Raymond Santana’s decades-long effort to clear his name has entered another legal chapter, this time through an ongoing federal defamation case involving President Donald Trump.
Santana, along with Yusef Salaam, Kevin Richardson, Antron Brown and Korey Wise, is suing Trump over statements he made during the September 2024 presidential debate. The five men, formerly known as the Central Park Five and now commonly called the Exonerated Five, contend that Trump falsely said they had pleaded guilty and had killed someone in connection with the 1989 Central Park case.
The men never pleaded guilty, and no victim in the Central Park jogger case was killed. Their convictions were vacated in 2002 after another man, Matias Reyes, confessed and DNA evidence supported his account. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office subsequently moved to vacate the convictions and dismiss the indictments.
A federal judge ruled in April 2025 that significant portions of the lawsuit could proceed, rejecting Trump’s effort to have the defamation and false-light claims dismissed. The court did dismiss the plaintiffs’ separate claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress.
The litigation has since moved into the federal appeals process.
In May 2026, Trump expanded his appellate legal team with attorneys from DLA Piper as he continued challenging the case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. His attorneys have argued that the lawsuit should be barred under legal protections involving political speech and Pennsylvania’s anti-SLAPP law. Attorneys representing Santana and the other plaintiffs have opposed that effort.
The dispute remains unresolved.
For Santana, the case adds another chapter to a story that began when he was just 14 years old.
Santana and the other four teenagers were convicted in 1990 after interrogations that became a central focus of later criticism of the prosecution. The Innocence Project states that false confessions and faulty forensic evidence contributed to the wrongful convictions. Santana spent years incarcerated before being released and later exonerated.
In the years since, Santana has become an advocate on wrongful convictions, criminal-justice reform and the long-term consequences of incarceration.
He has continued speaking publicly about healing and rebuilding life after exoneration. A recent rebroadcast of an interview with Santana focused on the psychological toll of his wrongful conviction, forgiveness, community support and his advocacy work.
More than three decades after the original case captured national attention, Santana’s legal battle over how that history is publicly described is still unfolding.
The current lawsuit does not revisit whether Santana and the other men were guilty of the 1989 attack. Their convictions were vacated and the indictments dismissed more than two decades ago.
Instead, the case now centers on whether Trump’s later statements about the Exonerated Five were defamatory and legally actionable — a question that remains before the courts.