Judge signs off on $41M ‘Central Park Five’ settlement

The city’s longstanding legal fight with the so-called “Central Park Five” is finally history.

A Manhattan federal judge on Friday formally signed off a $ 41 million settlement for the five black and Hispanic men wrongfully convicted in the notorious 1989 rape of a Central Park jogger, records show.

Under the deal approved by Magistrate Judge Ronald Ellis, plaintiffs Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam and Raymond Santana will each pocket $ 7.125 million while Kharey Wise will collect $ 12.25 million.

It resolves a $ 250 million civil-rights lawsuit the men filed in 2003, charging they were wrongly convicted and imprisoned in the notorious case.

Jonathan Moore, a lawyer for the Central Park Five, called the settlement a “significant sum of money” but added, “It’s been our position all along that no amount of money can make up for the pain and suffering these men and their families have had to endure over the past 25 years.”

The five men were found guilty at trial —with Wise spending 13 years in prison and the others doing roughly six to seven years each — but their convictions were tossed in 2002 after a career criminal confessed to the attack.

The settlement also calls for the city paying off an additional $ 285,000 in legal fees for the plaintiffs but allows it to save some face by not admitting any wrongdoing in the case.

The Central Park Five’s suit alleged that cops forced false confessions through threats and beatings, and that key DNA evidence, which would have cleared them, was deliberately ignored. They were all convicted of the beating and rape of the investment banker near the park’s Reservoir.

Mayor Bill de Blasio had vowed to settle the case after taking office this year and put an end to a lurid chapter in New York history in which a “wolf pack” of “wilding” youths were said to have attacked then-28-year-old Trisha Meili as she took her evening jog through the park.

In 2002, a judge granted a motion to vacate the 13-year-old convictions after a serial rapist who was already in jail said he committed the crime — a confession backed up by DNA evidence.

The Wall Street Journal, however, has reported that two doctors who treated Meili said in interviews that some of her wounds were not consistent with Matias Reyes’ account of the attack.

The revelation has cast some doubt on the claim that Reyes was the only attacker.

The “Central Park Five,” now in their late 30s to early 40s, were 14 to 16 when arrested.

De Blasio’s push to settle the case was in stark contrast to the Bloomberg administration’s opposition to a deal.

Yahoo Local News – New York Post

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