Corey Arthur Released: Conviction, Parole Denials, Co-Defendant

Corey Arthur, the former New York City man convicted of murdering his onetime English teacher Jonathan Levin in 1997, was released from prison on parole in April 2026 after serving nearly 29 years of a 25-years-to-life sentence. He walked free for the first time since his arrest in June 1997, having been approved by the New York State Board of Parole at what appears to have been his third appearance before the Board.¹

Arthur disclosed the release in an April 2026 interview with Film Comment, conducted alongside filmmaker Sandro Ramani just days after he left custody.¹

The Crime That Sent Him to Prison

On May 30, 1997, Jonathan M. Levin, a 31-year-old English teacher at William Howard Taft High School in the South Bronx, was attacked inside his Upper West Side apartment at 205 Columbus Avenue. He was bound to a chair with duct tape, cut repeatedly with a steak knife to force him to give up his ATM code, and shot in the back of the head. His stolen Chase Manhattan Bank card was then used to withdraw $800.²³

Levin was the son of Gerald Levin, then chairman and CEO of Time Warner Inc., and the case drew extraordinary law-enforcement attention. NYPD Commissioner Howard Safir called Arthur the “most wanted man in New York City” and posted an $11,000 reward, and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said “hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of detectives” had been assigned to the investigation.⁴

Arthur, 19 at the time, was a former student of Levin’s. The teacher had tried to mentor him as an aspiring poet. Arthur had been out of school for more than a year and had prior felony convictions for drug possession. Police arrested him on June 7, 1997, after finding his fingerprint at the scene and a .22-caliber bullet in his knapsack; forensic evidence also linked him to the knife, and the victim’s blood was found on his clothing.²⁵

Conviction and Sentence

On November 11, 1998, a Manhattan jury convicted Arthur of second-degree murder and two counts of first-degree robbery. Jurors acquitted him of first-degree murder, apparently not persuaded he was the shooter, though the physical evidence tied him to the attack. Arthur had told the court he was at the apartment to deliver crack cocaine to Levin and that two armed men forced him to tie the teacher up, an account the jury rejected.⁵

On December 11, 1998, State Supreme Court Justice Marcy L. Kahn sentenced him to the statutory maximum of 25 years to life. The Levin family had sought life without parole and considered the sentence inadequate.⁶²

Carol Levin, Jonathan’s mother, publicly defended her son after the trial, calling him an “honorable, beautiful man” and rejecting the defense’s drug-delivery account as “fiction.”⁷

Arthur’s direct appeal was unanimously rejected by the Appellate Division, First Department, on January 31, 2002.⁸

Two Parole Denials Before the Release

Arthur became eligible for parole after serving 25 years. The New York State Board of Parole denied him in 2022, and the parole appeals unit affirmed that decision.⁹

He appeared again in February 2024 and was denied a second time, with a 24-month hold set before his next hearing. The Board found that release would be “incompatible with the welfare of society” and would “deprecate the serious nature of the crime.” Commissioners cited the “callousness” of robbing and killing a mentor, and said Arthur had not been forthright in his interview, giving conflicting statements about his role and minimizing his actions. Arthur challenged the decision, arguing the Board mischaracterized his statements, relied on personal bias, and improperly focused on the seriousness of the offense while ignoring other statutory factors. The Appeals Unit rejected all three arguments as “without merit.”¹⁰

The 24-month hold pointed to a rehearing in early 2026. That hearing resulted in his release. Neither the file nor Arthur’s own public comments detail the specific reasoning behind the Board’s reversal.¹

What Arthur Did in Prison

Over nearly three decades at Otisville Correctional Facility and other New York State prisons, Arthur built a body of writing, visual art, and film. His essays and journalism have appeared in The Marshall Project, Spectre Journal, Scalawag, The Drift, and Inquest, among others.¹¹ In a 2015 interview with Newsweek‘s Alexander Nazaryan, he said: “The buck stops here. I take full responsibility for Jonathan’s death.”⁴

As a visual artist working in composite, acrylic, and colored pencil on paper, Arthur mounted the exhibition She Told Me Save the Flower at My Gallery NYC in Brooklyn in March 2023, featuring more than 20 portraits of feminist figures including Angela Davis and Kathy Boudin. He joined the opening by a ten-minute phone call from prison. His work has also been shown at the Berkeley Art Center and in Australia. His creative projects have been supported by Empowerment Avenue, a nonprofit that helps incarcerated artists reach galleries, publishers, and film festivals.¹²¹³

Arthur co-directed the 15-minute documentary In Exchange for Flesh (2025) with Sandro Ramani. The film examines strip frisking in New York State prisons, drawing on testimony Arthur and co-writer Sara Keilly recorded under state surveillance along with archival training footage. It was assembled over a year of remote collaboration on monitored phone lines.¹⁴ The film received an Honorable Mention for the Documentary Short Grand Jury Prize at the 2026 Slamdance Film Festival¹⁵ and screened at the True/False Film Fest and Dances with Films New York. Arthur has said he was placed in solitary confinement in retaliation for the production.¹

In a 2024 essay for Spectre Journal, Arthur argued that press coverage of his case in 1997 and 1998 exemplified the “superpredator” framing of 1990s crime reporting, calling it a form of “social lynching” that cast him as an “urban monster.”⁴

What Happened to the Co-Defendant

Arthur was tried alone. His co-defendant, Montoun Hart, was tried separately and acquitted of all charges in January 1999. The jury found Hart’s three confessions unreliable because he had consumed large quantities of alcohol and marijuana before his police interrogation, and no physical evidence placed him at the scene.¹⁶ Hart was later arrested in a separate gun-trafficking investigation and in July 2022 pleaded guilty to first-degree criminal sale of a firearm, receiving a 15-year prison sentence for selling 44 firearms to undercover officers.¹⁷

1
Film Comment. Interview: Corey Devon Arthur and Sandro Ramani on In Exchange for Flesh
2
Education Week. Remembering Jon
3
FindLaw. People v. Arthur
4
Spectre Journal. Social Lynching: Reflecting on Media Racism From a Prison Cell
5
New York Times. Corey Arthur News
6
UPI. Levin Killer Gets Max 25 to Life
7
New York Daily News. Smear of Son Painful, Mom Says
8
FindLaw. People v. Arthur
9
Fordham Law Archive. Arthur, Corey – Appeals Unit Decision
10
NY DOCCS. Corey Arthur DIN 98A7146
11
Scalawag Magazine. Corey Devon Arthur
12
Friends Journal. She Told Me Save the Flower
13
Empowerment Avenue. Corey Arthur
14
In Exchange for Flesh. About
15
Slamdance. 2026 Award Winners
16
New York Post. Levin Slay Suspect’s Booze, Pot Spree Sets Him Free
17
Brooklyn District Attorney. Brownsville Man Sentenced to 15 Years in Prison for Gun Trafficking