Where’s the outrage over the Central Park jogger case?
BY SETH GITELL
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2002 -- No case more symbolized a New York City that was barbaric and out of control than the 1989 rape of a female jogger -- a white investment banker -- in Manhattan’s Central Park by a gang of black and Hispanic youths. The incident which gave rise to the verb "wilding" -- a gang of young people attacking victims at random -- and shocked the conscience of the nation and probably, eventually, helped elect Rudy Giuliani as the mayor of New York.
There is a story out of New York City that ought to be garnering more attention than it is: It appears that New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau will later today announce that convictions against the five men who have served their terms for the crime, should be overturned. New DNA evidence reportedly has linked a serial-rapist and murderer in prison for an unrelated crime, Matias Reyes, to the rape of the jogger. Reyes has told prosecutors that he, and he alone, committed the rape. He also says he raped another woman in Central Park two days before the jogger was attacked. Morgenthau’s recommendation may convince New York Supreme Court Judge Charles Tejada to clear Yusef Salaam, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Kharey Wise, and Antron McCray. Those names -- and the photos of the young men -- became synonymous with urban crime in the late 1980s.
This case was a national sensation when it occurred. It increased racial tension nationwide. Yet even with the news that the original case may have been dramatically flawed, there seems no great effort on the part of prosecutors to fully exonerate the men. The thinking among the prosecutors, according to press accounts, is that the gang of former teens -- now almost all men in their late 20s -- were somehow involved even if Reyes was the only one to technically rape the jogger, whose injuries rendered her brain so damaged that she could not remember anything about it. Still, prosecutors believe the mistakes were so great the first time around that it does not make sense to bring a new trial against the men.
Here’s the problem. A huge public interest is at stake. Either these men were the 1980s version of the Scotsboro Boys -- nine African American men charged with gang raping two white women on a Memphis, Tennessee-bound train in the absence of all evidence -- or they weren’t. If the evidence now suggests that men are truly innocent, they ought to be wholely exonerated. If, on the other hand, prosecutors really believe the men still played some role in the crime, they ought to be tried for that.
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Issue Date: December 5, 2002
"Today's Jolt" archives: 2002 2001
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