In 1989, New York was a town on a racial knife's edge. Rapper Chuck D of Public Enemy made a call to"fight the powers that be". Spike Lee made- a funny/tragic tale of race relations reaching boiling point in Brooklyn and, in April that year, a white woman named Trisha Meili was brutally assaulted, raped and left for dead while jogging in Central Park.
In the months leading up to their trial New Yorkers were deeply polarised. Outgoing Mayor Edward Koch called for their conviction before hearing any evidence at their trial. Real-estate mogul Donald Trump placed full-page ads in local papers demanding that the death penalty be brought back specifically for the purpose of executing the alleged perpetrators - teenagers whose ages ranged between 14 and 17 years old.
The Central Park Five, as the teens became known, were all sentenced and served degrees of time in various prisons - their lives irrevocably changed by their having been young, black and in the wrong place at the wrong time. Eventually their convictions were overturned and in 2014 they were awarded a record-setting settlement of $41m between them for the injustice served upon them by an angry citizenry baying for blood.
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