What followed was a miscarriage of justice. After two days under repeated questioning, four of the five teenagers signed contradictory confessions and were each sentenced to between five and 15 years in prison. DNA evidence later established that Matias Reyes, a serial rapist already behind bars, had committed the crime by himself. All five men had their convictions vacated in 2002.
Donald Trump disagrees. On Friday, he told CNN he still believes the Central Park Five committed the crime for which they have been exonerated.
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Their exoneration in 2002, long after the media frenzy and the broader crime wave of the 1990s had receded, did not dissuade him. When Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the city would settle their lawsuit for $40 million in 2014, Trump called it “politics at its lowest and worst level.” He criticized the courts, which had a “lot to answer for,” as well as the “stupidity” of city officials. Only the police officers who had extracted false confessions from five teenagers escaped his scorn.
“Speak to the detectives on the case and try listening to the facts,” he
wrote in an editorial. “These young men do not exactly have the pasts of angels.”
The Central Park Five case is not an anomaly. Trump told a police union last December he would
use executive orders to mandate the death penalty for people who kill police officers. When asked at a recent town hall how he would stop “black-on-black crime,” he said he would
apply stop-and-frisk nationwide. After the arrest of Ahmad Khan Rahami for allegedly planting pressure-cooker bombs in Manhattan in September, Trump
voiced dismay that the “evil thug” would be given “amazing hospitalization” and “an outstanding lawyer.”
“His case will go through the various court systems for years and, in the end, people will forget, and his punishment will not be what it once would have been,” Trump later told a crowd of supporters about Rahami’s case. “What a sad situation. We must have speedy but fair trials, and we must deliver a just and very harsh punishment to these people.”