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‘Central Park Five’ defamation suit against Trump, explained
Presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris pictured during portion of Sept. 10, 2024 debate on ABC that gave rise to Central Park Five defamation lawsuit (ABC News).
Just over one month after former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris appeared on ABC for a debate in Philadelphia watched by 67 million people across America, the exonerated “Central Park Five” has filed a defamation lawsuit against Trump.
Antron Brown, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Korey Wise and Yusef Salaam were each named as plaintiffs in the case brought Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and they said Trump “falsely stated that Plaintiffs killed an individual and pled guilty to the crime.”
In 1989, the then teenagers were wrongfully accused of raping Trisha Meili as she jogged in Central Park. The five were also accused of attacking two men that same night.
“While in police custody, Plaintiffs were each separately subjected to hours of coercive interrogation, under duress, with no attorney present and often without a parent or guardian present,” the lawsuit recounted. “Plaintiffs all initially denied having any knowledge of the Central Park assaults. However, after hours of interrogation, four of the Plaintiffs agreed to provide written and videotaped statements in which they falsely admitted to having been present during the assaults.”
From there, the “Central Park Five” faced trials, maintained their innocence, were convicted by juries in 1990 and were sent to prison, only to be exonerated decades later after the real attacker, Matias Reyes, admitted to the crime against Meili and DNA “conclusively” proved that Reyes was the “true perpetrator,” court documents said.
“In fact, Plaintiffs were not involved in the assaults in any way, and their statements were the product of coercion and duress,” the lawsuit said. “Plaintiffs all recanted their coerced statements shortly after their interrogations.”
The Central Park Five were ultimately exonerated, their convictions were vacated, and New York City went on to settle a lawsuit to the tune of $41 million dollars.
Top left to right and bottom left to right: This combination photo shows Raymond Santana, Yusef Salaam, Antron McCray, Korey Wise and Kevin Richardson, known as Central Park Five (AP Photo).
What does this have to do with Trump? During the Sept. 10 debate, Harris said that throughout his life and career, Trump has “attempted to use race to divide the American people,” and one of the examples she provided was the “full-page ad” he placed in the New York Times and elsewhere in 1989 “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.”
In response to Harris, Trump said that “they come up with things like what she just said going back many, many years when a lot of people including Mayor Bloomberg agreed with me on the Central Park Five.”
“They admitted – they said, they pled guilty. And I said, well, if they pled guilty they badly hurt a person, killed a person ultimately,” he said. “And if they pled guilty – then they pled we’re not guilty.”
These words, the complaint said, were “demonstrably false.”
“Plaintiffs never pled guilty to any crime and were subsequently cleared of all wrongdoing. Further, the victims of the Central Park assaults were not killed,” the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit alleged that Trump engaged in “malicious, intentional and reckless conduct” and should be on the hook for punitive damages to “punish Defendant Trump for his conduct and deter him and others similarly situated from like acts in the future.”
Trump’s prior exchange with a reporter during his presidency appears to have been cited as some proof that he knew the “Central Park Five” didn’t kill anyone or plead guilty, though he did say they “admitted their guilt.”
In response to Law&Crime’s request for comment, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said the federal complaint is “just another frivolous, Election Interference lawsuit, filed by desperate left-wing activists, in an attempt to distract 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 said.
Read the lawsuit here.
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