In Netflix’s “When They See Us,” the Central Park Five-focused Ava DuVernay limited series, audiences learn that the five exonerated men sued New York City in 2003.
Following a decade of uncertainty, the city finally settled with the plaintiffs for $41 million in 2014, and the five men pursued an additional $52 million in damages from the state of New York.What they wound up receiving was another $3.9 million in a 2016 settlement, in what the Daily News describes as a “low-key state Court of Claims payout” for the “economic and emotional devastation caused by the incarceration of the five men,” who were just teenagers at the start of their prison sentences.After their convictions in the 1989 rape and savage assault of a Central Park jogger were overturned in 2003, the five exonerated men sued New York City for malicious prosecution, racial discrimination, and emotional distress.
Under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the city refused to settle
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