The so-called Central Park Five were exonerated and their convictions tossed out in 2002.
Filed in federal district court in Pennsylvania, the suit claims that Trump falsely said during the debate last month that the five Black and Latino men who wrongly convicted for the rape of a White female jogger when they were teens in 1989 pleaded guilty to the crime and killed a person during a series of assaults that occurred in Central Park.
During the debate, Harris criticized the Republican presidential nominee for taking out a full-page ad in The New York Times soon after the attacks that called on New York to “send a message loud and clear to those who would murder our citizens and terrorize New York” by bringing back the death penalty.
The lawsuit argues that Trump’s statements in response to Harris are “demonstrably false”, as the Central Park Five — all of whom are plaintiffs in the case — never pleaded guilty, and the victims of the assaults weren’t killed.
