Central Park Five — wrongfully convicted in 1989 rape — settle with city for $40 million
The five men, whose trial and convictions made national headlines in the 1989 beating and rape of a Central Park jogger, have agreed to a $40 million settlement with the city, a source said Thursday.
BY
Michael Feeney ,
Ginger Adams Otis
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
D Dipasupil/Getty Images (From left) Kharey Wise, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana and Yusef Salaam attend the 2012 screening of 'The Central Park Five' at SVA Theater in New York.
Five black and Latino men — wrongfully convicted 24 years ago in the sensational Central Park jogger case that whipped New York into a racial frenzy — have reached a $40 million settlement with the city, a source familiar with the terms said Thursday.
Now middle-aged, the men were teens when they were arrested in 1989 amid a wave of corrosive and polarizing outrage over the savage rape of a 28-year-old woman.
Convicted in 1990, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana and Yusef Salaam were in prison just shy of seven years, while Kharey Wise served nearly 13.
The men, known as the Central Park Five, had been locked in a bitter battle with the city since filing civil rights lawsuits following their exoneration in 2002. Their convictions were vacated after career criminal Matias Reyes confessed to the brutal crime and DNA evidence backed up his claim.
jim Estrin Defendants Michael Briscoe, Steve Lopez, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson and Yusef Salaam are seen in court. McCray, Richardson, Salaam and two others were wrongfully convicted and served time in the 1989 rape of a jogger in Central Park.
The Bloomberg administration fought to get their lawsuits dismissed, arguing the city had acted with probable cause.
Then-candidate Bill De Blasio made a campaign promise last year to put the divisive issue to rest if elected. Neither the Mayor’s office nor the city's Law Department would comment on the deal, first reported by The New York Times.
But many others expressed their delight.
Courtesy Cordell Cleare/Courtesy Cordell Cleare Supporters are seen rallying the city to settle the civil rights lawsuit on behalf of five men who were wrongly convicted of raping a jogger in Central Park in 1989.
“Tonight I see 5 young boys resting proudly on the shoulders of 5 grown men. A long time coming my friends,” tweeted Ken Burns, who co-directed a 2012 documentary about their case.
The Rev. Al Sharpton, who was sharply criticized, along with many other community activists for standing by the boys during their trials, hailed the settlement.
“We took a lot of abuse. The toll on these men and their supporters was terrible. I want to know we have things in place so that this doesn't happen again,” he said.
IFCFilmsTube via YouTube The movie, 'The Central Park Five,' depicted the story of the five men's trial and wrongful convictions.
“I'm happy for them, but you know… money doesn't give them those years back. It doesn't give them their youth back," Sharpton added.
The CP5’s 1989 arrests occurred amid an economically strapped New York simmering with class tensions and racial unrest and gave rise to new and scary language.
On April 19, as cops heard reports of “wolf packs” of black and Latino teens “wilding” through Central Park, the jogger was viciously attacked.
Yusef Salaam, one of the exonerated members of the Central Park 5.
Trisha Meili was bashed in the head with a rock — nearly ripping her left eye from its socket — and raped and left with skull fractures so severe she was in a coma for six weeks.
As the newspapers howled for arrests of the marauding teens and then-mayor Ed Koch called it “the crime of the century,” real-estate mogul Donald Trump took out ads calling for the return of the death penalty. Trump wanted “criminals of every age” involved in the Central Park jogger case “to be afraid.”
The Central Park Five say they never attacked Meili. They and their lawyers maintain police railroaded them into making incriminating statements against themselves and each other.
Sen. Bill Perkins, who was president of the Schomburg Plaza tenants' association, where three of the Central Park Five members lived, said the settlement brought tears to his eyes.
"This chapter of our racist history needs to be closed and never repeated again," said Perkins. "Hopefully this will never happen to anybody ever again."
With Corinne Lestch
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/central-park-40m-settlement-article-1.1836991
Is this correct?
in prison,
& the trauma 
