In December, a reporter asked Michael Bloomberg whether the NYPD and city officials had acted "in good faith" in their handling of the case of the Exonerated Five. The story of the men, who'd been known for decades as the Central Park Five, re-entered the national conversation again last year, thanks to the Emmy-winning, Ava DuVernay-directed Neflix series, When They See Us.



"I really have no idea; I’ve read in the paper, I’ve been away from government for a long time," said the 2020 presidential candidate. Still, he added, "There was an awful lot of evidence presented at that time that they were involved. There’s been questions since then about the quality of that evidence. And, so, I’ve been away from it for so long, I just really can’t respond."

The convictions of the Exonerated Five were vacated in 2002. But Bloomberg hasn't been "away" from the case for all of the eighteen years since. Instead, the city, under almost the entirety of his 12-year-long mayorship, fought the civil rights lawsuit brought by the men. The suit would not be settled until 2014, during the administration of Bloomberg's successor, Bill de Blasio.

"There was no speedy or complete way that they made us whole," Exonerated Five member Yusef Salaam told Esquire of the "12 year fight" with New York City. "We were like, 'Hey, you found out that we were innocent, that we didn't do this. Now you have to compensate us.'"

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CBS News asks @MikeBloomberg about his prior support for how NYC handled the Central Park Five case: "There was an awful lot of evidence presented at that time that they were involved. There’s been questions since then about the quality of that evidence." https://t.co/CvStIOESzU pic.twitter.com/Yvyv44EXk3 — CBS News (@CBSNews) December 31, 2019

Bloomberg is one of the few Democratic presidential contenders left standing, and his candidacy has been dogged by criticism of his administration's "stop-and-frisk" program, which found hundreds of thousands of young black and Latino men harassed and traumatized in encounters with the NYPD. But city's delay in settling the Central Park Five case is also a major part of his legacy on policing and civil rights.

On April 19th, 1989, 28-year-old investment banker Trisha Meili was attacked, raped, and beaten nearly to death during an evening run in Central Park by serial predator Matias Reyes. Police, having already arrested many teenagers in relation to more minor crimes committed in the park that same name night, interrogated the youths about the vicious attack. Under hours of questioning by authorities, often without the presence of their parents, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Korey Wise, and Salaam confessed to participating to the crime. The boys, aged between 14 and 16, swiftly recanted, but amid city-wide panic over violent crime and racist hysteria over the specter of black and brown youths gang-raping a white woman, all five were convicted of the assault. Contrary to Bloomberg's remarks, no physical evidence linked them to the attack.

The boys who became known as the Central Park Five spent between six and 13 years in prison before Reyes, already serving a life sentence for murder and other rapes, confessed to attacking Meili. DNA evidence linked Reyes—and only Reyes—to the crime scene, and Central Park Five's convictions were overturned.

Yusef Salaam and Raymond Santana being arrested in 1989. New York Daily News Archive Getty Images

That's pretty much where When They See Us, and many other accounts of the story, end. But despite the fact that their names had been cleared, the five young men faced questions over their innocence and another years-long battle.

Their exoneration "was supposed to be a feel-good moment; it was supposed to be a restorative moment," said Salaam. "And it was quickly swept under the rug."

In 2003, the exonerated men filed a lawsuit against the city, alleging that their false convictions had constituted a racist violation of their civil rights. But rather than pursuing a swift settlement, the legal fight continued for more than a decade. Meanwhile, the men, who'd spent much of their formative years in maximum security prisons, tried to rebuild their lives. Returning to freedom left Wise "scrambling," he said during a Breakfast Club interview, and trying "to find a roof over [his head]."

Though they'd been exonerated, doubts over their innocence lingered—doubts that might have been mitigated with with press coverage of a swift and decisive settlement. Some of the men struggled to find work. During a 2013 appearance with The New York Times, McCray said that he couldn't find employment until he left New York to stay with family in Maryland.

The Exonerated Five at the 2019 BET Awards. Bennett Raglin Getty Images

"The way that the system responded with Mayor Mike Bloomberg at the helm of the city was very negative," said Salaam. "They dragged their feet. They started saying that this was a no-pay case. They started saying that we had done this to ourselves."

The case went on so long that even New York city officials themselves criticized the process. In 2013, the City Council approved a resolution demanding that New York "acknowledge the years of suffering of all those involved in the Central Park jogger case, including both the men whose convictions were vacated and the jogger herself" by "settling this matter out of court as expeditiously as possible." Then-comptroller John Liu also made a statement asking the city to settle.

"We were petitioning the mayor, we were trying to go to the top because we knew the top was the one that would be able to solve this problem and solve it quickly," said Salaam. "And of course, as you see, in 2014 when Mayor de Blasio was elected, we got the opportunity to have our case restored."

During his mayoral campaign, de Blasio (who also pursued a brief presidential run last year) made a pledge to settle the case one of his campaign promises. His administration still didn't reach the settlement, which found the five receiving $41 million while the city admitted no wrongdoing, all that swiftly. But it finally closed the case in the second year of his first term.

Michael Bloomberg on the campaign trail. Joe Raedle Getty Images

In the wake of controversy sparked by his December remarks on the story, Bloomberg released a statement to Essence magazine, saying that he "believe[d], and the DNA shows, that these men were in jail and endured long sentences for a crime they did not commit." Still, his false suggestion that "an awful lot of evidence" implicated in the men in the crime was clearly echoed in his administration's handling of their lawsuit.

Some New Yorkers still doubt the innocence of the Exonerated Five. As recently as 2014, the New York Post Editorial Board described them as being "hardly innocent," and insisted that Meili's injuries "suggest multiple attackers." After the release of When They See Us, the tabloid ran articles defending Linda Fairstein, the district attorney-turned-novelist who prosecuted the five and was dropped by her publisher in the wake of the series' release.

And if Bloomberg scores significant victories during the Super Tuesday races, the Five could face a troubling electoral choice in November: To cast a vote for Donald Trump, who called for their executions in now-infamous full-page ads in New York City's major papers, or Bloomberg, whose administration spent more than a decade delaying their settlement.

"You still have some people thinking we got off because of a technicality," said McCray in 2013. "It's not like that. We didn't do it."

Gabrielle Bruney Gabrielle Bruney is a writer and editor for Esquire, where she focuses on politics and culture.

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