ROCHESTER (AP) — A mentally disabled man is poised to collect a $3.75 million settlement for a wrongful murder conviction in Upstate New York that put him behind bars for more than a decade, his attorney and the city said Monday.

Douglas Warney confessed in police custody in Rochester to the stabbing death of community activist William Beason on New Year's Day in 1996. Warney has an IQ of 68, which is considered intellectually deficient.

His defenders say Warney's delusional ramblings led to his conviction. He was freed in 2006 when DNA tests that prosecutors initially tried to block tied another man to the killing.

His attorney, Don Thompson, said the negotiated settlement was agreed to by Rochester Mayor Tom Richards. It needs final City Council approval at a Dec. 13 meeting.

"It was one of those things where we thought it was prudent to bring the matter to conclusion,'' said mayoral aide Bob Bergin.

Warney, now 50, also has a smaller state claim pending before the Court of Appeals. That could be wrapped up by the end of the year, Thompson said.

While "no amount" can make up for a loss of freedom, he said "the money sends a message to the government that there will be consequences for this kind of activity and therefore, perhaps, others will not be subjected to the same kind of injustice.''

At his trial in February 1997, prosecutors said Warney confessed details about Beason's slaying that police insisted only the killer could know. But the defense argued that he simply parroted details that two detectives gave him during interrogation at a time when he was stricken with dementia related to AIDS.

"He was not expected to live through his trial, much less his incarceration," Thompson said, "so the time (left to him) probably means more than it would to another individual."

Eldred Johnson Jr., an inmate serving 25 years to life for killing his landlady, drew an extra sentence of 15 years to life in May 2007 for Beason's slaying.

Johnson slashed the woman's throat in Utica in late 1995 and fled to Rochester, where he killed Beason two weeks later. He was imprisoned for the Utica murder in 1998.

The New York City-based Innocence Project helped handle DNA testing for Warney after his conviction. Evidence collected at Beason's apartment eventually led authorities to Johnson through a state DNA database of convicted felons.

In pleading guilty, Johnson claimed he was angered when Beason repeatedly solicited him to have sex. Beason, 63, who also was known as Solomon Israel, had helped organize the Rochester contingent of black men that attended the Million Man March in Washington in 1995.