The wrongly convicted and imprisoned Central Park Five — Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Kharey Wise and Yusef Salaam — have reportedly agreed to a settlement of close to $40 million. The five, railroaded into convictions for having sexually assaulted 28-year-old investment banker Trisha Meili while she jogged in Central Park, will each receive about $1 million for each year they were behind bars.

The settlement, reported yesterday by the N.Y. Times, was nudged along by Mayor Bill de Blasio, who had promised to reach a “swift settlement” once he took office.

On 10.30.12 I posted the following: “New York City needs to do more than simply admit error in case of the Central Park Five. Nine years ago the five filed a federal lawsuit against the city, seeking $50 million each in damages or $250 million total. If anyone deserves to be financially compensated for a perversion of justice, it’s these guys.

“I came to this conclusion after seeing Ken Burns, Sarah Burns and David McMahon‘s The Central Park Five, a PBS-funded doc about the 1989 Central Park Jogger rape case, at the [2012] Telluride Film Festival. Earlier this month the N.Y. Times reported that ‘lawyers for New York City want to explore if much of the film’s unpublished interviews and unreleased footage might help them’ defend against the above-mentioned lawsuit. Let’s hope that they lose and that the five receive full financial compensation.”