The lawyer for a man who spent 16 years behind bars for the murder of a Brooklyn rabbi before his conviction was thrown out has a message for Mayor de Blasio: He’ll have what the Central Park Five are having.
Jabbar Collins’ lawyer, Joel Rudin, says his client, like each of the five men released in the quarter-century-old jogger rape case, should get $1 million for each year he was in prison.
Rudin complained that the city has been low-balling Collins with a fraction of what the Central Park Five were awarded.
“The city is understandably concerned about establishing a million-dollar-per-year going rate for wrongful-imprisonment cases, but cases like Jabbar Collins and the Central Park Five come along once or twice in a generation,” Rudin told The Post.
The city last month agreed to pay $40.7 million to the five men convicted of the Central Park attack in 1989 for the nearly 41 combined years they spent in prison. Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana and Yusef Salaam will get $7 million each. Kharey Wise will get $13 million.
Mayor Mike Bloomberg had opposed settling their suit. De Blasio had strongly criticized Bloomberg’s stance and signed off on the payout.
In Collins’ case, the guilty verdict was overturned after a prosecution witness said he had testified because Brooklyn Assistant DA Michael Vecchione threatened to bash him with a coffee table.
Vecchione has repeatedly disputed that he threatened any witnesses or acted improperly in the Collins case.
Several other cases prosecuted by Vecchione have also come under scrutiny.
“Unlike the Central Park Five case, there is no doubt at all about the city’s legal liability for the pervasive violations of Jabbar Collins’ constitutional rights,” Rudin said.
Rudin warned that any delay will cost the city in the long run.
“The closer we get to a trial the city cannot defend or win, the higher will be the settlement we will insist upon,” he said.
Collins has filed a claim against the state, but Rudin said Attorney General Eric Schneiderman hasn’t made a settlement offer.
Rudin noted Schneiderman has made strident statements about righting wrongful convictions.
“Mr. Schneiderman has been refreshingly sympathetic to the need to compensate the unjustly convicted,” he said. “Delay prolongs Jabbar’s suffering and his ability to get on with his life after 16 horrendous years spent in prison.’’
Collins was convicted in the murder of rabbi Avraham Pollack in a 1994 robbery. He was arrested after cops said they got a tip.
He was released in 2010 after the troubling circumstances of his arrest and prosecution surfaced.
Former Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes admitted a botched prosecution in a recent deposition.
“Hynes admitted in his sworn deposition that the conviction resulted from his office’s illegal conduct in holding back exculpatory evidence,” Rudin said.
Citing the ongoing litigation, the AG’s office and the city Law Department declined to comment.