Central Park Five wrongfully convicted in landmark case of racial bias in the justice system

Real estate developer Donald Trump spends $85,000 on May 1, 1989 to place full-page advertisements in The New York Times, New York Daily News, New York Post, and Newsday demanding the reinstatement of the death penalty after five Black and Latino teenagers — Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise — are accused of raping a woman in Central Park. "I want to hate these murderers and I always will," Trump writes. The five teenagers are convicted and imprisoned based on false confessions obtained through coercive interrogation. In 2002, DNA evidence and a confession by the actual perpetrator, Matias Reyes, exonerate all five. New York City settles with them for $41 million. Trump never apologizes. In 2019, when asked directly whether he will apologize, Trump replies, "You have people on both sides of that. They admitted their guilt." The case becomes a defining exhibit in Trump's decades-long history of targeting Black men.