"Donald Trump calls Central Park 5 settlement 'A Disagrace'"

[Jamaal510]

More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/21/donald-trump-central-park-5_n_5517784.html

The five black and Latino men, who were then teens, were convicted in 1989 of raping a 28-year-old woman in Central Park. But DNA evidence and a confession by a serial rapist later cleared Antron McCray, Korey Wise, Kevin Richardson, Yusuf Salaa and Raymond Santana in 2002, after the five had spent as long as 13 years in prison.

In an op-ed published in the New York Daily News on Saturday, Trump calls the settlement a "disgrace."

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.”

Settling doesn’t mean innocence, but it indicates incompetence on several levels. This case has not been dormant, and many people have asked why it took so long to settle? It is politics at its lowest and worst form.

[Coventina]

1. I don't care about the Donald's opinion on anything.

He can go pee up a rope.

[Quantess]

4. Yeah, really. Who asked him?

And what makes him think he is qualified to bestow us peasants his opinion?

[Warpy]

2. The guys they arrested on a whim weren't choirboys

Because of that, they made great scapegoats and helped to keep white folks scared of black folks, especially the teenaged boys.

That's all they were. There was no forensic evidence to tie them to the crime, no bloody clothing, no semen on the victim. The DA had no other leads, so they got hustled off to the joint while racist propagandists had a field day talking about "wilding."

Eventually the real bastard confessed.

I think this is a good settlement, they can all retire on it with no reason to do more crime.

What the movers and shakers like the deplorable Trump should be talking about is how expensive prosecutorial hot dogging can get.

[KamaAina]

3. Replace "calls Central Park 5 settlement" with "is".

[WilliamTuckness]

5. Maybe Donald Trump, to demonstrate this "disgrace" settlement, could spend 13 years in prison.

What do you all think?

[JHB]

6. Speaking of disgraces... from 2002, about 1989:

Trump Draws Criticism for Ad He Ran After Jogger Attack
By MICHAEL WILSON
Published: October 23, 2002


On May 1, 1989, Donald J. Trump took out full-page advertisements in four New York newspapers calling for the return of the death penalty. Mr. Trump said he wanted the ''criminals of every age'' who were accused of beating and raping a jogger in Central Park 12 days earlier ''to be afraid.''

Thirteen years later, as new evidence raises the possibility that the five teenagers convicted in the attack had nothing to do with it, their supporters are focusing some of their fiercest anger at Mr. Trump.

''Trump is a chump!'' protesters shouted during a recent demonstration, accusing Mr. Trump of, at least, further inflaming passions and perhaps tainting the defendants' future jurors. Some called him a racist. Supporters of the Central Park defendants have demanded an apology.

One does not appear to be forthcoming.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/23/nyregion/trump-draws-criticism-for-ad-he-ran-after-jogger-attack.html

If Trump had had his way, it would have been four executions for a crime that was committed by someone else entirely.

[muntrv]

7. Trump, go Cheney yourself!