Trump: Central Park Five Guilty Despite DNA Evidence

Today, Trump released a statement on the Central Park Five. If you haven’t heard of the Central Park Five, it may be because you’re too young to remember it (like me) or it might simply be because Trump has so many scandals attached to him that it’s become impossible for the press to do justice to each (or perhaps they were just late to the game of trying). But Trump’s comments today matter, because they presage what a Trump presidency might mean for those who care about criminal justice reform and racial bias in policing and the judicial system. And it ain’t pretty.

In 1989, Trisha Meili, a New York investment banker, was violently assaulted and raped in Central Park. She nearly died, and spent almost two weeks in a coma in the hospital. Five teenage boys, four black and one Hispanic, were arrested. Two were 14, two were 15, and one was 16. Interrogated for hours (on accusation of committing the rape), each of the five confessed to being an accomplice to the rape but none of the five confessed to being the rapist (each identified others among the five as the rapist). The five were tried and convicted of assault and rape in 1990 on the basis of their confessions, despite the fact that the DNA in the semen found on Meili, which pointed to a single donor, did not match any of them.

Donald Trump himself played a role in the case, running full-page ads in four major New York City newspapers calling for the return of the death penalty, so that the Central Park Five could be sentenced to death. In 2002, Matias Reyes, a convicted rapist and murderer serving a life sentence, confessed to Meili’s assault and rape. He told authorities that he had acted alone. Reyes had been living in New York City at the time that the assault and rape took place. Reyes’ DNA identified him as the sole contributor to the semen found on Meili’s body. The convictions of the Central Park Five were vacated and the five won a settlement from the city.

Or, to summarize it as the LA Times did:

The five men were convicted as teenagers after implicating each other under intense questioning over a brutal sexual assault on a jogger that dominated the tabloids. Defenders said they were coerced into confessing and all five were later cleared by DNA evidence and a separate confession in 2002 from another criminal who took credit for the assault.

New York paid them $41 million in a settlement in 2014 over their ordeal.

But Donald Trump still thinks they’re guilty:

“They admitted they were guilty,” Trump said in a statement to CNN’s Miguel Marquez. “The police doing the original investigation say they were guilty. The fact that that case was settled with so much evidence against them is outrageous. And the woman, so badly injured, will never be the same.”

I’m not sure which is more disturbing here—Trump’s dismissal of DNA evidence when it exonerates individuals or his insistence that confessions made in coercive situations should be taken as gospel. Remember that Trump ran full-page adds in major newspapers arguing that the five teens should be given the death penalty for their alleged crime—a crime we now know they did not commit. To me this reads like Trump not wanting to admit that he was wrong.

Remember that Reyes, the actual perpetrator, was not captured or brought to justice after the Central Park rape because police believed they had already found the perpetrators. Reyes was in jail when he confessed because, after assaulting and raping Meili, he raped several additional woman and raped and murdered a pregnant woman while her children listened in the next room. If the police hadn’t been so focused on the five teenagers they ultimately convicted, they might have picked up Reyes before he committed these crimes. And yes, that should be horrifying.

Trump has revealed that he cares nothing for justice, right or wrong, or people’s safety. No. He cares far more about never admitting that he was wrong.