Of course they were black and were tried as adults. Netflix has a new 4-part series called “The Way They See Us” chronicling how the convictions were overturned 13 years later after DNA tests proved them innocent.
[SIZE=5][B]Trump involves himself in the case[/B][/SIZE]
When the case of “the Central Park jogger” broke, Trump was a high profile real estate mogul in New York City, already publicly toying with the idea of running for president.
Trump took out a full-page ad to air his grievances.
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On Dec. 19, 2002, Angela Cuffie meets reporters at Manhattan Supreme Court and Councilman Bill Perkin s holds up an advertisement taken out by Donald Trump after the crime.
The letter, published in ads in four area papers — the New York Times, the Daily News, the New York Post and New York Newsday — was signed by Trump and ran as the teenagers awaited their trial. It called for the return of the death penalty for violent crimes — a move that attorneys for the boys said helped rally the public against them.
“BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!” the ad read in all-caps.
Moore told ABC News on Tuesday that Trump’s ad “was designed to influence the population of NYC against these five young men” and fueled in “an overwhelming amount of animus” directed at them.
“Who has the money to buy a full-page ad in all the major newspapers and proclaim not only that these kids are guilty but that they should get the death penalty and that there should be a death penalty for juveniles,” Moore said, adding, “It was not surprising that those juries convicted them because they were already convicted in the press well before the case went to trial.”
The ad, which was written in the form of a letter and signed by Trump, laments “bands of wild criminals,” and “crazed misfits,” dismisses the notion of “police brutality” and ends with a call to action that is not unlike candidate Trump and President Trump’s rhetoric on"law and order."
“I want to hate these murderers and I always will. I am not looking to psychoanalyze or understand them, I am looking to punish them … I no longer want to understand their anger. I want them to understand our anger. I want them to be afraid,” he wrote in the ad.
Amid criticism that his ad was inciting violence, Trump took to the national airways to discuss the “Central Park Jogger” case and defended his ad in a 1989 interview with CNN’s Larry King, saying he was asked about the boys by a reporter and responded, [COLOR=rgb(184, 49, 47)]“of course I hate these people. Let’s all hate these people because maybe hate is what we need if we’re going to get something done.”
As president, Trump seemed to encourage police to be more violent in handling potential offenders during a speech to law enforcement officers in July 2017.
“When you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, you just seen them thrown in, rough. I said, ‘Please don’t be too nice,'” he said.
Four of the teenagers testified that they were coerced into confessing. Prosecutor Elizabeth Lederer was in the room with the teens during the infamous “confessions.”
Salaam never confessed.
All were convicted in 1990 of various crimes, including rape.
McCray, Richardson, Santana and Salaam got five to 10 years in prison as juveniles. Wise was sentenced to five to 15 as an adult.