Trump: Central Park Five Still Guilty Despite DNA Exoneration

Twelve years after DNA evidence conclusively proved the innocence of the Central Park Five, Donald Trump published an opinion piece in the New York Daily News calling the city’s $41 million settlement with the wrongfully convicted men “a disgrace” and continuing to assert their guilt. Trump’s op-ed, written in response to the settlement announcement, demonstrated his refusal to acknowledge scientific evidence or accept that the five men had been exonerated.

Trump’s Claims

In the Daily News op-ed, Trump wrote: “My opinion on the settlement of the Central Park Jogger case is that it’s a disgrace. A detective close to the case, and who has followed it since 1989, calls it ’the heist of the century.’” He described the settlement as “politics at its lowest and worst form” and questioned why the city would pay the men for their wrongful imprisonment.

Trump’s argument ignored fundamental facts: the five men’s convictions had been vacated based on DNA evidence that excluded all of them and matched the actual perpetrator, Matias Reyes, whose detailed confession was corroborated by physical evidence unknown to the public. Trump claimed the men had “admitted they were guilty,” referring to confessions that had been coerced from teenagers after marathon interrogations without legal representation—confessions that contradicted each other and the physical evidence.

Pattern of Racial Animus

Trump had maintained his position that the Central Park Five were guilty through multiple statements over the years. Even after the DNA exoneration, he repeatedly insisted on their guilt, making this one of the most clear-cut examples of someone rejecting scientific evidence in favor of racist presumptions.

The 2014 op-ed came as the exonerated men—now in their 40s—were finally receiving some measure of compensation for the years stolen from their youth. The settlement amounted to roughly $1 million for each year of wrongful imprisonment they had endured. Trump’s public campaign against their compensation added additional cruelty to men who had already suffered tremendously from his 1989 death penalty advertisements.

Significance

Trump’s 2014 op-ed is particularly significant because it came 12 years after scientific proof of innocence, eliminating any possible claim of uncertainty or lack of information. DNA evidence—the gold standard of forensic science—had definitively excluded all five men. The actual perpetrator had confessed in detail. Yet Trump continued to insist on their guilt, revealing how deeply rooted racial bias can resist even the most conclusive evidence.

This represented more than just stubbornness or unwillingness to admit error; it was active racial animus in the face of scientific fact. Trump was not merely refusing to apologize for his 1989 death penalty ads—he was doubling down on his belief that five Black and Latino men were guilty despite DNA proof that they were innocent.

The op-ed demonstrated a pattern that would characterize Trump’s political career: the creation and maintenance of racist narratives regardless of facts, the vilification of people of color even when proven innocent, and an absolute refusal to acknowledge error or show human decency toward those his actions had harmed.

Trump would never apologize to the Central Park Five. In 2016, during his presidential campaign, he would again insist they were guilty. In 2019, after one of the exonerated men, Yusef Salaam, won election to the New York City Council, Trump would still refuse to acknowledge their innocence. The Central Park Five case became the most clear-cut example in Trump’s history of racism superseding evidence, decency, and truth.