Mayor Bill de Blasio acted in the interest of justice when his administration agreed to pay about $40 million to the five black and Hispanic men wrongly convicted in the brutal beating and rape of a white, female jogger in Central Park in 1989. If the settlement is approved by the city comptroller and a federal court, it will bring to a close one of the more shameful and racially divisive episodes in New York City history.

The assault, which stunned New Yorkers, came at a time of deep anxiety about urban crime that pervaded not just the city but the nation as a whole. New York City itself was still recovering from the insolvency of the previous decade and reeling from the crack wars, which had desolated neighborhood after neighborhood. Continue reading Editorial: A Settlement in the Central Park Jogger Case – NYTimes →