In the Spring of 1989, a 28 year-old woman by the name of Trisha Meili was brutally beaten and raped while jogging in Central Park, New York City. She was found naked and in critical condition four hours after her attack, having suffered significant trauma to her face and skull, fractured in multiple places, and extreme loss of blood. The initial medical evaluation deemed she would die from her injuries, and she remained in a coma for nearly two weeks. The NYPD, treating the case like an attempted homicide, were desperate to find whoever was culpable for this assault on an innocent jogger. The police picked up and interrogated 5 teens who would come to be known as the Central Park Five – Antron McCray, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Korey Wise, and Yusef Salaam.
There were a total of 12 teenagers picked up as a result of the criminal investigation, including Steven Lopez, Michael Briscoe, Clarence Thomas, and Lamont McCall, Antonio Montalvo, Orlando Escobar, and the five mentioned above. All of the teenagers were between the ages of 14 – 16, and all were Black or Latino. Some teenagers were involved in the assault of other people who were in Central Park that same night, who pleaded guilty and were convicted and sentenced. However, the story centers on the Central Park Five, who were interrogated for hours without legal counsel, and were intimidated and coerced into giving confessions regarding the rape and beating of Trisha Meili.
Richardson, Salaam, Santana, and McCray were convicted and incarcerated on the first-degree assault and first-degree rape of Trisha Meili. Korey Wise, the oldest of the group, 16 at the time, was tried as an adult and found guilty of first-degree sexual assault, first-degree sexual abuse, and first-degree riot. Wise, because of his age, was sentenced to Riker’s Island and spent 13 years imprisoned, while the other four each served almost seven years.
The media played a huge role in swaying public opinion and covering the story as a sensational story brought to justice. The vernacular used to describe the boys were dehumanizing, using words like “savages”, “animals”, “bloodthirsty”, and “wolf-pack”. Just two weeks after the boys were rounded up, a then-real estate developer Donald Trump paid $85,000 to publish a full-page advertisement in four different New York magazines calling for the Death Penalty.
The boys were unanimously portrayed by the media, politicians, police investigators, and district attorneys as criminals, as dangerous and violent predators who were capable of treacherous crimes. Pat Buchanan, conservative commentator and assistant to several Republican Presidents, was quoted saying “If the eldest of the wolf pack were tried, convicted, and hanged…the park might be soon safe again for women”, a quote eerily reminiscent of the violence and lynchings of innocent people of color like Emmitt Till.
In 2001, the offender responsible for the crime against Trisha Meili came forward and confessed after seeing Korey Wise still doing time in prison for a crime he did not commit. The actual assailant, Matias Reyes, gave testimony with details about the night that could not be known by anyone but him, and his story was also corroborated by DNA evidence tying him to the scene. In 2002, the charges against all of the Central Park Five were dropped, and in 2014 they were awarded a settlement by the state of New York on account of $41 million. But no lawsuit and no amount of money can undo or give the time they boys were robbed of their youth, publicly warred against, and prosecuted to the full extent of the law, for a crime they did not commit.
What the Central Park Five exemplifies is the criminalization of black and brown bodies, who in this case were wrongfully convicted and sentenced with skimpish evidence and forced testimonies. Public perception of this case, brought to the public’s attention through the media, preyed on the fears of people and fabricated a narrative incriminating and dehumanizing these five teenagers. What the case brings attention to is the prevalence of cases like these, where people are unjustly served by the justice system, tried and convicted for having the wrong-colored skin.
Since the exoneration of the Central Park Five, organizations like the Innocence Project have reported “88 percent of DNA exonerees who were arrested as minors are black, and the majority were tried as adults; 62 percent of DNA exonerees overall are black; and 33 percent of the false confessors were 18 or younger at the time of arrest.”