In 1990, five Black and Latino teenagers — Kevin Richardson (14), Raymond Santana (14), Antron McCray (15), Yusef Salaam (15) and Korey Wise (16) — who became known as the Central Park Five, were wrongly convicted for attacking and raping a jogger, Trisha Meili, a 28-year-old white woman was in a coma for 12 days following the incident in April 1989.
Subsequently exonerated, the five — all of them now in their 50s — now find themselves in the middle of another legal battle: On Monday, the five men filed a lawsuit in Pennsylvania suing former President Donald Trump, accusing him of “false and defamatory” statements he made during the presidential debate in September with Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump is the Republican candidate for the November election, while Harris is the Democratic Party’s nominee.
It’s the latest chapter in a long-running saga involving the Central Park Five (now sometimes known as the “Exonerated Five”) and Trump — who once called for their execution in an infamous series of advertisements.
So what’s the latest lawsuit about, how has the Trump campaign responded and what’s Trump’s history with the Central Park Five?
Why are the Central Park Five suing Trump?
At the September debate, Trump said that at the time of the interrogation process in 1989 the teenagers “admitted – they said, they pled guilty. And I said, well, if they pled guilty, they badly hurt a person, killed a person ultimately.”
However, no one was killed in the 1989 attack. Meili was severely battered, left in a coma, and is still dealing with long-term effects from the attack, but she survived.
Trump was also wrong in his claim that the Central Park Five pled guilty: Throughout the trial, they all insisted that they were innocent, as their lawyers pointed out in their lawsuit.
The lawsuit says Trump’s debate comments were given “negligently” and “with reckless disregard for their falsity”.
Four of the Central Park Five did say, in statements to the police during questioning, that they were involved in the assault. But many legal experts have accused the interrogators at the time of putting the five young men under duress and in effect, coercing four of them into falsely confessing to attacking and raping Meili.
Their sentences ranged from six to thirteen years.
In 2002, the Central Park Five were exonerated after Matias Reyes, a convicted serial rapist already serving a life sentence for unrelated crimes, confessed to Meili’s assault.
Reyes’s DNA matched the evidence collected at the crime scene which led Justice Charles J Tejada of the Supreme Court of the State of New York to grant a motion to vacate the convictions of the Central Park Five. In 2014, the five men sued the city of New York in a civil suit. The city agreed to a settlement worth $41m.
In 2016, the men were awarded a further $3.9m in a settlement from the New York State Court of Claims.
What’s Trump’s history with the Central Park Five?
The attack on Meili sparked widespread outrage and anger: She was found naked and gagged, her skull fractured so badly that her left eye was dislodged from its socket.
Amid the media’s frenetic focus on the case, Trump took out full-page 600-word advertisements with his signature in The New York Times, The Daily News, The New York Post and New York Newsday, advocating for the reinstatement of the death penalty.
The ads were titled: “Bring Back The Death Penalty. Bring Back Our Police!”
The advertisements stated: “I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes. They must serve as examples so that others will think long and hard before committing a crime or an act of violence.”
Despite the subsequent vacation of their convictions, Trump has never apologised for those advertisements.
How has Trump’s campaign responded to the new lawsuit?
Shanin Specter, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said in a statement that Trump’s remarks “cast them in a harmful false light and intentionally inflicted emotional distress on them”.
But in a statement, Trump’s campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung called the lawsuit “just another frivolous, election Interference lawsuit”. He claimed the lawsuit was aimed at distracting “the American people from Kamala Harris’s dangerously liberal agenda and failing campaign.”
“The frantic lawfare efforts by Lyin’ Kamala’s allies to interfere in the election are going nowhere and President Trump is dominating as he marches to a historic win for the American people on November 5th,” Cheung stated, referring to the election date.
Could the lawsuit affect Trump’s campaign?
In the recent September presidential debate and at the Democratic National Convention in August, Harris and her supporters have continued to target Trump over his positions regarding the Central Park Five.
At the DNC, civil rights activist Al Sharpton brought out the Central Park Five on stage to speak out against Trump.
“He spent a small fortune on full-page ads calling for the execution of five innocent young teenagers,” Sharpton stated, referring to the Central Park Five.
“Forty-Five wanted us unalive,” Yusef Salaam said at the DNC, referring to Trump, the nation’s 45th president. “Today, we are exonerated because the actual perpetrator confessed and DNA proved it. [Trump] still says he still stands by the original guilty verdict. He dismisses scientific evidence rather than admit he was wrong.”
In the September debate, Harris criticised Trump for the full-page ad he did in 1989
“Let’s remember, this is the same individual who took out a full-page ad in The New York Times calling for the execution of five young Black and Latino boys who were innocent, the Central Park Five. Took out a full-page ad calling for their execution.” Harris stated
“I think the American people want better than that, want better than this,” Harris added.
Yet, Trump has for months polled at record levels among Black voters — support that appears to have been undented by criticism from Harris and her campaign. Harris is also polling lower than previous Democratic Party candidates among Latinos.