Facing Misconduct Claims, Brooklyn Prosecutor Agrees to Free Man Held 15 Years

By A. G. SULZBERGER

Facing questions about whether a high-ranking prosecutor’s actions during a murder investigation and trial constituted misconduct, the Brooklyn district attorney’s office agreed on Tuesday to allow a man imprisoned in that case to have his murder conviction vacated and his record cleared with the assurance that he will not be retried.

The agreement means that the man, Jabbar Collins, who 15 years ago was sentenced to 34 years to life in the murder of a Brooklyn landlord, will be freed later this week — the culmination of years of his own legal efforts to bring light to prosecutorial misconduct that he said deprived him of a fair trial.

The decision also spares officials from the Brooklyn district attorney’s office — most notably the hard-charging prosecutor who oversaw the case, Michael F. Vecchione — from being compelled to testify about the allegations of misconduct during a habeas corpus hearing that was set to resume this week.
The deal amounted to a rare and embarrassing admission by the Brooklyn district attorney’s office — which had initially insisted that Mr. Collins be retried — that the case had been mishandled.

Judge Dora L. Irizarry, of the United States District Court in Brooklyn, lamented that in agreeing to free Mr. Collins, the district attorney’s office had avoided a hearing that would have offered greater transparency into the case’s “troubling history.”

“It is indeed beyond disappointing, it is really sad that the district attorney’s office persists in standing firm and saying that it did nothing wrong here,” the judge said. She described the handling of the case by the district attorney’s office as “shameful.”