson and granddaughter iPads.

“I looked on Google, on Amazon, and ordered two of them,” he said. “When it comes I’ll wrap it in a present.”

He’s also looking for a bracelet for his daughter.

Overall, he’s doing his best to move forward but acknowledges he hasn’t sought mental-health counseling in part due to a lack of funds.

Instead, he has regular talks with a friend from the neighborhood, known as Q, who also served decades in prison.

“We talk about the transition and how we are moving forward,” Herion said.

He’s also inspired by other friends who have similarly turned their lives around after years in prison.

“My counseling is the men who served time before me,” he said. “When I see them. What they are doing.”

They tell him to “take it slow” and not to look back “because you might trip and fall again,” he said. “I’m just keeping my head forward,” he added.

He’s grateful for all the support he’s gotten from his friends and family.

“Some people in my predicament, or those coming home right now, don’t have the luxury that was given to me,” he said. “I’m always appreciative to the people who took me in, put a roof over my head, put money in my pocket, and clothes on my back.”