NYC agrees to pay out $40M to wrongly convicted Central Park Five rapists
Attorney Peter Cross (left) visits client Eric Glisson at New York's Sing Sing prison in August 2012. Glisson wrote a letter to an investigator with the U.S. Attorney's office that year, which ultimately resulted in the convictions collapsing.
The city settled lawsuits Thursday brought by five wrongly convicted people who spent nearly two decades in prison, agreeing to pay out $40 million -- one of the largest such amounts in city history.
The four men and one woman were wrongly identified as the killers in two 1995 murders, at least one of which was linked to a vicious gang in the Soundview section of the Bronx called "Sex Money Murder."
The quintet was dubbed the "Soundview Five," a reference to the high-profile Central Park Five who settled their lawsuits with the city for $41 million in 2014, after being wrong convicted of beating and raping a jogger in 1989.
The Soundview Five were released in 2012 and 2013 after new evidence surfaced that the real killers had confessed to one of the murders. Before Thursday's agreement, they had previously settled with the state in the Court of Claims for a separate $19.45 million.
Like the others, Carlos Perez, 47, now living in Pennsylvania, spent 18 years in prison.
"I'm just trying to spend as much time as I can with my family," he said. "It's not easy to adapt after 18 years in a cage."
Perez plans to continue reacquainting himself with the family he was torn away from for so long. His four kids were 12 and younger when he was arrested. They are now adults.
"My children were my life," he said. "One day, police officers grabbed me and took me to prison. No one can replace what I lost. The criminal justice system is broken. My faith kept me going."
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