Central Park Five

Central Park Five
Abstract 
The Central Park jogger case, often referred to as the Central Park Five for the five men who were wrongly convicted of the assault, is a brutal assault that occurred in Central Park in 1989.  The victim was severely assaulted, which resulted in her losing her memory surrounding the attack.  The police identified at least 14 suspects, and a number of them were convicted of the assault, despite a lack of substantial evidence linking them to the crime.  Five of the men, the Central Park Five, were exonerated when evidence revealed that they were actually innocent, but this did not occur until the men had spent years in jail.  This essay investigates the Central Park Five, covering information about the victim, about the trial against the defendants, about their lawsuit for their wrongful incarcerations, recent developments in their case, and the role that President Trump has played in their case.  
Introduction
In 1989, Americans were introduced to a new concept when they were told that the brutal assault and rape of Trisha Meili by an unknown number of assailants was the result of “wilding.”  This concept suggested that roaming groups of teenagers were going through the park, assaulting suspects.  It was suspected that this group was very large; more than 30 teenagers were believed to be in the group.  In addition to assaults, the group was suspected of other crimes, and police actually began to apprehend suspects around 9pm that night.  Meili was found around 1:30 that morning, and the police hunt intensified.  The police eventually took at least 14 suspects into custody, and eventually charged six of the boys with assault, robbery, riot, rape, sexual abuse, and attempted murder.  The boys who were charged include Steve Lopez, who was 14; Antron McCray, who was 15; Kevin Richardson, who was 14; Yusef Salaam, who was 15; Raymond Santana, who was 14; and Korey Wise, who was 16.  While Meili’s assault was the most brutal one, it was not the first similar assault in Central Park; there had been similar attacks on eight other victims.  In fact, the six boys were charged with attempted murder of an unrelated victim, John Loughlin.  
On April 21st, the police held a press conference stating that they had apprehended suspects in the attacks on the victims in Central Park.  The police stated that these suspects were part of a gang of teenagers who had been wilding in Central Park, attacking random strangers in a series of seemingly motiveless crimes.  They stated that the suspects had used the term wilding.  However, the whole usage of this terms seems to have been a misunderstanding of the term “wild thing” to mean sex. 
The public response to the attacks was unusual.  Normally, the names of juvenile defendants are kept secret unless a court has made a decision to try the juvenile as an adult.  However, the media ignored its own rule in this case, not only printing the names of the Central Park Five, but also their photos and addresses.  This led to significant threats against the juveniles, as well as their neighbors.  In addition, the racial overtones of the coverage led to some emerging support for the young men, with some leaders of the black community suggesting that the young men, most of whom were black, were being charged with sexual assault of a white woman because of their race.  
Trump’s Comments
To understand the racial overtones of the case against the young men, it is important to take a closer look at how Donald Trump’s actions influenced the prosecution.  On May 1, 1989, Trump took out a full-page ad in each of the city’s four major newspapers.  Trump’s advertisement made it clear that he thought the death penalty was appropriate for all of the accused, even though they were juveniles.  He even called for the deprivation of civil liberties from the accused, sating, “Criminals must be told that their CIVIL LIBERTIES END WHEN AN ATTACK ON OUR SAFETY BEGINS” (Trump, 1989). 
New York City was already horrified by the accounts of wilding in Central Park, as well as the very graphic details that were emerging about the alleged gang rape of Meili.  In fact, it would be fair to describe the entire country as horrified by the account of the attack as it was described by the New York Police Department and eventually the prosecution.  However, many people, including one of the Central Park Five, Salaam, believe that it was with these ads that the city really began to presume that the boys were guilty.  He believed that the inflammatory statements helped push their unfair prosecution and put the defendants’ families in danger. 
Central Park Five
Of the six boys who were charged, one, Steve Lopez, pleaded guilty to the charges in exchange for a lesser sentence.  The other five who were charged maintained their innocence, but the state did have some questionable evidence against them.  Anton McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise, the five juveniles who would eventually become known as the Central Park Five, had all confessed to taking some part in the events of the night.  All of the boys, except for Salaam, had confessed to playing a part in the sexual assault, but the other boys’ confessions implicated Salaam, as well.  
This evidence was in the form of confessions that each of the defendants had made during police interrogations.  However, there were always problems with these confessions.  First, the boys were all juveniles when they were interrogated, with some of them in their young teens, and the oldest of them being only 16 at the time that they were interrogated.  The confessions were not accurate in terms of time or location of the sexual assault, and were not consistent between the various defendants.  In addition, all of the confessions were made without the defendants having counsel available during the confession, and all five of the defendants withdrew their confessions, and refused to take any plea deals.  The confessions did not begin until the boys had been held for at least seven hours, without food, water, or relief.  In fact, some of the confessions did not occur until the relevant juveniles had been in custody for at least two days.   While some parents were present for the confessions, which were videotaped, the parents were not present for the lengthy interrogations that occurred before the confessions.  In addition, there were allegations that the police were beating some of the juveniles to get the confessions and using threats of physical violence with other juveniles.  Once the confessions were withdrawn, they asserted their innocence, and their assertions never wavered.  
The state did not have any real evidence against the defendants other than their confessions.  The had DNA from the sexual assault, but the DNA did not match any of the DNA from the suspects.  In fact, of the two semen samples that were collected at the assault, not only did they not match any of the five, but also they were linked to a single unidentified man.  In addition, there was no physical evidence linking the boys to the assault.  Furthermore, the timeline of the crime did not add up; at the time of Meili’s rape, witnesses could place all of the defendants in other areas of Central Park, where they were either participating in or spectators to muggings of other victims.
However, the city was in an uproar about the assault, with Donald Trump, then simply a New York city real estate developer and minor celebrity, going so far as to take out a newspaper advertisement calling for harsher punishment for the teens.  There was tremendous pressure to find the responsible party and obtain a conviction, and all five boys were not only convicted, but also received significant sentences, from 5 to 15 years.  Four of them were sentenced as juveniles, but the 16-year old defendant was tried and sentenced as an adult.  Four of them appealed their sentences, but the appellate court upheld them.  
Although the evidence came too late to spare the Central Park Five from their prison sentences, in 2001 there was a development in the case.  A convicted serial rapist and murder, Matias Reyes, confessed to raping Meili.  His DNA matched the DNA found at the scene, and he provided additional evidence of his guilt.  Reyes maintained that he committed the rape on his own and without the aid of the Central Park Five, or any other person.  In fact, Matias had raped another woman in the same area just two days before the assault on Meili, and, had the detectives in the Meili case compared the DNA of her assailant with the DNA retrieved from the other victim, they would have seen that they had the same assailants.  They did not do so because of a technical issue; since it was believed that Meili would die, her assault was initially investigated as a homicide, not a sexual assault, and there was not communication between the homicide and sexual assault divisions.  At the time, the NYPD did not have a DNA database, which would have flagged the DNA as the same.  Reyes went on to rape four more women that summer, and killed one of them.  Although Reyes could no longer be prosecuted for the crime because of the statute of limitations, the New York County District Attorney, Robert Morgenthau, reinvestigated the assault and asked the court to vacate the convictions against the Central Park Five.  
However, this did not mean that the NYPD believed that the Central Park Five were innocent of the attack.  They convened a panel to investigate whether there were problems with police procedures related to the case.  The panel, which included Michael Armstrong, Jules Martin, and Stephen Hammerman.  They issued a report, known as the Armstrong Report, detailing their findings.  While they agreed that the convictions should be set aside, they did not believe that the Central Park Five was not guilty of the attack on Meili.  They did not put stock in Reyes’ claims that he had acted alone, but believed that the Central Park Five and Reyes had all assaulted her, whether acting together as a group, or whether acting separately.  However, while this may have been the panel’s conclusion, the reality remains that there is absolutely no physical evidence tying any of the Central Park Five to the attack.  On the contrary, the one bit of physical evidence that could link any of the men to the attack, which consisted of two hairs found on one of the defendants, and which the prosecution alleged belong to the victim when the men were on trial, was conclusively identified as not belonging to the victim by DNA testing.  Interestingly enough, while this hair was presented as physical evidence linking the men to the crime at the trial, and presented as the victim’s hair, it was not subjected to DNA testing at the time, despite DNA testing being available.
Lawsuit
While wrongful convictions may be an unfortunate reality of a fallible criminal justice system, for victims like the Central Park Five, wrongful convictions mean missing out on years of their life.  They also mean incarceration in a criminal justice system that is notoriously difficult and violent.  These circumstances would have been exacerbated for these offenders, who had been portrayed as violent sexual predators.  In fact, the one defendant who was tried as an adult had a notoriously difficult time in prison and was subjected to so much violence that he reportedly spent a large portion of his prison sentence in voluntary solitary confinement.  The Central Park Five filed suit against New York City.  In addition to malicious prosecution, they sued for racial discrimination and emotional distress.  The lawsuit lasted for more than ten years, with the city refusing to settle the case.  Eventually, New York City settled with the Central Park Five for $41 million in 2014.  They also sued the State of New York, and that case was settled in 2016 for $3.9 million.  
Victim
The victim of the assault was 28 year old Trisha Meili.  Meili was a white woman, which would end up being a salient part of the investigation and prosecution of the Central Park Five, because the case eventually took on many racial overtones and incorporated racist tropes.  However, Meili was not responsible for that; not only did she have no recollection of the events surrounding her assault, but not all of the assault victims were white.  Meili received significant injuries from the attack; it was initially believed that she would not survive the attack, but she did.  However, she was in a coma for twelve days after the attack, then spent months in a hospital setting.  Even when she was released from the hospital, she was unable to perform normal daily functions like speaking, walking, or even rudimentary self-care.  
Eventually, Meili was able to return to her work as an investment banker.  She published a memoir about the ordeal, coming out to the world as the survivor of the Central Park assault. She began working as a sexual assault advocate, working with victims and as an inspirational speaker.  Meili continues to believe that more than one person was involved in her brutal physical and sexual assault, though she still cannot recall details of the assault, itself.  There is no question that Reyes was involved in the assaults; he was a DNA match for the semen sample found in Meili and had details that only someone at the assault would know, Meili does not believe he was the only perpetrator.  Her doctors agree that her injuries were not consistent with a lone attacker, and even point out that she had hand prints in different sizes on her body.  She was opposed to the city and state settling the lawsuits with the Central Park Five, and wanted to hear the additional details that would have come out at trial (Welsh, Schiffman, and Francis, 2019).  
Recent Developments
Even though the Central Park Five have had their convictions vacated and won settlements for their wrongful incarcerations, a number of people are still convinced that they are guilty.  Beginning in 2014, right wing pundit Ann Coulter began speaking out about their guilt (Coulter, 2014).  Edward Conlon, a New York City Detective that was involved in the investigation of the case, suggested that the youth had made incriminatory statements outside of their confessions (Conlon, 2014).  Most significantly, Donald Trump continued his charge on the Central Park Five, writing in an opinion article in the New York Daily News that the Central Park Five was probably guilty, based on his understanding of the facts as presented by the detectives on the case (Trump, 2014).  He doubled down on this position while campaigning for President, when he asserted that the Central Park Five were guilty and should not have had their convictions vacated (Holmes, 2017).  This led to widespread condemnation from a number of sources, including some of Trump’s fellow Republicans.  
Other developments have included legal changes that are aimed at preventing the type of false confessions in this case.  In fact, many states now require recordings of an entire confession.  In addition, the case has brought awareness to actual innocence claims, and each of the Central Park Five is active, in some way, in advocating for serious reforms in the criminal justice system, many working with the Innocence Project.  They were successful in helping pass a law in New York requiring that interrogations be videotaped.  
References
Conlon, Edward.  “The Myth of the Central Park Five.”  Daily Beast.  10 October 2014. https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-myth-of-the-central-park-five.  Accessed 20 August 2019. 
Coulter, Ann.  “What the Media Won’t Tell You About the Central Park Five.”  Frontpage  Magazine.  23 April 2014. https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/224068/what-media-wont-tell-you-about-central-park-five-ann-coulter. Accessed 20 August 2019.  
Holmes, Stephen.  “Reality Check: Donald Trump and the Central Park 5.”  CNN.  7 October 2016.  https://www.cnn.com/2016/10/06/politics/reality-check-donald-trump-central-park-5/.  Accessed 20 August 2019. 
Trump, Donald.  “Bring Back the Death Penalty.  Bring Back Our Police.”  New York Daily 
News.  1 May 1989.  http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.1838466.1403324800!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/article_970/trump21n-1-web.jpg?enlarged.  Accessed 20 August 2019.  
Trump, Donald.  “Donald Trump: Central Park Five Settlement is a Disgrace.  New York Daily 
News.  21 June 2014.  https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/donald-trump-central-park-settlement-disgrace-article-1.1838467.  Accessed 20 August 2019.  
Welsh, Susan, Keren Schiffman, and Enjoli Francis.  “I So Wish the Case Hadn’t Been Settled: 
1989 Central Park Jogger Believes More Than 1 Person Attacked Her.”  ABC News.  23 May 2019.  https://abcnews.go.com/US/case-settled-1989-central-park-jogger-believes-person/story?id=63077131.  Accessed 20 August 2019.