Opinion

The Central Park five, again

The Bloomberg administration has given the back of its hand to de mands that it settle a multimillion- dollar lawsuit by the five defendants in the notorious 1989 Central Park Jogger case.

And why not?

The city has far too strong a case to simply write a check — even if then-DA Robert Morgenthau did foolishly move in 2002 to vacate the convictions of the five thugs who confessed to the crime.

Nevertheless, the always audacious City Councilman Charles Barron demands that the city simply “pay compensation and settle out of court and not put them through a trial.”

To this, the city Corporation Counsel’s office responds that there’s no reason to settle, since police and prosecutors acted on “abundant probable cause, including confessions that withstood intense scrutiny, in full and fair pretrial hearings and at two lengthy trials.”

So why the calls for a settlement?

Maybe the plaintiffs and their lawyers expected a quick capitulation by City Hall — that they’d pick up their checks and move on, no fuss and no muss.

After all, Morgenthau in 2002 contrived to have the convictions thrown out after DNA evidence linked another man, Matias Reyes, to the crime. Reyes later confessed and claimed that he alone had committed the attack — which left a 29-year-old woman near death.

But while no one had ever doubted that an unknown person had participated in the attacks, Morgenthau ignored objections from some of his senior staff and moved to toss the rape convictions.

The original trial judge raised doubts about the swiftness of the DA’s move, asking why Reyes — who couldn’t be prosecuted because the statute of limitations had expired — was never questioned under oath in court.

Morgenthau even stonewalled a subsequent police investigation into the case, refusing to turn over forensic evidence and blocking access to fellow prisoners who might have raised doubts about Reyes’ claims.

Still, a panel headed by Michael Armstrong (chief counsel of the ’70s-era Knapp Commission, which uncovered rampant police corruption) concluded that the five had “most likely” participated in the jogger attack — either together with Reyes or separately.

In fact, Reyes reportedly told one fellow inmate that “a group of kids” attacked the jogger before he came along.

Inconsistencies in their stories, cited by Morgenthau, were an effort by each defendant to minimize his own involvement in the crime, the panel found.

As for the videotaped confessions, which the defendants later recanted, there was no evidence they were coerced — having been made in the presence of their parents or other adult relatives.

Indeed, some of the defendants actually repeated those same confessions over the years during parole hearings before their release from prison.

The NYPD had hoped to submit its report to the late Judge Charles Tejada, who heard Morgenthau’s motion. But the judge — a former Legal Aid Society board member — moved up the hearing and ordered the convictions overturned before the report was completed.

Again, the trial jurors knew full well that someone unknown had also participated in the Central Park attack — yet they harbored no reasonable doubts about the concurrent guilt of the five defendants.

But if it takes yet another trial to affirm that guilt — and exonerate the meticulous work of the NYPD and some truly dedicated assistant district attorneys — so be it.

And the sooner, the better.