Trisha Meili
Encyclopedia
The Central Park Jogger case involved an assault
and rape
that took place in New York City's Central Park
on April 19, 1989. The victim was Trisha Meili. Five juvenile males were tried and convicted for the crime. The convictions were vacated in 2002 when another man claimed to have committed the crime alone and DNA evidence confirmed his involvement in the rape.
and Pittsburgh, Meili received a Bachelor of Arts
from Wellesley College, a Master of Arts
from Yale University
, and a Master of Business Administration
from Yale School of Management
. She worked at the Wall Street
investment bank Salomon Brothers
. Meili was referred to simply as the "Central Park Jogger" in most media accounts of the incident. However, local television stations did release her name in the days immediately following the attack, and two newspapers aimed at the African-American community, The City Sun
and the Amsterdam News
, and radio station WLIB
continued to do so as the case progressed. In 2003, Meili confirmed her identity to the media, published a memoir entitled I Am the Central Park Jogger, and began a career as an inspirational speaker.
was violently assaulted while jogging
in New York City
's Central Park
. She was raped and beaten almost to death. When found about four hours later, she was suffering from severe hypothermia
and blood loss from multiple lacerations and internal bleeding, and her skull
had been fracture
d so badly that her left eye was removed from the socket. The initial medical prognosis
was that she would die or, at best, remain in a permanent coma
due to her injuries. Remarkably, she largely recovered, with some lingering disabilities related to balance and loss of vision. As a result of the severe trauma, she had no memory of the attack or of any events up to an hour preceding the assault.
The crime, one of 3,254 rapes reported in New York City that year, was unique in the level of public outrage it provoked. New York Governor Mario Cuomo
told the New York Post
, "This is the ultimate shriek of alarm."
's hit song "Wild Thing
". April 19 was known to have been a night when such a gang attack occurred, in which the suspects had entered the park in Harlem
with over 30 acquaintances. Contrary to normal police procedure, which stipulates that the names of suspects under the age of sixteen are also to be withheld, the names of the juveniles arrested in this case were released to the press before any of them had been formally arraigned
or indicted
, including one 14-year-old who was ultimately not charged. The mainstream media's double-standard — printing the names, photos, and addresses of the juvenile suspects while shielding Meili — was cited by the editors of the City Sun and the Amsterdam News to explain their continued use of Meili's name in their coverage of the story. While many teenage suspects were identified (or identified themselves) as participants in the Central Park assaults that night — although not necessarily in the attack on Meili — only five, known later as the Central Park Five, were brought to trial
.
All five were convicted
in 1990. Four of the juveniles charged — Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, and Kharey Wise — officially confessed
to the crime, and each implicated the others. A fifth suspect, Yusef Salaam, made verbal admissions, but refused to sign a confession or make one on videotape. Salaam was, however, implicated by all of the other four and convicted. Salaam's supporters and attorneys charged on appeal
that he had been held by police without access to parents or guardians, but as the majority appellate court decision noted, that was because Salaam had initially lied to police in claiming to be 16, and had backed up his claim with a transit pass that indeed (falsely, as it turned out) said that he was 16. If a suspect has reached 16 years of age, his parents or guardians no longer have a right to accompany him during police questioning, or to refuse to permit him to answer any questions. When Salaam informed police of his true age, police permitted his mother to be present.
s. The detectives had indeed used ruses to convince the suspects to confess, with Salaam confessing to having been present only after he was told that fingerprints were found on the victim's clothing. While the confessions themselves were videotaped, the hours of interrogation that preceded the confessions were not.
No DNA evidence
tied the suspects to the crime, so the prosecution's case rested almost entirely on the confessions. In fact, analysis indicated that the DNA collected at the crime scene did not match any of the suspects — and that the crime scene DNA had all come from a single, as yet unknown person.
One of the suspects' supporters, Reverend Calvin O. Butts
of the Abyssinian Baptist Church
in Harlem
, told the New York Times, "The first thing you do in the United States of America when a white woman is raped is round up a bunch of black youths, and I think that's what happened here."
the convictions of the teenagers originally accused and sentenced to prison. In 2002, convicted rapist and murderer Matias Reyes, serving a life sentence for other crimes but not, at that point, associated by the police with the attack on Meili, declared that he had committed the assault when he was 17, and that he had acted alone. The DNA evidence confirmed his participation in the crime and identified him as the sole contributor of the semen
found in and on the victim "to a factor of one in 6,000,000,000 people". Supporters of the five defendant
s again claimed their confessions had been coerced. An examination of the inconsistencies between their confessions led the prosecutor to question the veracity of the confessions. District Attorney
Robert M. Morgenthau
's office wrote:
Based on Reyes' confession, the DNA evidence, and the questionable confessions, Morgenthau recommended that the convictions be vacated
. In light of the "extraordinary circumstances" of the case, the prosecutor recommended that the court vacate not only the convictions related to the assault and rape of Meili, but also those for the other crimes to which the defendants had confessed. The rationale was that the defendants' confessions to the other crimes were made at the same time, and in the same statements, as those related to the attack on Meili. Had the newly discovered evidence been available at the original trials, it might have made the juries question whether any part of the defendants' confessions were trustworthy. Morgenthau's recommendation to vacate the convictions was strongly opposed by Linda Fairstein
, who had overseen the original prosecution but had since left the District Attorney's office. The five defendants' convictions were vacated
by New York Supreme Court
Justice Charles J. Tejada on December 19, 2002. As Morgenthau recommended, Tejada's order vacated the convictions for all the crimes of which the defendants had been convicted.
Despite the analysis conducted by the District Attorney's office, New York City detectives maintained that the defendants had "most likely" been Reyes' accomplices in the assault and rape of Meili. Members of the medical crew who treated her stated her injuries were not consistent with Reyes' claim of how he acted alone. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly complained that Morgenthau's staff had denied his detectives access to "important evidence" needed to conduct a thorough investigation. This claim notwithstanding, no indictments, convictions or disciplinary actions were ever taken against District Attorney's office staff members. All of the defendants had completed their prison sentences at the time of Tejada's order, which only had the effect of clearing their names. However one defendant, Santana, remained in jail, convicted of a later, unrelated crime, although his attorney said that his sentence in that case had been extended because of his conviction in the Meili attack. All five were removed from New York State's sex offender registry
.
In 2003, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana Jr., and Antron McCray sued the city for malicious prosecution
, racial discrimination
and emotional distress
. As of late 2009, the suit is yet to be settled.
In 2009, filmmaker Ken Burns
announced plans to make a film about the case, which he compares to the Scottsboro Boys
case. He refers to the wrongly convicted as the "Central Park Five". The City is refusing to settle the suits, citing the "confessions that withstood intense scrutiny, in full and fair pretrial hearings and at two lengthy public trials".
Assault
In law, assault is a crime causing a victim to fear violence. The term is often confused with battery, which involves physical contact. The specific meaning of assault varies between countries, but can refer to an act that causes another to apprehend immediate and personal violence, or in the more...
and rape
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
that took place in New York City's Central Park
Central Park
Central Park is a public park in the center of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The park initially opened in 1857, on of city-owned land. In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition to improve and expand the park with a plan they entitled the Greensward Plan...
on April 19, 1989. The victim was Trisha Meili. Five juvenile males were tried and convicted for the crime. The convictions were vacated in 2002 when another man claimed to have committed the crime alone and DNA evidence confirmed his involvement in the rape.
Victim
Trisha Meili (born June 24, 1960) was the victim often described in the media as the Central Park Jogger. Raised in New JerseyNew Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
and Pittsburgh, Meili received a Bachelor of Arts
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
from Wellesley College, a Master of Arts
Master of Arts (postgraduate)
A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...
from Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, and a Master of Business Administration
Master of Business Administration
The Master of Business Administration is a :master's degree in business administration, which attracts people from a wide range of academic disciplines. The MBA designation originated in the United States, emerging from the late 19th century as the country industrialized and companies sought out...
from Yale School of Management
Yale School of Management
The Yale School of Management is the graduate business school of Yale University and is located on Hillhouse Avenue in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. The School offers Master of Business Administration and Ph.D. degree programs. As of January 2011, 454 students were enrolled in its MBA...
. She worked at the Wall Street
Wall Street
Wall Street refers to the financial district of New York City, named after and centered on the eight-block-long street running from Broadway to South Street on the East River in Lower Manhattan. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, or...
investment bank Salomon Brothers
Salomon Brothers
Salomon Brothers was a bulge bracket, Wall Street investment bank. Founded in 1910 by three brothers along with a clerk named Ben Levy, it remained a partnership until the early 1980s, when it was acquired by the commodity trading firm Phibro Corporation and then became Salomon Inc. Eventually...
. Meili was referred to simply as the "Central Park Jogger" in most media accounts of the incident. However, local television stations did release her name in the days immediately following the attack, and two newspapers aimed at the African-American community, The City Sun
The City Sun
The City Sun was a weekly newspaper that was published in Brooklyn from 1984 through 1996. Its primary focus was on issues of interest to African Americans in New York City....
and the Amsterdam News
The New York Amsterdam News
The New York Amsterdam News is a American black nationalist weekly newspaper geared to the African-American community of New York City, New York.It has published columns by notables including W. E. B. Du Bois, Roy Wilkins, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr...
, and radio station WLIB
WLIB
WLIB is an urban contemporary gospel AM radio station located in New York City. WLIB is owned by Inner City Broadcasting Corporation along with sister station WBLS...
continued to do so as the case progressed. In 2003, Meili confirmed her identity to the media, published a memoir entitled I Am the Central Park Jogger, and began a career as an inspirational speaker.
Assault
On April 19, 1989, the slightly-built 28-year-old investment bankerInvestment banking
An investment bank is a financial institution that assists individuals, corporations and governments in raising capital by underwriting and/or acting as the client's agent in the issuance of securities...
was violently assaulted while jogging
Jogging
Jogging is a form of trotting or running at a slow or leisurely pace. The main intention is to increase fitness with less stress on the body than from faster running.-Definition:...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
's Central Park
Central Park
Central Park is a public park in the center of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The park initially opened in 1857, on of city-owned land. In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition to improve and expand the park with a plan they entitled the Greensward Plan...
. She was raped and beaten almost to death. When found about four hours later, she was suffering from severe hypothermia
Hypothermia
Hypothermia is a condition in which core temperature drops below the required temperature for normal metabolism and body functions which is defined as . Body temperature is usually maintained near a constant level of through biologic homeostasis or thermoregulation...
and blood loss from multiple lacerations and internal bleeding, and her skull
Human skull
The human skull is a bony structure, skeleton, that is in the human head and which supports the structures of the face and forms a cavity for the brain.In humans, the adult skull is normally made up of 22 bones...
had been fracture
Skull fracture
A skull fracture is a break in one or more of the bones in the skull usually occurring as a result of blunt force trauma. If the force of the impact is excessive the bone may fracture at or near the site of the impact...
d so badly that her left eye was removed from the socket. The initial medical prognosis
Prognosis
Prognosis is a medical term to describe the likely outcome of an illness.When applied to large statistical populations, prognostic estimates can be very accurate: for example the statement "45% of patients with severe septic shock will die within 28 days" can be made with some confidence, because...
was that she would die or, at best, remain in a permanent coma
Coma
In medicine, a coma is a state of unconsciousness, lasting more than 6 hours in which a person cannot be awakened, fails to respond normally to painful stimuli, light or sound, lacks a normal sleep-wake cycle and does not initiate voluntary actions. A person in a state of coma is described as...
due to her injuries. Remarkably, she largely recovered, with some lingering disabilities related to balance and loss of vision. As a result of the severe trauma, she had no memory of the attack or of any events up to an hour preceding the assault.
The crime, one of 3,254 rapes reported in New York City that year, was unique in the level of public outrage it provoked. New York Governor Mario Cuomo
Mario Cuomo
Mario Matthew Cuomo served as the 52nd Governor of New York from 1983 to 1994, and is the father of Andrew Cuomo, the current governor of New York.-Early life:...
told the New York Post
New York Post
The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...
, "This is the ultimate shriek of alarm."
Suspects
According to a police investigation, the culprits were gangs of teenagers who would assault strangers as part of an activity that became known as "wilding." New York City detectives said the word was used by the suspects themselves to describe their actions to police. This account has been disputed by other journalists, who say that it originated in a police detective's misunderstanding of the suspects' use of the phrase "doing the wild thing", lyrics from Tone LōcTone Lōc
Anthony Terrell Smith , better known by his stage name Tone Lōc, is an American rapper and actor.-Early life and career:...
's hit song "Wild Thing
Wild Thing (Tone Lōc song)
"Wild Thing" is the name of rapper Tone Lōc's 1988 single from the album Lōc-ed After Dark. The title is a reference to the phrase "doin' the wild thing," a euphemism for sex, unlike The Troggs' hit song, "Wild Thing", in which the "wild thing" was a girl.Tone Lōc's song peaked at number two on...
". April 19 was known to have been a night when such a gang attack occurred, in which the suspects had entered the park in Harlem
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...
with over 30 acquaintances. Contrary to normal police procedure, which stipulates that the names of suspects under the age of sixteen are also to be withheld, the names of the juveniles arrested in this case were released to the press before any of them had been formally arraigned
Arraignment
Arraignment is a formal reading of a criminal complaint in the presence of the defendant to inform the defendant of the charges against him or her. In response to arraignment, the accused is expected to enter a plea...
or indicted
Indictment
An indictment , in the common-law legal system, is a formal accusation that a person has committed a crime. In jurisdictions that maintain the concept of felonies, the serious criminal offence is a felony; jurisdictions that lack the concept of felonies often use that of an indictable offence—an...
, including one 14-year-old who was ultimately not charged. The mainstream media's double-standard — printing the names, photos, and addresses of the juvenile suspects while shielding Meili — was cited by the editors of the City Sun and the Amsterdam News to explain their continued use of Meili's name in their coverage of the story. While many teenage suspects were identified (or identified themselves) as participants in the Central Park assaults that night — although not necessarily in the attack on Meili — only five, known later as the Central Park Five, were brought to trial
Trial (law)
In law, a trial is when parties to a dispute come together to present information in a tribunal, a formal setting with the authority to adjudicate claims or disputes. One form of tribunal is a court...
.
All five were convicted
Conviction
In law, a conviction is the verdict that results when a court of law finds a defendant guilty of a crime.The opposite of a conviction is an acquittal . In Scotland and in the Netherlands, there can also be a verdict of "not proven", which counts as an acquittal...
in 1990. Four of the juveniles charged — Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, and Kharey Wise — officially confessed
Confession (legal)
In the law of criminal evidence, a confession is a statement by a suspect in crime which is adverse to that person. Some authorities, such as Black's Law Dictionary, define a confession in more narrow terms, e.g...
to the crime, and each implicated the others. A fifth suspect, Yusef Salaam, made verbal admissions, but refused to sign a confession or make one on videotape. Salaam was, however, implicated by all of the other four and convicted. Salaam's supporters and attorneys charged on appeal
Appeal
An appeal is a petition for review of a case that has been decided by a court of law. The petition is made to a higher court for the purpose of overturning the lower court's decision....
that he had been held by police without access to parents or guardians, but as the majority appellate court decision noted, that was because Salaam had initially lied to police in claiming to be 16, and had backed up his claim with a transit pass that indeed (falsely, as it turned out) said that he was 16. If a suspect has reached 16 years of age, his parents or guardians no longer have a right to accompany him during police questioning, or to refuse to permit him to answer any questions. When Salaam informed police of his true age, police permitted his mother to be present.
Confessions
Although the suspects (except Salaam) had confessed on videotape in the presence of a parent or guardian, they retracted their statements within weeks, claiming that they had been intimidated, lied to, and coerced into making false confessionFalse confession
A false confession is an admission of guilt in a crime in which the confessor is not responsible for the crime. False confessions can be induced through coercion or by the mental disorder or incompetency of the accused...
s. The detectives had indeed used ruses to convince the suspects to confess, with Salaam confessing to having been present only after he was told that fingerprints were found on the victim's clothing. While the confessions themselves were videotaped, the hours of interrogation that preceded the confessions were not.
No DNA evidence
Genetic fingerprinting
DNA profiling is a technique employed by forensic scientists to assist in the identification of individuals by their respective DNA profiles. DNA profiles are encrypted sets of numbers that reflect a person's DNA makeup, which can also be used as the person's identifier...
tied the suspects to the crime, so the prosecution's case rested almost entirely on the confessions. In fact, analysis indicated that the DNA collected at the crime scene did not match any of the suspects — and that the crime scene DNA had all come from a single, as yet unknown person.
One of the suspects' supporters, Reverend Calvin O. Butts
Calvin O. Butts
Calvin O. Butts, III , is the Pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in the City of New York, President of the State University of New York College at Old Westbury, and Chairman and founder of the Abyssinian Development Corporation, an engine for $500 million in housing and commercial development...
of the Abyssinian Baptist Church
Abyssinian Baptist Church
The Abyssinian Baptist Church is among the most famous of the many prominent and activist churches in the Harlem section of New York City.- History :...
in Harlem
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...
, told the New York Times, "The first thing you do in the United States of America when a white woman is raped is round up a bunch of black youths, and I think that's what happened here."
Convictions vacated
In 2002, another man's confession, plus DNA evidence confirming his crime, led the district attorney's office to recommend vacatingVacated judgment
A vacated judgment makes a previous legal judgment legally void. A vacated judgment is usually the result of the judgment of an appellate court which overturns, reverses, or sets aside the judgment of a lower court....
the convictions of the teenagers originally accused and sentenced to prison. In 2002, convicted rapist and murderer Matias Reyes, serving a life sentence for other crimes but not, at that point, associated by the police with the attack on Meili, declared that he had committed the assault when he was 17, and that he had acted alone. The DNA evidence confirmed his participation in the crime and identified him as the sole contributor of the semen
Semen
Semen is an organic fluid, also known as seminal fluid, that may contain spermatozoa. It is secreted by the gonads and other sexual organs of male or hermaphroditic animals and can fertilize female ova...
found in and on the victim "to a factor of one in 6,000,000,000 people". Supporters of the five defendant
Defendant
A defendant or defender is any party who is required to answer the complaint of a plaintiff or pursuer in a civil lawsuit before a court, or any party who has been formally charged or accused of violating a criminal statute...
s again claimed their confessions had been coerced. An examination of the inconsistencies between their confessions led the prosecutor to question the veracity of the confessions. District Attorney
District attorney
In many jurisdictions in the United States, a District Attorney is an elected or appointed government official who represents the government in the prosecution of criminal offenses. The district attorney is the highest officeholder in the jurisdiction's legal department and supervises a staff of...
Robert M. Morgenthau
Robert M. Morgenthau
Robert Morris Morgenthau is an American lawyer. From 1975 until his retirement in 2009, he was the District Attorney for New York County, the borough of Manhattan.-Early life:...
's office wrote:
"A comparison of the statements reveals troubling discrepancies. ... The accounts given by the five defendants differed from one another on the specific details of virtually every major aspect of the crime — who initiated the attack, who knocked the victim down, who undressed her, who struck her, who held her, who raped her, what weapons were used in the course of the assault, and when in the sequence of events the attack took place. ... In many other respects the defendants' statements were not corroborated by, consistent with, or explanatory of objective, independent evidence. And some of what they said was simply contrary to established fact."
Based on Reyes' confession, the DNA evidence, and the questionable confessions, Morgenthau recommended that the convictions be vacated
Vacated judgment
A vacated judgment makes a previous legal judgment legally void. A vacated judgment is usually the result of the judgment of an appellate court which overturns, reverses, or sets aside the judgment of a lower court....
. In light of the "extraordinary circumstances" of the case, the prosecutor recommended that the court vacate not only the convictions related to the assault and rape of Meili, but also those for the other crimes to which the defendants had confessed. The rationale was that the defendants' confessions to the other crimes were made at the same time, and in the same statements, as those related to the attack on Meili. Had the newly discovered evidence been available at the original trials, it might have made the juries question whether any part of the defendants' confessions were trustworthy. Morgenthau's recommendation to vacate the convictions was strongly opposed by Linda Fairstein
Linda Fairstein
Linda Fairstein is an American feminist author and former prosecutor focusing on crimes of violence against women and children. She served as head of the sex crimes unit of the Manhattan District Attorney's office from 1976 until 2002 and is the author of a series of novels featuring Manhattan...
, who had overseen the original prosecution but had since left the District Attorney's office. The five defendants' convictions were vacated
Vacated judgment
A vacated judgment makes a previous legal judgment legally void. A vacated judgment is usually the result of the judgment of an appellate court which overturns, reverses, or sets aside the judgment of a lower court....
by New York Supreme Court
New York Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the State of New York is the trial-level court of general jurisdiction in thestate court system of New York, United States. There is a supreme court in each of New York State's 62 counties, although some smaller counties share judges with neighboring counties...
Justice Charles J. Tejada on December 19, 2002. As Morgenthau recommended, Tejada's order vacated the convictions for all the crimes of which the defendants had been convicted.
Despite the analysis conducted by the District Attorney's office, New York City detectives maintained that the defendants had "most likely" been Reyes' accomplices in the assault and rape of Meili. Members of the medical crew who treated her stated her injuries were not consistent with Reyes' claim of how he acted alone. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly complained that Morgenthau's staff had denied his detectives access to "important evidence" needed to conduct a thorough investigation. This claim notwithstanding, no indictments, convictions or disciplinary actions were ever taken against District Attorney's office staff members. All of the defendants had completed their prison sentences at the time of Tejada's order, which only had the effect of clearing their names. However one defendant, Santana, remained in jail, convicted of a later, unrelated crime, although his attorney said that his sentence in that case had been extended because of his conviction in the Meili attack. All five were removed from New York State's sex offender registry
Sex offender registration
Sex offender registration is a system in various states designed to allow government authorities to keep track of the residence and activities of sex offenders, including those who have completed their criminal sentences. In some jurisdictions , information in the registry is made available to the...
.
In 2003, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana Jr., and Antron McCray sued the city for malicious prosecution
Malicious prosecution
Malicious prosecution is a common law intentional tort, while like the tort of abuse of process, its elements include intentionally instituting and pursuing a legal action that is brought without probable cause and dismissed in favor of the victim of the malicious prosecution...
, racial discrimination
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
and emotional distress
Emotional distress
Mental distress or anxiety suffered as a response to a sudden, severe, and saddening experience.Emotional distress may refer to:* Law of torts:** Intentional infliction of emotional distress** Negligent infliction of emotional distress* Medicine:...
. As of late 2009, the suit is yet to be settled.
In 2009, filmmaker Ken Burns
Ken Burns
Kenneth Lauren "Ken" Burns is an American director and producer of documentary films, known for his style of using archival footage and photographs...
announced plans to make a film about the case, which he compares to the Scottsboro Boys
Scottsboro Boys
The Scottsboro Boys were nine black teenage boys accused of rape in Alabama in 1931. The landmark set of legal cases from this incident dealt with racism and the right to a fair trial...
case. He refers to the wrongly convicted as the "Central Park Five". The City is refusing to settle the suits, citing the "confessions that withstood intense scrutiny, in full and fair pretrial hearings and at two lengthy public trials".
Further reading
- Connor, Tracy (October 20, 2002) "48 hours: Twisting trail to teens' confessions". New York Daily News http://www.nydailynews.com/10-20-2002/news/crime_file/story/28497p-27070c.html
- Michael F. Armstrong, et al. (January 27, 2003) "NYPD Review of the Central Park Jogger Case" http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/pdf/dcpi/JoggerReportfinal.pdf
- Ryan, Nancy E. (December 5, 2002) "Affirmation in Response to Motion to Vacate Judgement of Conviction" http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/cpjoggera1.html
- "Central Park Revisited" New York Magazine. 20 year perspective on this subject