The Central Park 5 are exonerated. Trump doesn't seem to think so
Former President Donald Trump again defended his actions in New York in the late '80s surrounding the case of the Central Park Five (also called the Exonerated Five) during Tuesday night's presidential debate.
Following the 1989 brutal assault of a New York jogger in Central Park, Trump famously took out full-page ads in the city's major newspapers calling for the return of the death penalty for those responsible — further inciting racial tensions in the city.
Five Black and Hispanic teen boys were falsely accused and served years in prison before being exonerated by DNA and the confession of a convicted rapist and murderer.
But Tuesday night, Trump said that at the time the five Black and Latino teenagers who were falsely accused of the crime must have “badly hurt a person, killed a person, ultimately.” The victim in the case is still alive but deals with the lingering health effects of her attack.
It wasn't the first time in recent years Trump has falsely claimed that the men were responsible for the attack.
Read on to learn more about the case that is making headlines, again.
What happened in April 1989?
In 1989, Trisha Meili was a 28-year-old investment banker out for a jog in Central Park when she was brutally beaten and raped. Following the violent attack, Meili fell into a coma for almost two weeks and retained no memory of the attack.
New York City at the time was dealing with high violent crime rates and the media covered the case extensively. On the same night Meili was attacked, witnesses told media and police that groups of teenage boys attacked passersby and other joggers, robbing and beating them.
Police brought in a group of Black and Hispanic teen boys — Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond