Co-defendant in Central Park jogger case to be exonerated

A co-defendant of the so-called “Central Park Five,” whose convictions in a notorious 1989 rape were thrown out more than a decade later, is set to have his conviction on a related charge overturned.

A hearing was scheduled for Monday afternoon in the case of Steven Lopez, who was arrested along with five other Black and Latino teenagers in the rape and assault on Trisha Meili but reached a deal with prosecutors to plead guilty to the lesser charge of robbing a male jogger.

Lopez, now 48, served about three years in prison before being released in the early 1990s. A message was left with his lawyer on Monday seeking comment.

The brutal assault on Meili, a 28-year-old white investment banker who was in a coma for 12 days after the attack, was considered emblematic of New York City’s lawlessness in an era when the city recorded 2,000 murders a year.

Five teenagers were convicted in the attack on Meili and served six to 13 years in prison. Their convictions were overturned in 2002 after evidence linked a convicted serial rapist and murderer, Matias Reyes, to the attack.

Prosecutors who reviewed the case had concluded the teens’ confessions, made after hours of interrogations, were deeply flawed.

“A comparison of the statements reveals troubling discrepancies,” they wrote in court papers at the time. “The accounts given by the five defendants differed from one another on the specific details of virtually every major aspect of the crime.”

The Central Park Five, now known as the “Exonerated Five,” went on to win a $40 million settlement from the city and inspire books, movies and television shows.