Central Park 5 suing Donald Trump for defamation, as former president can’t get over the case

Members of the Central Park 5, wrongly accused of assaulting a woman in New York’s Central Park when they were teenagers and with a long history with Donald Trump, are suing him for defamation over comments he made during the presidential debate broadcast on ABC News.

The Central Park 5 are a group of five African-American and Latino teenagers wrongly convicted in 1989.

After years in prison, their innocence was proven by DNA, but their story highlights racial and judicial injustices, not least with the controversial involvement of Donald Trump. In 1989, Trump took out a full-page ad in the New York Times, calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty to execute the Central Park 5.

Even after their exoneration in 2002, Trump continued to assert their guilt, even up until recently during his September 10 presidential debate against Kamala Harris when the latter sharply criticized him for publishing the ad in 1989, calling for the execution of the “young teenagers” accused at the time.

According to the defamation suit, Trump responded during the debate to what Harris had just said by asserting that the Central Park 5 “killed a person and pleaded guilty to the crime”, whereas these statements “are patently false” according to the suit.

The complaint filed in federal court in Philadelphia states that the plaintiffs “never pleaded guilty to any crime” and were subsequently “cleared of any wrongdoing”.

What’s more, the victim of the Central Park assaults “was not killed”, a fact Donald Trump should have known since he’s taken this cause so personally since 1989.

The lawsuit contends that Donald Trump’s statements are “part of an ongoing pattern of extreme and outrageous behavior going back several years.”

Because of the consequences of his comments, which include allegations of defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress, the Central Park 5 are seeking damages of over $75,000, with the total amount of compensatory and punitive damages to be determined at trial.