The Central Park Five: The Central Park Jogger Case (Part III)

Recommendation to vacate charges

As a result of his team's review, Reyes's confession, and DNA testing that confirmed he was the sole source of semen, District Attorney Robert Morgenthau recommended vacating the convictions of the five defendants who had been convicted and sentenced to prison.  Supporters of the five defendants again claimed that their confessions had been coerced by police.

During the re-investigation, the DA's office questioned the veracity of their confessions, because of their many inconsistencies and their lack of correspondence to established facts in the case. Morgenthau'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.

In addition to the confessions, the report noted that a "reconstruction of the events in the park has bared a significant conflict, one that was hinted at but not explored in-depth at the trials: at the time the jogger was believed to have been attacked, the teenagers were said to be involved—either as spectators or participants—in muggings elsewhere in the park."

The report also noted: "Ultimately, there proved to be no physical or forensic evidence recovered at the scene or from the person or effects of the victim which connected the defendants to the attack on the jogger, or could establish how many perpetrators participated."

In light of the "extraordinary circumstances" of the case, Morgenthau recommended that the court also vacate the convictions for the other crimes that night, such as robbery or assault, to which the defendants had confessed. His 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 was trustworthy.  In addition, the defendants had already served more time than they likely would have received based on those charges alone.

At the time and later, Morgenthau's recommendation to vacate the convictions were strongly opposed by Linda Fairstein, who had directed the original prosecution; as well as by lead detectives on the case, and some other members of the police department.  Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly complained at the time that Morgenthau's staff had denied his detectives access to "important evidence" needed to conduct a thorough investigation.

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.  All five of the defendants had completed their prison sentences at the time of Tejada's order; their names were cleared in relation to this case. This also enabled them to be removed from New York State's sex offender registry. In addition to having had difficulty getting employment or renting housing, as registered offenders, they had been required to report to authorities in person every three months.

Santana remained in jail to complete a different sentence, having been convicted of an unrelated later crime.  But his attorney said that his sentence had been greater in that case because of his earlier conviction in the Meili attack.

Aftermath

Lawyers for the five defendants repeated their assessment that Trump's advertisements in 1989 had inflamed public opinion about the case. After Reyes confessed to the crime and said he acted alone, defense counselor Michael W. Warren said, "I think Donald Trump at the very least owes a real apology to this community and to the young men and their families."  Protests were held outside Trump Tower in October 2002 with protestors chanting, "Trump is a chump!" Trump did not apologize.

Armstrong Report

Following these events, in 2002, New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly commissioned a panel to review the case, "To determine whether the new evidence [from the Reyes affidavit and related evidence, and Morgenthau's investigation] indicated that police supervisors or officers acted improperly or incorrectly, and to determine whether police policy or procedures needed to be changed as a result of the Central Park jogger case." The panel was made up of two lawyers, Michael F. Armstrong, the former chief counsel to the Knapp Commission; and Jules Martin, a former police officer and now New York University Vice President; as well as Stephen Hammerman, deputy police commissioner for legal affairs.  The panel issued a 43-page report in January 2003.[

In its January 2003 Armstrong Report, the panel "did not dispute the legal necessity of setting aside the convictions of the five defendants based on the new DNA evidence that Mr. Reyes had raped the jogger."  But it disputed acceptance of Reyes's claim that he alone had raped the jogger.  It said there was "nothing but his uncorroborated word" that he acted alone.  Armstrong said the panel believed "the word of a serial rapist-killer is not something to be heavily relied upon."

The report concluded that the five men whose convictions had been vacated had "most likely" participated in the beating and rape of the jogger and that the "most likely scenario" was that "both the defendants and Reyes assaulted her, perhaps successively."  The report said Reyes had most likely "either joined in the attack as it was ending or waited until the defendants had moved on to their next victims before descending upon her himself, raping her and inflicting upon her the brutal injuries that almost caused her death."

Despite the analysis conducted by the District Attorney's Office, New York City detectives supported the 2003 Armstrong Report by the police department. The panel said there had been "no misconduct in the 1989 investigation of the Central Park jogger case."

As to the five defendants, the report said:

We believe the inconsistencies contained in the various statements were not such as to destroy their reliability. On the other hand, there was a general consistency that ran through the defendants' descriptions of the attack on the female jogger: she was knocked down on the road, dragged into the woods, hit and molested by several defendants, sexually abused by some while others held her arms and legs, and left semiconscious in a state of undress.

Lawsuits against New York City

In 2003, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana Jr., and Antron McCray sued the city for $250 million for malicious prosecution, racial discrimination, and emotional distress.  The city refused for a decade to settle the suits, saying that "the confessions that withstood intense scrutiny, in full and fair pretrial hearings and at two lengthy public trials" established probable cause.  New York City lawyers under then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg believed the city would win the case if it went to civil trial.

Settlements

Under newly elected Mayor Bill de Blasio, New York City announced a settlement in June 2014 in the case of about $40 million.  Santana, Salaam, McCray, and Richardson each received around $7.1 million from the city for their years in prison, while Wise received $12.2 million because he had served six additional years. The city did not admit to any wrongdoing in the settlement.  The settlement averaged roughly $1 million for each year of imprisonment that each of the men had served.

As of December 2014, the five men were pursuing an additional $52 million in damages from New York State in the New York Court of Claims, before Judge Alan Marin.  Speaking of the second suit, against the state, Santana said: "When you have a person who has been exonerated of a crime, the city provides no services to transition him back to society. The only thing left is something like this—so you can receive some type of money so you can survive."  They received a total settlement of $3.9 million from the state in 2016, with varying amounts related to the period of time that each man had served in prison.

Trisha Meili publishes book

Meili returned to work at the investment bank. In April 2003, Meili confirmed her identity to the media when she published a memoir entitled I Am the Central Park Jogger. She began a career as an inspirational speaker.  She also works with victims of sexual assault and brain injury in the Mount Sinai Hospital sexual assault and violence intervention program. She had resumed jogging in 1989 three or four months after the attack, and over the years added a variety of other exercise and yoga practice.  She continues to manifest some after-effects of the assault, including memory loss.

Settlement and exonerations disputed

In 2014, after New York City had settled the wrongful conviction suit, some figures returned to the media to dispute the court's 2002 decision to vacate the convictions. Among those were conservative columnist Ann Coulter.  Also retired New York City detective Edward Conlon, who had been involved with the case, in an article published in October 2014 in The Daily Beast, quoted incriminatory statements allegedly made by some of the youths after they had been taken into custody by police in April 1989.

Similarly, two doctors who had treated Meili after the attack said in 2014, after the settlement, that some of her injuries appeared to be inconsistent with Reyes's claim that he had acted alone.  But a forensic pathologist who testified at the 1990 trial said that it was impossible to tell from the victim's injuries how many people had participated in the assault, as did New York City's chief medical examiner in 2002.  Meili, who had no memory of what happened, said at the time of the settlement that she believed there had been more than one attacker and expressed her regret that the case had been settled.

Donald Trump also returned to the media, writing a 2014 opinion article for the New York Daily News. He said the settlement was "a disgrace," and that the men were likely guilty: "Settling doesn't mean innocence. ... Speak to the detectives on the case and try listening to the facts. These young men do not exactly have the pasts of angels."  During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump again said that the Central Park Five were guilty and that their convictions should not have been vacated.  The men of the Central Park Five criticized Trump at the time for his statement, stating they had falsely confessed under police coercion.  Other critics included U.S. Senator John McCain (R-Arizona), who said that Trump's responses were "outrageous statements about the innocent men in the Central Park Five case." He cited this as among his reasons to retract his endorsement of the candidate.

Legislative and other justice reforms

Because of the great publicity surrounding the case, the exoneration of the Central Park Five highlighted the issue of false confession.  The issue of false confessions has become a major topic of study and efforts at criminal justice reform, particularly for juveniles.  Juveniles have been found to make false confessions and guilty pleas at a much higher rate than adults.

Advances in DNA analysis and the work of non-profit groups such as the Innocence Project have resulted in 343 people being exonerated of their crimes from as of July 31, 2016 due to DNA testing.  This process has revealed the strong role of false confessions in wrongful convictions. According to a 2016 study by Craig J. Trocino, director of the Miami Law Innocence Clinic, 27 percent of those persons had "originally confessed to their crimes."

Members of the Five have been among activists who have advocated for videotaped interrogations and related reforms to try to prevent false confessions.  Since 1989, New York and some 24 other states have passed laws requiring "electronic records of full interrogations".  In some cases, this requirement is limited to certain types of crimes.

Lives of the men after vacated judgment

Antron McCray was the first to move away from New York. He is married, has six children, and lives and works in Georgia.

Kevin Richardson is married and lives with his family in New Jersey. According to the Innocence Project, he has acted as an advocate with Santana and Salaam to reform New York State's criminal justice practices, advocating methods to prevent false confessions and eyewitness misidentifications.  Among their goals was required videotaping of interrogations by law enforcement; such a law was passed by the New York State legislature and went into effect on April 1, 2018.

Yusef Salaam has been an advocate for reform in the criminal justice system and prisons, particularly for juveniles. He has spoken against practices leading to false confessions and eyewitness misidentifications, which can lead to wrongful convictions. He also works as a motivational speaker. Living in Georgia, he is married with ten children. He serves as a board member of the Innocence Project.   As noted, Salaam was an advocate for the law passed in New York in 2017 requiring videotaping of accused subjects in all custodial interrogations for serious crimes.  In 2016, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from President Barack Obama.

Raymond Santana also lives in Georgia, not far from McCray. He serves as a criminal justice advocate with the Innocence Project and spoke in New York to audiences with Richardson and Salaam to advocate passage of the New York State justice reform law that passed in 2017. He has also appeared with other involved men in presentations at local schools and colleges.  In 2018 he started a clothing company, Park Madison NYC, named for the avenues near his former home in New York. Some of his merchandise commemorates the men of the Central Park Five.

Korey Wise still lives in New York City, where he works as a speaker and justice reform activist. (He changed his first name from Kharey after being released from prison.) He donated $190,000 of his 2014 settlement to the chapter of the Innocence Project at the University of Colorado Law School, to aid other wrongfully convicted people to gain exoneration. They renamed the project in his honor as the Korey Wise Innocence Project.

Contemporaneous cases compared by the media

The Central Park events, which were attributed at the time to members of the large group of youths who attacked numerous persons in the park, including whites, blacks and Hispanics were covered as an extreme example of the violence that was occurring in the city, including assaults and robberies, rapes and homicides. Focusing on rapes in the same week as the one in Central Park, The New York Times reported on April 29, 1989, on the "28 other first-degree rapes or attempted rapes reported across New York City".  The fourth one, on April 17, took place during the day in the park and is now tied to Reyes.

Soon after the Central Park rape, when public attention was on the theory of a gang of young suspects, a brutal attack took place in Brooklyn on May 3, 1989.  A 30-year-old black woman was robbed, raped and thrown from the roof of a four-story building by three young men. She fell 50 feet, suffering severe injuries.  The incident received little media coverage in May 1989, when the focus was on the Central Park case.  The woman's injuries required extensive hospitalization and rehabilitation.

The New York Times continued to report on the case, and followed up on prosecution of suspects. Tyrone Prescott, 17, Kelvin Furman, 22, and another young man, Darren Decotea (name corrected a few days later as Darron Decoteau), 17, were apprehended within two weeks and prosecuted for the crimes. They arranged plea deals with the prosecution in October 1990 before trial; the first two were sentenced to 6 to 18 years in prison.  Decoteau had made a plea deal in February in which he agreed to testify against the other two. He was sentenced on October 10, 1990 to four to twelve years in prison.  Social justice activists and critics have pointed to the lack of extensive coverage of the attack of the woman in Brooklyn as showing the media's racial bias; they have accused it of overlooking violence against minority women.

Representation in other media

Ken Burns, Sarah Burns and her husband David McMahon premiered their The Central Park Five, a documentary film about the case, at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2012.  Documentarian Ken Burns said he hoped the material of the film would push the city to settle the men's case against it.  On September 12, 2012, attorneys for New York City subpoenaed the production company for access to the original footage in connection with its defense of the 2003 federal civil lawsuit brought against the city by three of the convicted youths.  Celeste Koeleveld, the city's executive assistant corporation counsel for public safety, justified the subpoena on the grounds that the film had "crossed the line from journalism to advocacy" for the wrongfully convicted men.  In February 2013, U.S. Judge Ronald L. Ellis quashed the city's subpoena.

 On May 31, 2019, When They See Us, a four-episode miniseries was released on Netflix. Ava DuVernay co-wrote and directed the drama. Its release and wide viewing on Netflix prompted renewed discussion of the case, the criminal justice system, and of the lives of the five men.

An opera also called The Central Park Five, premiered in Long Beach, California by the Long Beach Opera Company on June 15, 2019.  The music is by composer Anthony Davis and the libretto by Richard Wesley. An earlier version, Five, was premiered in Newark, New Jersey by the Trilogy Company.