While most have heard of the Central Park Five, few know that six teenage boys were actually convicted in connection to the crime.
Steven Lopez, now 48, pleaded guilty when he was just a teenager to a lesser crime of robbing a male jogger, the New York Post reported. On Monday, he was officially exonerated after the Manhattan district attorney’s office filed a motion to vacate Lopez’s conviction.
“Mr. Lopez was charged and pleaded guilty in the face of false statements, unreliable forensic analysis and immense external pressure,” District Attorney Alvin Bragg told the courtroom on Monday, according to the Post.
Bragg said that after re-investigating Lopez’s case, authorities determined he had “involuntarily” pleaded guilty when he made a deal with prosecutors. The re-investigation began in March 2021, one month after Lopez requested the review.
“Unique circumstances, combined with Mr. Lopez’s youth, made his plea involuntary – and therefore unconstitutional,” Bragg said, according to the Post.
Bragg added that certain evidence used to convict Lopez, including “hair sample comparisons,” wasn’t reliable, stating that “there remains no physical evidence connecting Mr. Lopez to the charged conduct.” In addition to the unreliable evidence, witnesses who claimed Lopez had participated in the crime also recanted their statements.
Lopez was one of six black and Latino teenagers arrested in 1989 and accused of participating in the brutal rape and beating of white jogger Trisha Meili, who was 28 at the time of the crime. While Lopez pleaded guilty to a lesser charge or robbery and spent four years in prison before he was released, his five co-defendants were convicted on more serious charges of rape. They served between six and 13 years in prison before they were each exonerated in 2002.
That year, serial rapist Matias Reyes confessed to the attack on Meili, and insisted he acted alone. The New York Police Department and then-Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau’s office both said DNA evidence linked Reyes to the attack – information that could have persuaded a jury not to convict teenagers Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Kharey Wise (now Korey Wise), who all served prison time for the crime.
A year after they were exonerated, the five men sued New York City for $250 million for their wrongful convictions and imprisonment. It took more than a decade for the five men to collect, with a Manhattan federal judge formally signing off on a $41 million settlement in 2014. Under the agreement, Wise – who was the oldest at the time of the convictions – received $12.25 million while the other four men each would collect $7.125 million.
Lopez, meanwhile, has not received any money for his wrongful prosecution, and it is unclear if he intends to pursue compensation.