during the presidential debate on Tuesday Donald Trump appeared to defend his decades old calls for the reinstatement of the death penalty after five black and Latino teenagers known as the Central Park 5 were wrongfully convicted of rape in New York when moderators asked the former president and Kamala Harris to speak on the topic of race in America Trump struggled to account for his previous remarks questioning Harris's racial identity and to deal with his fraud history on the subject I don't care what she is I don't care Trump said you make a big deal out of something I couldn't care less whatever she wants to be is okay with me in her response Harris called it a tragedy that we have someone who wants to be president who is consistently over the course of his career attempted to use race to divide the American people and reminded viewers that Trump had called for the reinstatement of the death penalty after five young men of color were wrongfully convicted of raping a woman in 1989 was referring to an ad that Trump purchased in the New York Times in the wake of a brutal assault on a woman in Central Park calling on the state of New York to bring back the death penalty the police pulled five black and Latino teenagers from the park and interrogated them prompting confessions they later said had been extracted under duress then in 2002 a convicted serial rapist named matius Reyes confessed from prison to the crime and a DNA test confirmed that he had been the perpetrator still on the debate stage more than two decades after the exoneration of the teenagers Trump dug in they played guilty said Trump who also claimed that Mike Bloomberg the former New York mayor agreed with him on the topic they killed a person ultimately said Trump Yousef Salam one of the five exonerated men who is now a member of New York City Council watch the debate live in Philadelphia