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Democrat Yusef Salaam won a seat on the New York City Council Tuesday, more than three decades after he was wrongfully imprisoned in an infamous rape case.
Salaam is one of the exonerated 'Central Park Five,' a group of five black and Latino teens who were unjustly convicted in a famous 1989 attack of a white female jogger in Central Park.
His victory in Tuesday's election completes an extraordinary reversal in his life. Salaam was 15 years old at the time of his arrest, and spent nearly seven years in prison for a crime that he did not commit. He and his four codefendants were exonerated in 2002.
"For me, this means that we can really become our ancestors' wildest dreams," Salaam said in an interview ahead of the election.
Salaam will represent a central Harlem district on the City Council. His campaign ran unopposed after he won his primary election in a landslide.