Lawsuit in 1989 Central Park jogger case settled out of court

NEW YORK (AP) — A New York City official says the city has agreed to a $40 million settlement in a civil rights lawsuit filed against police and prosecutors by the five men exonerated in the 1989 Central Park jogger attack.

The official has direct knowledge of the agreement but isn't allowed to speak publicly about it and therefore spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. A spokeswoman for the city's Law Department declined to comment. The deal must still be approved by the city comptroller and a federal judge.

The $250 million lawsuit was filed more than a decade ago on behalf of five black and Hispanic boys convicted in 1990 of raping and beating a white woman jogging in the park a year earlier.

Each served six to 13 years in prison. Their convictions were tossed in 2002 after evidence emerged linking someone else to the crime.

The attack on 28-year-old investment banker Trisha Meili was one of the most notorious crimes in New York City history and came to be seen as a lurid symbol of the city's racial and class divide and its rampant crime. It gave rise to the term "wilding" for urban mayhem by marauding teenagers.

When Meili was found in the brush, more than 75 percent of her blood had drained from her body and her skull was smashed. She was in a coma for 12 days, left with permanent damage, and remembers nothing about the attack.

The AP does not usually identify victims of sexual assault, but Meili went public as a motivational speaker and wrote a book.

Raymond Santana and Kevin Richardson, both 14 at the time, Antron McCray and Yusef Salaam, 15, and Korey Wise, 16, were rounded up and arrested. After hours of interrogation, four of them gave confessions on video.

At the trials, their lawyers argued the confessions were coerced. At the time, DNA testing was not sophisticated enough to make or break the case.

In 2002, a re-examination of the case found that DNA on the victim's sock pointed to Matias Reyes, a murderer and serial rapist who confessed that he alone attacked the jogger.