PHILADELPHIA - It's back to court for the Central Park 5, a group of then-teenagers were wrongfully convicted of the assault and rape of a woman in 1989.
The group later sued New York City over its prosecution of them, which was found to be erroneous when someone else confessed to the crimes. They obtained a $41 million settlement.
Now, they are suing former President Donald Trump, filing suit Oct. 21 in Philadelphia federal court over statements made during the September Presidential debate with Kamala Harris.
"Defendant Trump falsely stated that Plaintiffs killed an individual and pled guilty to the crime," the suit says. "These statements are demonstrably false.
"Plaintiffs never pled guilty to any crime and were subsequently cleared of all wrongdoing. Further, the victims of the Central Park assaults were not killed."
The five were convicted and sentenced to several years in prison. Serial rapist Matias Reyes confessed to the crime, however, while incarcerated for attacking five other women.
The suit notes Trump published full-page advertisements in four New York City newspapers 11 days after the assault in 1989 that sought to "BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY."
During the September debate, Harris brought up the ads.
"Let's remember, this is the same individual who took out a full-page ad in The New York Times calling for the execution of five young Black and Latino boys who were innocent, the Central Park Five," she said.
Trump answered, "They admitted - they said, they pled guilty. And I said, well, if they pled guilty, they badly hurt a person, killed a person ultimately."
The defamation case notes that others assaulted in Central Park that day weren't killed, nor was the rape victim.
"Defendant Trump also omitted key facts, further rendering his statements false, misleading or defamatory," the suit says.
"These include, among other things, the fact that the Manhattan District Attorney's Office later acknowledged that the teens' confessions were unreliable and conflicted with the objective evidence; that four of the five were acquitted of attempted murder; that all five men's convictions were later vacated; that the true perpetrator, Matias Reyes, confessed; that DNA evidence confirmed that Reyes was the true perpetrator; and that the City of New York ultimately agreed to pay $41 million for its conduct toward Plaintiffs."
The suit calls Trump's statement extreme, outrageous and intended to cause emotional distress to the Central Park 5.
Past statements, like a tweet in 2013 calling a documentary about their exoneration a "one sided piece of garbage that didn't explain the horrific crimes of these young men," are included in the it.
A 2014 op-ed written by Trump and published in the New York Daily News called the $41 million settlement a "disgrace."
Shanin Specter and Alex Van Dyke of Kline & Specter represents the five.
"The Plaintiffs seek to correct the record and clear their names once again," Specter said.