After 31 years, this often ignored sixth member of the 'Central Park Five' was also finally exonerated

Stephen Lopez was among those arrested and charged along with the "Central Park Five" when he was a teenager. He's now 48 years old and he has finally been exonerated, Vice News reported.

Lopez was the only one who never appealed his case after being found guilty of first-degree robbery and the beating of a jogger in Central Park in 1989. It was the same night that Trisha Meili was found raped and beaten into a coma in Central Park, which resulted in the false incarcerations of the Black and Hispanic teens.

"At the age of 15, Lopez, who’s Hispanic, was one of several teens arrested in connection to the attack on Meili, as well as a number of other violent crimes that took place that night," reported Vice. "As shown in countless documentaries and television series, the teens were all interrogated by the cops and tricked into placing blame on each other. Despite adamantly denying his involvement and no forensic evidence tying him to the crimes, Lopez and his father, who was not fluent in English, were coerced into signing a statement written by NYPD detectives placing him at the scene that night."

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Prosecutors were able to convince Lopez to take a deal two years after his arrest, in 1991. If he agreed to plead guilty to the robbery he would avoid the significantly harsher sentence that the other five teens got. So, he accepted the deal and served three years in prison for a crime he never committed.

Now known as the Exonerated Five, the group was able to sue the city for $40 million, but Lopez was never included and remained all but forgotten. His family privately spoke to the Manhattan district attorney in Feb. 2021 about the case and the office agreed to investigate. After over a year Lopez was vindicated.

“We talk about the Central Park Five, the Exonerated Five, but there were six people on that indictment,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg told the New York Times on Monday morning. “And the other five who were charged, their convictions were vacated. And it’s now time to have Mr. Lopez’s charge vacated.”

Read the full report at Vice.