The man convicted of murdering a Long Island motivational speaker was sentenced today to 20 years to life behind bars.

Kenneth Minor admitted to the 2009 stabbing death of 52-year-old Jeffrey Locker, saying he only helped Locker commit suicide in exchange for cash.

“If I wasn’t a black man … this case would have been resolved two years ago,” Minor told the judge, breaking down in tears at one point.

“I want to try to make it home before I’m a senior citizen,” he added. “I ask for forgiveness and hopefully one day I’ll get it.”

He and his lawyers had said Locker asked for Minor’s help staging his death to look like a robbery, so his family could collect the insurance money.

Minor said, “I ain’t no animal and I don’t have any malice in my heart.”

Minor offered his condolences to the Locker family, saying, “It’s a loss for a loss. I’ve wanted nothing but a resolution for this case since the beginning.”

“Only two people in the world know what happened that night, and one of them is not here no more,” said Minor. “I was going to pay for the part I played in this situation. And I would be the first to stand up as a man to take responsibility.”

During the trial, Minor had admitted he was hired off the streets of East Harlem by Locker, who paid him to stage a fatal mugging so his family in Valley Stream could collect on $18 million in insurance.

“In the end, Mr. Locker is where he wanted to be,” Minor said.

Locker had made thorough plans for his death — taking out insurance, researching funeral parlors and writing goodbye letters to family.

Minor insisted in court that all he did was brace the knife against the steering wheel as they sat in Locker’s car in East Harlem at First and Paladino avenues in the predawn hours of July 16, 2009.

Locker, he claimed, impaled himself in the heart six or seven times.

Minor even hired celebrity coroner Cyril Wecht to testify that the impaling was possible because being stabbed in the heart is only “moderately” painful.

As such, Minor’s lawyer, Daniel Gotlin, claimed his client merely assisted in Locker’s suicide — and should have been acquitted.

But jurors sided with prosecutor Peter Casolaro, who had argued in closing statements that it’s absurd to believe Locker could stab himself so many times.

“Is the defendant an angel of mercy?” Casolaro had asked jurors on Tuesday. “No. He’s the Grim Reaper.”

Locker had cruised through Harlem two summers ago soliciting what he called a “Kevorkian.” He got ripped off by his first hire — a drug addict who took his money and vanished.

His second hire, Minor, left him to bleed to death and got Locker’s ATM card and PIN as payment.

“He was taken advantage of. … He’s no contract killer,” Gotlin had said in his closing argument.

Gotlin said Minor plans to appeal.