On Monday, five Black and Latinx men formerly known as the “Central Park Five” filed a lawsuit against former President Donald Trump, who, as a candidate for president this year, wrongly asserted to a national audience that the men were guilty of a sexual assault they were exonerated of more than 20 years ago.
As teenagers in 1989, the five men were arrested by the New York City Police Department under suspicion of sexually and physically assaulting a female jogger in Central Park. After being coerced by police (without lawyers or parents present), some of the five confessed to the crime, believing it would end the hours-long interrogations they were being subjected to.
“During the hours of relentless questioning that we each endured, detectives lied to us repeatedly. They said they had matched our fingerprints to crime scene evidence and told each of us that the others had confessed and implicated us in the attack. They said that if we just admitted to participating in the attack, we could go home,” the men, now calling themselves the Exonerated Five, wrote in a joint op-ed in 2021. “All of these were blatant lies.”
The men later recanted their statements, and none of the five ever pleaded guilty in court. They maintained their innocence for years, even after a jury found them guilty and they were sent to prison for the crime.
In 2002, after another individual confessed to the crime and DNA evidence proved the five were innocent, the men were released from prison. The city later agreed to pay them $41 million in legal fees.
Since the teenagers were initially accused in 1989, Trump has needlessly inserted himself into the case. When they were first charged, for example, Trump took out a full-page ad in The New York Times, citing the case to demand that the state of New York reinstate the death penalty. Even after their exoneration, Trump has refused to apologize for his mischaracterization of the men, claiming their coerced confessions from police were proof that they had committed the crime and deserved to be executed by the state.
“They admitted their guilt,” Trump said in 2019 when asked if he had changed his mind or had any remorse for publishing the ad.
More recent claims from the ex-president led to the lawsuit the five men submitted this week. Trump repeated the false claims during a presidential debate against his Democratic opponent Vice President Kamala Harris in early September. Said Trump:
They admitted — they said, they pled guilty. And I said, well, if they pled guilty they badly hurt a person, killed a person ultimately. And if they pled guilty — then they pled we’re not guilty.
The lawsuit from the five men notes that Trump’s words are “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 complaint against Trump says.
In continuing to push false claims against them, Trump has caused “severe emotional distress and reputational damage,” the complaint further alleges. The men are seeking monetary damages for Trump’s defamatory statements.
Even if Trump wins the presidential election, the complaint could, in theory, continue moving forward. Although precedent prevents presidents from being held accountable for criminal charges against them while in office, a Supreme Court ruling in 1997 found that sitting presidents could face civil lawsuits while serving in the White House.
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