Central Park Five Get $41 Million

A federal judge has approved a settlement amounting to $1 million for each year the five men accused of the 1989 rape of a Central Park jogger spent in prison.

The conviction of black and Hispanic teenagers in the attack on a white investment banker became a flashpoint for issues of race, class and violence in late '80s New York City.

But those themes took on new meaning in 2002, when evidence connected someone else to the attack and their convictions were overturned.

Since then, critics have accused the police officers involved of misconduct for tactics that elicited false confessions.

Mayor Bill de Blasio promised to settle the lawsuit, which his predecessor, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, had fought. De Blasio called the settlement "an act of justice" that was "long overdue."

But the city's top lawyer, Zachary Carter, issued a statement saying the settlement is not an acknowledgement of misconduct in the case, and that both the detectives and prosecutors acted "reasonably."