As Donald Trump assailed his guilty verdict, he stood in a Manhattan courthouse that was the site of one of the most notorious examples of injustice and he had a part in it It’s the same courthouse where five Black and Latino youths, the Central Park Five, were wrongly convicted 34 years ago in the beating and rape of a white female jogger. Trump bought a newspaper ad after the 1989 attack calling for the execution of the accused in a case that roiled racial tensions and that many cite as evidence of a criminal justice system prejudiced against defendants of color, reports the Associated Press. A day after making history as the first U.S. president convicted of felonies, Trump blasted the same justice system as corrupt and rigged against him.
The Central Park Five case was Trump’s first foray into tough-on-crime politics. Lately, in his outreach to Black and Hispanic communities, he has adopted the language of criminal justice reform advocates. He claims Blacks and Latinos can relate to him because prosecutors are out to get him like they have been out to get many men and boys in their communities. Trump's conviction "is going to be a problem for him with many Black people because, guess what, many Black people do not like people who violate our criminal laws,” said Maya Wiley, a civil rights attorney and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
“Black people are disproportionately the victims of crime. It’s not that they just side with people who’ve been convicted of a crime.” Judith Browne Dianis of the Advancement Project Action Fund civil rights group, said Trump hasn’t been subject to the type of unfair treatment in the criminal justice system that Black and Hispanic communities know too well. “He didn’t have a violent arrest by police, he didn’t stay a night in Rikers Island because he couldn’t afford bail, he didn’t even go to jail. He could pay a battery of lawyers to represent him and he can pay for an appeal,” Dianis said.