Donald Trump and the Central Park Five: the racially charged rise of a demagogue
In this Guardian story first published in 2016, and as Ava DuVernay’s new Netflix series on the Central Park Five case, When They See Us, hits screens, we tell of how, 30 years ago, five young black men were wrongly convicted of rape – and how the charge against them was led by a real estate mogul who would become president
Yusef Salaam was 15 years old when Donald Trump demanded his execution for a crime he did not commit.
Nearly three decades before the rambunctious billionaire began his run for president – before he called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States, for the expulsion of all undocumented migrants, before he branded Mexicans as “rapists” and was accused of mocking the disabled – Trump called for the reinstatement of the death penalty in New York following a horrific rape case in which five teenagers were wrongly convicted.