DNA evidence exonerated them and another man confessed to the crime, but President Trump refuses to apologize to the Central Park Five for demanding that they be executed.
In 1989, a woman was beaten, raped, and left for dead in New York's Central Park. Five black and Latino teenagers were accused of the crime, and later recanted confessions they said were made under duress. The teens — dubbed the Central Park Five — pleaded not guilty, and while none of their DNA matched samples from the crime scene, they were found guilty. Later, a convicted murderer and rapist confessed he was the perpetrator, and it was determined his DNA matched the samples. After being wrongfully imprisoned, the Central Park Five were exonerated and later reached a settlement with the city of New York.
Ten days after the crime was committed, Trump paid for full-page ads in four newspapers, calling for the Central Park Five to be executed with the message: "BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!" A new Netflix miniseries about the case, When They See Us, has the country talking about the Central Park Five, and American Urban Radio Networks correspondent April Ryan asked Trump on Tuesday if he would ever apologize to the men. "You have people on both sides of that," Trump responded. "They admitted their guilt ... some of the prosecutors think the city should never have settled that case and we'll leave it at that."
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One of the men, Yusef Salaam, wrote in The Washington Post ahead of the 2016 presidential election that Trump "has never apologized for calling for our deaths. It's further proof of Trump's bias, racism, and inability to admit that he's wrong." Catherine Garcia
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