Month: July 2022

A sixth man, a co-defendant of the ‘Central Park Five’ who were wrongly convicted in the 1989 rape of a New York jogger, was exonerated of a robbery conviction linked to the attack on Monday.  According to the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, the more than three decades-old conviction of the defendant, Steven Lopez, was overturned.  Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said:  “Many have largely forgotten there were six. Today, Mr. Lopez joins the other five.”

Lopez was 15-years-old when he and five other teenagers were arrested in connection with the vicious beating and sexual assault of investment banker Trisha Meili, who testified she could not remember the attack.  The other defendants — Antron Mccray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise — were convicted and served jail time. Lopez took a deal and pleaded guilty to robbing a male jogger in Central Park the same night as the attack to avoid a rape charge, and spent more than three years in prison.  District Attorney Bragg told the court: “Mr. Lopez was charged and pleaded guilty in the face of false statements, unreliable forensic analysis and immense external pressure.”  

In 2002, convicted rapist and murderer Matias Reyes admitted he was behind Meili’s attack. DNA testing and other evidence confirmed Reye’s confession, prompting then-District Attorney Robert Morgenthau to file a motion to vacate the Central Park Five’s convictions. The five men settled with New York City for $40 million for the time they served in prison — roughly $1 million for each year served.

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Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell has been moved to a low-security prison in Florida to serve out a 20-year sentence for her role in Epstein’s sex trafficking scheme. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons,. the 60-year-old Maxwell is currently listed as an inmate at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tallahassee and was moved on Friday.

Maxwell’s attorneys had requested she serve her time in Danbury, Conn., according to court records filed in the Southern District of New York.  They argued that Maxwell received harsh treatment at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn because of her association with Epstein.

The North Florida prison, which houses more than 700 female inmates, will find Maxwell required to wake up at 6 a.m., dress in khaki pants and shirt and perform certain chores. The prison offers a number of activities including yoga, basketball, cooking and painting, according to FCI Tallahassee’s handbook.  However Duncan Levin, a former federal prosecutor in New York who was not involved in the case, said: “There is nothing cushy about Maxwell’s designation. She is going to be surrounded by barbed wire and fences.”

Maxwell was sentenced last month to 20 years in prison and ordered to pay a $750,000 fine, after being convicted by a jury in December on five of six counts relating to the sex trafficking scheme in which she was accused of procuring young girls to be sexually abused by Epstein. The former British socialite was found guilty of sex trafficking minors, transporting a minor with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity and three related conspiracy counts.  According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Maxwell will be eligible for release in July 2037.

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