NEW YORK—A long overlooked co-defendant of the Central Park Five, a group of teenagers wrongly convicted of raping a woman jogger in 1989 based on false confessions, was exonerated of a related conviction by a New York judge on Monday.
Steven Lopez was 15 when he was first named in the indictment along with other teenagers for the night-time rape and attempted murder of Trisha Meili, an investment banker whose horrific injuries became the subject of media coverage.
Lopez later pleaded guilty to robbing a male jogger that same night in a deal with prosecutors that saw the charges alleging his involvement in the attack on Meili dropped, and was sentenced to between 1.5 and 4.5 years in a state prison….