Lawyers for the “Central Park Five” and the city have agreed to publicly release hundreds of thousands of pages of documents that could shed new light on the infamous case.
“Certain documents will have to be redacted, so there are lots of details that need to be worked out, but there is a plan to put the documents on a city Web site,” said Karen Dippold, an attorney representing the wrongfully convicted men, after a hearing in Manhattan federal court.
The documents expected to be released include 95 depositions spanning about 200,000 pages, Dippold said.
The five black and Hispanic men were wrongfully convicted in the notorious 1989 rape of a Central Park jogger. They settled a wrongful-conviction suit against the city last year for $41 million.
Lawyers hope to post the documents, some of which involve former high-ranking NYPD officers and Manhattan district attorneys, in November.
The depositions are expected to include those given by the Central Park Five themselves as well as others arrested for crimes committed in the park the night of the jogger’s rape, court records state.
Transcripts and reports related to Matias Reyes, who confessed to the rape in 2002, will also be made available.
“The parties are working with the court to make records of the case available to the public,” a city Law Department spokesman said.