Metro

Man who spent 16 years behind bars gets $10M for wrongful conviction

A Brooklyn man who spent 15 years behind bars after being wrongly convicted of killing a rabbi won a $10 million settlement from the city Tuesday.

Former Brooklyn District Attorney Charles HynesDennis A. Clark

The amount ties the largest city settlement ever given a wrongfully convicted man.

“They’ll go to their graves denying it,’’ but prosecutors were wrong, Jabbar Collins, the former convict who won the verdict, told The Post on Tuesday.

The 42-year-old man — who already won a $3 million settlement from the state — said the first thing he plans to do with his dough is buy a new car to replace his unreliable 2000 Nissan Altima.

Collins was convicted of killing Rabbi Avraham Pollack during a 1994 robbery and then released from prison in 2010 after a trio of witnesses recanted their testimony.

The case exposed controversial allegations about the DA’s office such as keeping witnesses in hotel rooms until they agreed to give false testimony.

One witness said former Brooklyn prosecutor Michael Vecchione threatened to pummel him with a coffee table if he refused to take the stand against Collins.

A federal judge wound up bashing the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office’s conduct as “shameful.”

Then-DA Charles Hynes has since said he now believes Collins is innocent.

“I think the case exposed that the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office under Charles Hynes was a cesspool,” said Collins’ lawyer, Joel Rudin.

Collins’ city settlement matches that of one of the Central Park Five accused rapists.

A spokeswoman for the city Law Department said the DA’s office had conceded that exculpatory evidence was withheld from Collins at his trial and that his conviction and sentencing violated his Constitutional Rights.

Meanwhile, Vecchione said, “I did absolutely nothing wrong in that entire case. I never violated any legal ethics. I don’t know how many times I have to say it, but that’s my statement.”