Two years after New York City elected one of the five men whose wrongful convictions as teens gained national attention, a second member has decided to join him in running for office.
Raymond Santana, who was 14 when police arrested him and the other “Exonerated Five” members, announced his grassroots campaign for New York City Council’s District 8 on Tuesday. The 50-year-old activist said he is running as a Democrat to represent the very neighborhoods he was born and raised in.
“Raymond knows what most New Yorkers know — that the current system isn’t working for communities like the South Bronx and East Harlem. And that’s why he’s running to represent his home on the New York City Council,” Santana’s campaign website says.
The candidate, according to the site, also plans to focus on reforming the criminal justice system, increasing access to affordable housing and providing more economic opportunities for marginalized communities.
Despite having lived primarily in Georgia since 2015 — where he is registered to vote — the candidate told The New York Times that he had frequently returned to New York City, both for family and for lobbying legislation that would protect youth targeted by police. He said he only moved back full-time to East Harlem last year, according to the paper.
Santana’s campaign comes just a couple years after fellow Exonerated Five member Yusef Salaam won a City Council seat in neighboring Harlem — an election that for many symbolized progress in the very city whose prosecutors unjustly incarceratedthe five Black and Latino boys decades earlier.
Santana told NY1 that he has spoken to Salaam about his decision to run. A spokesperson for Salaam’s office did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment, though the councilman told the Times that “those who have been closest to the pain should have a seat at the table.”
In addition to Salaam and Santana, New York police arrested Kevin Richardson, Korey Wise and Antron McCray in the 1989 rape and beating of a white female jogger in Central Park. All five teenage boys — gaining the name “Central Park Five” — were convicted in the attack and served between five and 12 years in prison.
The case inflamed racial tensions in the city and highlighted the criminal justice system’sharsh treatment and adultification of Black and brown boys. New York City Mayor Edward Koch called the teens “monsters,” while President Donald Trump infamously used his position then as a high-profile businessman to take out full-page adsin newspapers like the Timescalling for the boys to face the death penalty.
Santana initially served five years on the wrongful conviction before getting 20 months added on for a parole violation. He also served four years on a separate drug charge.
The convictions were overturned in 2002 after a man whose DNA evidence linked him to the crime confessed to carrying out the attack alone. The prosecutors in the case were later found to have used false confessions and inconclusive physical evidence in the trial against the boys.
The city agreed to a settlement that paid the wrongfully accused about $1 million for each year they were incarcerated in the case. Now the five men are called the Exonerated Five, with most of them using their public position to push for justice reform.
The group filed a defamation suit just weeks before Trump won the election last year, accusing him of lying during a presidential debate that the five men killed a person. Four of the men — including Salaam and Santana — also spoke out against Trump last year at the Democratic National Convention.
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“The wrongful convictions of Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise are prime examples of the prejudice, inequality and structural racism that is ingrained in our nation’s criminal justice system,” Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) posted on X after their DNC speech.
Espaillat’s congressional district overlaps with the council district Santana’s running for, though the progressive lawmaker did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment on whether he would support the activist’s campaign.