The five Black and Hispanic teenagers who were wrongfully convicted for the 1989 rape of a white jogger in New York’s Central Park sued former US president Donald Trump for defamation on Monday over statements he made at last month’s US presidential debate.
Known widely as the Central Park Five, the defendants spent between five and 13 years in prison before they were cleared in 2002 based on new DNA evidence and the confession of another person.
Trump, the Republican nominee for the White House, falsely said at the Sept 10 debate with Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris that the Central Park Five had killed a person and pleaded guilty.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Philadelphia by Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron Brown and Korey Wise, called Trump's statements "demonstrably false." Salaam is now a member of the New York City Council.
A spokesperson for Trump’s campaign on Monday called the case "just another frivolous, election interference lawsuit, filed by desperate left-wing activists."
A lawyer for the plaintiffs, Shanin Specter, said in a statement that Trump’s remarks “cast them in a harmful false light and intentionally inflicted emotional distress on them.”
Specter denied any political motive in the lawsuit. "I’m not commenting on politics. We are seeking redress in a court of law," he said.
The plaintiffs are seeking unspecified monetary damages for reputational and emotional harms as well as punitive damages.
Trump has drawn criticism before over his statements about the Central Park Five. After the jogger's assault, he spoke out about the case and took out a full-page ad in several New York newspapers calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty.
Trump in 2019 stood by his prior comments about the Central Park Five, and declined to apologise.
Trump asked a US appeals court in September to reject a $5 million verdict finding him liable for sexually assaulting and defaming the writer E Jean Carroll.
A different jury in January ordered Trump to pay Carroll $83.3 million for having defamed her and damaging her reputation in June 2019 after she first accused him of rape.
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