Category Archives: Central Park 5

Sarah Burns, David McMahon (directors) and Raymond Santana (one of the characters) are invited to The Leonard Lopate Show. They bring more story behind The Central Park Five, a documentary movie about five teenagers were wrongfully convicted of a rape crime in Central Park in 1989. It shows the wrongful convictions from the jury and the innocence of the five people.

It is interesting that back to 1989 in New York City, when 6 crimes a day happened—why the Central Park five drew the attention? Sarah Burns explained it as existed but invisible “racial codes”. I agree with Burns that it was an inter-racial issue, more than a simple rape crime. The majority showed great exaggeration in social problems and the aggressive policemen in this case represented the public fear.

Media also was part of this “century of crime”. They made sensational headlines as the tabloid journalism’s development at that time. The media somehow made people believe that the poorly educated Latino teenagers would do the thing, thinking “they deserve for what they did”. This is an outrageous mindset. Mayor at that time as well as the public didn’t show much opinion, as a result of fear.

Why there were 30 teenagers were brought to the police that night and why these five got singled down? It’s again racial issues. Those dark-skin kids were playing in the field, while the jogger, who was later found jogging at totally different schedule and location. The five were detained because they were vulnerable. On one side, their family didn’t have experience dealing with policemen, and didn’t know how to handle the interrogation when policemen kept their children in darkness. On the other side, policemen didn’t clearly and necessarily notify the kids and their parents about the legal process, confession and aftereffects, etc. They mentioned the legal representation, but they didn’t give kids chances to defend themselves with lawyers.

The juveniles were naïve about the system and scared to get processed with the law enforcement. Santana said that he was kept more than 15 hours for oral confession, during which he was under huge pressure by the smoke and yelling from the policemen. I believed his innocence and also his words that a 14-year-old child is afraid of seeing those things, not to say doing it.  Santana said he was scared due to no experience talking to policemen, meanwhile he hoped his parents could tell him what to do but he was being interrogated alone by aggressive policemen.  So he simply “co-operated” by doing whatever policemen said, for just “be ok” and “go home”.

The truths are: the 5 confessions were not consistent, the investigation didn’t do DNA test, the policemen faked the confession and fingerprints as the evidences, which could prove the innocence of five teenagers. Worse of all, the policemen did not explain the serious responsibility to the suspects in a patient, or at least a professional way.

So the directors and the victims stood out, made this movie and wanted to involve people going back history, facing the mistakes and together working for fairness. What they did in movie could only factually show the incorrect part.

I was impressed by Santana’s words and his painful experience in the movie and also in this interview. He was horrified by the crude interrogation, which was so hard for a child to digest; he was wrongfully convicted and put in jail for 8 years, which brought him permanent criminal record in this life; when he became free, he couldn’t find a job, hardly transit to normal life, instead he started to sell drugs.

This is more than a sensational story or a provoking beat. It’s a great movie and it shows great effort and courage from both directors and four characters (one only showed sounds due to his personal privacy need). In this interview, Burns mentioned that she did try to approach the policemen, council and individuals but all of them found it was hard to comment. There is always different voice –people with deep-seated assumptions thinking, “we’re wrong but they are still guilty.” However, the most important thing is to reveal the truth and people did wrong should admit they made mistakes, as the direct hoped.

The documentary covers how an innocent man can suddenly be the prime suspect and then the offender of a crime. It also perfectly represents the failure of the police, media, public and justice system in the investigation process of the Central Park crime.

In 1980s, the NYC was a crime city with six murders a day. Every day there was news about mugs, rapes, cracks, or gangs and the young black men were perceived to be the most dangerous. But the Central Park case got more public attention than any other crime occurred in those years and called as “the crime of the century”.

One reason is that it was occurred in the Central Park, where was thought to be a secure area and exempt from violent crimes. The rapes in Brooklyn and Harlem occurred weeks before the Central Park crime were not considered as important.

The case also had an aspect of race and economic situation. The woman who was beaten and assaulted was a white well-educated person, while the young men who attacked the woman were low-income black and Hispanic teenagers.

The high number of the serial rape cases and the sexual assaults was scaring people in those years. The police were deeply criticized for not investigating the sex crimes rigorously. And the Central Park case was a great opportunity to voice their concerns.

In these circumstances, the police was under tremendous pressure to solve the crime quickly.

After the police announcement about the confessions of the five juveniles, everyone accepted that they were guilty except a few. Despite the discrepancies among the confessions, timeline disparities and lack of physical evidence, the jury, the media or the police were not suspicious about the case.

The recantation of the confessions and the statements about coerced confessions were not effective to change the public’s belief. The teenagers were defined as a “wolf pack” and accused of involving in “wilding”, referring to attacking people just for fun and sport. The public was so outraged that some called even death penalty.

All five teenagers were convicted and served prison from 6 to 13 years. After 13 years, a serial rapist confessed that he had committed the Central Park crime and the DNA evidence confirmed this testimony. Based on new evidences, the convictions of five men were vacated in 2002. However, the police department still maintains to believe that the five men were “most likely” the accomplices of the real rapist. Neither police department nor the justice department accepted their fault.

These five man lost several years in prison and became mature more quickly. Even though they get compensation for wrongly conviction, now it is impossible for them to take their life back, and no money can compensate this.

The Central Park Five is a documentary movie about the former mayor Edward I. Koch called “the crime of the century” in New York City. It conducts unhindered interviews and provides invaluable video footage. It provides a great watching experience to learn about sociology, journalism and public administration, etc.

It is produced, written and directed by award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns in collaboration with his daughter Sarah and her husband David McMahon. Directors of photography are Buddy Squires and Anthony Savini.

It’s a simple story but with unresolved legal issues and it brings up a discussion about justice. On April 20th 1989, Trisha Meili, a Wall Street banker who graduated from Yale Law School, was raped when she was jogging in Central Park after 9pm.

She was sent to the hospital while the policemen questioned thirty Harlem teenagers with dark skin, and five of them were convicted. Their names are: Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Kharey Wise and Yusef Salaam.

The movie brings us the truth that the sentence was wrong due to the imperfection of police investigation, media at that time, and the jury system. The five have already served sentences of almost 7 to 13 years when they were exonerated after the real murderer Matias Reyes was identified by DNA evidence test.

It’s a history of inter-cultural social issues. There are several bird’s-eye views showing the city of crimes and riots. The movie explores what New York City looked like in the 1980s, when Harlem had lots of illegal immigrants and most of them didn’t have education. The Central Park rape went on front page and drew lots of attention, as an inter-cultural violence.

It’s a story of media development in late 20th century. New York Times wrote the movie review, “As the filmmakers accurately depict, the teenagers were soon demonized and dehumanized, accused of being members of a “wolf pack” that went “wilding” like animals. To judge from the documentary you might think that it was mostly the agenda-driven tabloids that lobbed these descriptions.” There were professional skeptics writing in left-leaning publications immediately accepted that the Latino teenagers were guilty and believed the police, with whom these same skeptics had often been politically at odds.

It brings doubts to the jury system in the United States. From the beginning, the policemen randomly brought 30 Harlem teenagers to the police station. After that, they talked to five kids and showed impatience to them. The policemen cheated the teenagers by telling them they could go home once they confessed the “truth”, or signed a confession, which was made up by the policemen. The kids were terrified by the legal process and got very tired from the constant investigation. They wanted to get things down and went back home so they followed whatever the policemen told them to do.

It is human nature that those poorly educated teenagers didn’t understand the legal responsibility they were going to take after they confessed. They naively thought they could leave if they “helped” the policemen to finish their investigating work.  The kids didn’t ask for a lawyer and they showed fear in the videotaped confession. All these processes indicated a threat to the freedom and fairness of the legal system.

“It was important to us that each human being that was in it have their humanity, something that was completely robbed … race has been a huge part of other films that we’ve done and its an important aspect of this story as well,” said Ken Burns in an interview. “It’s a difficult story, a painful story, and it’s still going on. It was a 13-year tragedy.”

It’s a sad story seeing these middle aged men sharing experience from their youth of being put on trial to the public. Nobody cared about what they went through in this town, not even their parents or community when they were teenagers. Their lives were taken away when they were young, and they continued their lives on the tracks that led them nowhere.

Korey Wise speaks poor English with a strong accent. He is very emotional and his videotaped confession was the best footage showing how a confused and afraid young person reacted to the legal process under pressure and insecurity. Kevin Richardson is the most sentimental one. He weeps and he looks confused towards life.

Raymond Santana seems very positive and very talkative. He jokes sometimes in the interview about the transcription that the policeman wrote for his confession and wonders “how a teenager could understand rape and write in that way?” Something interesting that he got in prison again as a rapist later on. He seems not angry but not hopeful at all. I know he must endure lots of hardships but he doesn’t explain how he went on another rape.

As Andrew O’Hehir (Salon) comments, “the documentary illustrates a way we respond to powerful narratives about race, sex and gender, even when they turn out not to make sense.” The case represented a massive failure of law enforcement, journalism and public imagination, and it led to the last major wrongful-conviction case of the 20th century.

Students, it seems like I’m the only one blogging here. Where are the rest of you? Here’s another amazing story about a likely wrongful conviction.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann?currentPage=all