How many is that this year: The city has reached a $10 million settlement with a Brooklyn man who spent more than 15 years in prison for the murder of a rabbi he did not commit, ending a bitter legal battle that tarnished the legacy of former Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes. Jabbar Collins wrongful conviction was one of many in Brooklyn that came to light in recent years, but his case stood out as the shameful result of an allegedly rogue prosecutor who railroaded Collins to solve a high-profile crime that had struck deeply in the Orthodox Jewish community. The citys top lawyer, Zachary Carter, made the multimillion-dollar offer on Monday, capping weeks of intense negotiations with a civil trial scheduled for Oct. 20 in Brooklyn Federal Court. Collins, 42, agreed to a $3 million settlement last month from the state to settle a separate lawsuit. I lost some of the best years of my life in prison and now Im starting my life all over again as a middle-aged man, Collins told the Daily News. My emotions are all over the place. A part of me wanted to lay everything out in a full public trial and put all these people on the witness stand. Ive been litigating this for 20 years and for the first time in 20 years I dont have to wake up in the morning having to fight that fight anymore. Collins lawyer Joel Rudin said overturning the conviction and restoring his client to freedom is only part of the lawsuits victory. Im gratified that we were able to expose the corruption of the Hynes regime, Rudin said Tuesday. Hynes, who was voted out of office last November, acknowledged in a sworn deposition last year that he no longer believed Collins was guilty of killing Rabbi Abraham Pollack in 1994. Recently, Hynes successor, Kenneth Thompson, told the Daily News editorial board that Collins was innocent. Collins’ conviction was tossed out in 2010 by Federal Judge Dora Irizarry, who found that then-prosecutor Michael Vecchione had coerced witnesses to finger Collins and withheld evidence during the murder trial that would have helped clear the accused man. A key witness at Collins’ murder trial testified at a hearing in Brooklyn Federal Court in 2011 that Vecchione had threatened to beat him over the head with a coffee table and toss him in jail if he did not implicate Collins. Collins’ helped expose much of the key evidence used to free him by filing Freedom of Information Act requests while locked up. Photo by: Jesse Ward for New York Daily News Vecchione has strongly denied the allegations of wrongdoing. Collins was able to uncover much of the alleged misconduct on his own by filing Freedom of Information requests from his upstate prison cell. Rudin said the depositions and evidence developed as part of the suit showed Hynes had no system for disciplining prosecutors for misconduct and civil rights violations. In a statement issued by his lawyer, Hynes said he made the decision not to re-try Collins after learning that three prosecution witnesses had recanted their testimony.
Posted on: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 22:57:29 +0000
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