Ten years ago, a Manhattan judge vacated the convictions of five men for raping and beating a jogger in Central Park. For almost the entire time since then, the city and the five have battledwith no hint of compromiseover the men’s allegations that they were the victims of a malicious prosecution.
Facing claims of $50 million in damages from each plaintiff, the city’s attorneys have aggressively defended the actions of police detectives and prosecutors in eliciting confessionsconfessions it says gave them plenty of probable cause to arrest and prosecute teenagers Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Jr., Kharey Wise, and Yousef Salaam.