NEW YORK — A long-forgotten sixth suspect in the notorious 1989 Central Park Five rape case is to be exonerated Monday, more than 30 years after he pleaded guilty to a lesser crime, the Manhattan district attorney’s office announced.
Steven Lopez was 14 years old when he was arrested along with the Central Park Five — Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Raymond Santana, Korey Wise and Yusef Salaam. The more well-known five were convicted separately of raping a white woman jogging in the park ― a crime that outraged the city and contributed to racial tensions across the five boroughs.
Lopez pleaded guilty to robbing a male jogger that same night to avoid a more ruinous rape conviction. He was sentenced to 1 1/2 to 4 1/2 years in state prison. He served more than three years of his sentence and did not appeal his conviction.
Salaam, Santana and McCray were convicted of rape, assault and robbery. Wise was found guilty of sexual abuse, assault and riot, and Richardson was convicted of attempted murder, rape, sodomy, robbery, assault and riot.
All five suspects spent between seven and 13 years in prison.
But in 2002, a prison inmate, Matias Reyes, said he was the one who actually raped the 28-year-old jogger on April 19, 1989. DNA evidence backed his confession.
Richardson, McCray, Santana, Wise, and Salaam all had their convictions overturned.
They also received a $41 million settlement from the city in 2014, but not without protests from detractors, including future President Donald Trump, who had bought ads in four of the city’s newspapers in the aftermath of the incident calling for the death penalty. The five also received a $3.9 million payout from the state in 2016.
Lopez, now 48, received nothing.
Critics argued that the defendants were part of a group of young marauders who menaced people in the park, robbing, beating and harassing joggers, walkers and people sitting on benches. The alleged out-of-control behavior was described as “wilding.”
But supporters have argued that even if they were involved in criminal activity outside the sexual assault, they more than paid the price with the time they spent in jail for a rape they did not commit.
The Central Park Five later became known as the “Exonerated Five” and have been the subjects of a documentary and Netflix TV drama.
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