A Forgotten ‘Central Park Five’ Defendant Was Just Exonerated After 31 Years

Three decades after he was falsely accused of a violent crime he says he didn’t commit, a forgotten defendant in the notorious “Central Park Five” case had his conviction overturned Monday.

Steven Lopez’s exoneration comes 31 years after he pleaded guilty to first-degree robbery in the beating and robbing of a man jogging in Central Park in April 1989. His alleged crime took place the same night that 28-year-old Trisha Meili was found raped and beaten into a coma at the park, an infamous incident that led to the arrests and false incarceration of the Black and Hispanic teenagers now known as the “Exonerated Five.”

“Mr. Lopez, we wish you peace and healing,” New York County Supreme Court Justice Ellen Biden told Lopez, who’s now 48, in a Manhattan courtroom Monday. The New York Times first reported that the Manhattan district attorney’s office planned to vacate his conviction Monday.

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At the age of 15, Lopez, who’s Hispanic, was one of several teens arrested in connection to the attack on Meili, as well as a number of other violent crimes that took place that night. As shown in countless documentaries and television series, the teens were all interrogated by the cops and tricked into placing blame on one another. Despite adamantly denying his involvement and no forensic evidence tying him to the crimes, Lopez and his father, who was not fluent in English, were coerced into signing a statement written by NYPD detectives placing him at the scene that night.

Nearly two years after his arrest, Lopez took a deal from the prosecutor’s office before his 1991 trial and agreed to plead guilty to the robbery to avoid the same severe sentence that the other five teens received the year before. Lopez served three years in prison for the crime.

The Central Park Five case became the poster child for the violence and crime that New York was known for at the time. President Donald Trump, then a New York socialite, famously took out a full-page ad in the local newspapers calling for the boys, who were all between the ages of 14 and 16, to receive the death penalty.

After 13 years in prison, however, the five teens had their convictions overturned in 2002 after convicted murderer and rapist Matias Reyes confessed and DNA evidence linked him to the crime.

While the Exonerated Five have since successfully sued the city for more than $40 million over their false imprisonment, Lopez’s part in the story was all but forgotten. He never appealed his conviction and quietly served his sentence.

Then in February 2021, Lopez privately notified the Manhattan District Attorney’s office of his case, and the office agreed to look into his conviction. A year and a half later, the office announced it would vacate Lopez’s guilty plea and dismiss his indictment on the basis that his confession was false.

“We talk about the Central Park Five, the Exonerated Five, but there were six people on that indictment,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg told the New York Times Monday. “And the other five who were charged, their convictions were vacated. And it’s now time to have Mr. Lopez’s charge vacated.”

Before his election for city attorney last year, Bragg signaled that if he were to assume the role, he hoped to strengthen and support the office’s wrongful conviction unit. Lopez’s case will be the first exoneration to take place during his tenure.

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