Exonerated Five Sue Trump for Defamation After Decades of Lies

Donald Trump’s inaccurate account about the Central Park jogger case has lived rent-free in his head for nearly half of his life. The exonerated men have had enough and are calling on a federal judge to put a stop to his ongoing campaign of falsehoods regarding their wrongful convictions.

Since May 1, 1989, Trump has publicized his “hate” for the five Black and brown teenagers accused by law enforcement of nearly killing a young white woman in that famous Manhattan park.

The Republican nominee for president has unapologetically spewed his version of the events for decades about the well-documented case by calling them “murderers” and “criminals.” During last month’s presidential debate, Trump took his inaccuracies even further and falsely said they pleaded guilty, pushing the five men — known as the Central Park Five or Exonerated Five — to file a federal lawsuit against the former president on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 

“It would be good if Mr. Trump would retract his statement and apologize but we aren’t holding our breath for that,” Shanin Specter, a lead attorney for the Exonerated Five, wrote in an email to Capital B.

In the only debate between the candidates, Vice President Kamala Harris called out how Trump has used his notoriety and wealth to divide the country. She reminded the American public how he spent $85,000 for four full-page newspaper ads demanding for the teens’ execution before they were indicted in 1989. 

Trump tried to shrug off his 35-year-old ad that called for the death penalty for a non-homicide case. He responded to Harris by saying, in part: “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.”

None of that is true. 

Twelve days after the 28-year-old jogger survived the brutal sexual assault, she came out of a coma. Two days later, the teens — Antron Brown (formerly Antron McCray), Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise — were indicted by a grand jury in state court for attempted murder, rape, sodomy, assault, robbery, sexual abuse, and riot charges.

Read More: Exonerated ‘Central Park Five’ Members Remind America About Who Donald Trump Has Always Been

After two separate trials in 1990, four of the teens were convicted as juvenile offenders, and sentenced to less time than Wise. At only 16, he was tried and sentenced as an adult to five to 15 years in prison. By the turn of the century, all except Wise served their time in prison. They all maintained their innocence that came to light in 2002 when Matias Reyes, the actual perpetrator who was already serving prison time for a series of rapes that happened around April 1989, confessed. 

No forensic evidence ever connected the teens to the attack or rape. Prosecutors with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office acknowledged that their case “rested almost entirely” on “troubling discrepancies” throughout “statements made by the defendants,” according to court filings. DNA testing further cleared their names. In 2014, the exonerated men settled a civil lawsuit against the city of New York for $41 million. They have ongoing pain and suffering that’s tacked on whenever the next attack by Trump occurs. 

None of those facts mattered to Trump for decades.  

When Brown, Richardson, Salaam, Santana, and Wise went to trial, that meant they did not plead guilty or enter into a cooperation agreement with prosecutors to testify against the others. More importantly — not to disregard the severity of the injuries sustained by the three people attacked in the park that night — no one was murdered. 

With each defamatory comment Trump makes about their case, he casts them “in a harmful false light and intentionally inflicts emotional distress on them,” Specter, the lead attorney for the Exonerated Five, wrote in a news release. They “seek to correct the record and clear their names — once again.”

Read More: The Courthouse Where Trump Surrendered Conjures an Ugly History

Salaam, 50, is in his first term as a New York City Council member. Brown, Santana, and Richardson, all 50, and Wise, 52, are activists for criminal justice reform. 

With this litigation, the Exonerated Five are seeking an unspecified amount for damages to their reputation, emotional pain and suffering, out-of-pocket costs and expenses to file a civil lawsuit, and punitive damages to punish Trump “for his conduct and deter him and others similarly situated from like acts in the future,” according to the lawsuit. 

If this case is decided by a jury, judge, or out of court, that may not deter him or his associates from continuing to spread lies about the Exonerated Five’s case. Trump has found ways to weasel out of paying his bills, has repeatedly uttered racist comments without blinking twice, and he owes nearly $1 billion in civil litigations.

The 78-year-old owes $489 million for a civil fraud case the Office of the New York State Attorney General filed against him, and over $90 million to E. Jean Carroll for defamation and liability lawsuits she filed against Trump accusing him of sexually abusing her in the 1990s and defaming her reputation. Trump is appealing those judgments.

The post Exonerated Five Sue Trump for Defamation After Decades of Lies appeared first on Capital B News.

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