In April, former Bad Boy artist G-Dep was convicted in a New York court for the murder of John Henkel, who he shot during an attempted robbery in 1993. Yesterday, a judge handed down a 15 years to life prison sentence in the case.

Dep, real name Trevell Coleman, walked into a police precinct in December 2010 and voluntarily confessed to shooting the man, stating that the incident had been weighing on his conscious over the past 17 years. At the time of the confession, he was unaware that the victim had died.

His confession played a role in the given prison time and before giving him his sentence, Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Michael Obus commended Dep for coming forward in the way that he did:

“I’m sure there are people that are second-guessing your decision, and there will be people that will second-guess it. Perhaps it wasn’t the best legal strategy, but certainly it was the right thing to do, even though it landed you in the position that you are in now.”

The foreman on the jury that convicted G-Dep happened to be GQ magazine’s editor in chief Jeff Nelson. Before the sentencing, Nelson wrote the Obus asking that Dep be shown leniency for confessing. “I, and I believe many others, have been moved by Mr. Coleman’s story and by what he did in listening to his conscience and coming forward after all these years”

But when MTV News spoke to G-Dep shortly after his conviction, he said the following:

“However it went down, it was just one of them things where I knew I was facing some type of charge, so whatever the verdict was, I knew it was God’s will. You know, someone was taken from [the Henkel] family, so I can’t feel like I was robbed in any kind of way. I just want to thank everyone that was involved in the case. I don’t have no ill thoughts towards anybody.”

Sources: MTV, CBS