Five men unjustly convicted of the 1989 rape of a woman in Central Park filed a defamation lawsuit against the Republican candidate for the White House this Monday, 21st. Donald Trumpfor comments he made during a presidential debate.
The lawsuit, filed in court in Pennsylvania, accuses the former president of making “false and defamatory” comments during the September 10th debate with her rival, the Democrat Kamala Harris.
The five men – four black and one Latino – were teenagers when they were accused of raping and almost killing a young white woman who was jogging in a New York park.
Despite loopholes in the accusation and their DNA not matching that of the crime scene, the five were wrongly convicted and spent between 6 and 13 years in prison before a serial rapist confessed that he was responsible for the attack.
In 2014, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron Brown and Korey Wise received compensation of 41 million dollars (233 million reais) for his time behind bars.
During the presidential debate, Tump “falsely stated that plaintiffs killed a person and pleaded guilty to the crime,” according to the lawsuit. “These statements are false.”
“The plaintiffs never pleaded guilty to any crime and were later acquitted of any wrongdoing.”
Subjected to long interrogations without the presence of lawyers, the young men were prosecuted based on confessions in which they accused each other and which they later said they had made under pressure.
The lawsuit also recalled that eleven days after the Central Park attack, Trump took out a full-page ad in four New York newspapers calling for “bringing back the death penalty.”
Trump referred to the “Central Park Five” after Harris mentioned this ad during the debate to illustrate his argument that Trump uses the issue of race to “divide Americans.”
“They admitted it, they said it… they pleaded guilty,” Trump said.
“And I said, well, if they pleaded guilty, they seriously injured a person, they ultimately killed a person….”
“They pleaded guilty… then they pleaded not guilty,” Trump said.
The case, which dominated headlines and exposed racial discrimination in New York, inspired the dramatic miniseries Eyes that Condemnyes Netflix.
