$40M settlement reached in Central Park rape case

Associated Press

NEW YORK

With New York awash in murder and drugs, the 1989 rape and beating of a Central Park jogger by what was said to be a gang of “wilding” teens was seen as evidence of a city sliding into lawlessness. A quarter-century later, it stands instead as a $40 million symbol of failure by the justice system.

The city has agreed to a settlement for that amount with the five men who were falsely convicted in the attack, all but closing the books on one of the most lurid cases in New York history.

Official confirmation of the deal came Friday when City Comptroller Scott Stringer said his office had received settlement papers with a figure “in the ballpark” of the $40 million that had been widely reported in the media.

The settlement still needs final approval from the comptroller and a federal judge. Lawyers for the plaintiffs declined to comment.

The five black and Hispanic defendants were found guilty as teenagers in 1990 in the attack on a white woman — an investment banker — who had gone for a run in the park. They served six to 13 years in prison before their convictions were thrown out in 2002 because of evidence that someone else, acting alone, committed the crime. The five sued police and prosecutors for $250 million.

At the time, the crime was seen as a terrifying symbol of the city’s rampant lawlessness and its racial and class divide, and it gave rise to the term “wilding” for urban mayhem by marauding teenagers.

The victim, Trisha Meili, then 28, was found in the brush, more than 75 percent of her blood drained from her body and her skull smashed. She was in a coma for 12 days, suffered permanent damage and remembers nothing about the attack.

Raymond Santana and Kevin Richardson, both 14 at the time, Antron McCray and Yusef Salaam, 15, and Kharey Wise, 16, were rounded up and arrested. After hours of interrogation, four of them gave confessions on video. At the trials, their lawyers argued the confessions were coerced. At the time, DNA testing was not sophisticated enough to make or break the case.