If you’ve been on social media in the last month or so, you’ve probably seen some of your family and friends talking about the Netflix mini-series When They See Us. If you haven’t gotten a chance to watch this four-episode series, it absolutely should be required viewing for anyone with an interest in true crime our the criminal justice system in general.
Premise
On April 19th, 1989, 28-year-old jogger Trisha Meili was brutally raped and nearly beaten to death in New York’s Central Park. Several other seemingly related attacks happened in the park around the same time cause. This caused police to take in a large group of teenagers and arrest five men of color who happened to be in the park, Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam, Korey Wise, and Raymond Santana on suspicion of the rape. They came to be known as the “Central Park Five.”
Despite the fact that four out of the five young men were under the age of 16 at the time, and many of their parents protested to their questioning or were out of the room, these men were forced to confess to the attack on the jogger without a lawyer present. These confessions were used to prosecute these young men even after they withdrew their confessions and refused plea deals on the charges. All five men were excluded from the DNA collected from the crime scene and both samples belonged to one man that was not part of the charged group. Prosecutors claimed this proved there was at least one other man present during the attack, but did not exclude the other five men.
Four of the five men were convicted and sentenced to maximum terms in juvenile facilities. Kory Wise, who was 16 at the time of the crime, was charged as an adult and sent to an adult prison. After the current perpetrator was identified through DNA testing, the five men were exonerated despite having already served their full sentences.
The Impact
The now “Exonerated Five,” have cleared their names and won wrongful conviction lawsuits against the city and state of New York for the time they spent in prison. The four juvenile defendants each served 5-6 years in prison, and Kory Wise, the oldest of the 5, served 12 years in adult facilities, much of it in solitary confinement. Despite being nearly 30 years since the men were charged and tried, and over 15 years since the men were exonerated, many of the same issues that plagued the investigation and prosecution of these men still exist today, making this case and mini-series just as relevant in 2019 as it would have been in the 90’s.
False Confessions
Daily News
New York, New York
Tue, Oct 10, 198
The Innocence Project claims that of the nearly 365 DNA exonerations that have occurred since 1989, nearly 28% of those involved false confessions. Nearly 33% of those false confessors were under the age of 18 at the time of the confession like Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam, Korey Wise, and Raymond Santana.
While it can seem hard to believe that anyone would confess to something they didn’t do, short of being tortured, many of today’s interrogation techniques lead to circumstances in which they do occur. Interrogations often happen under extreme exhaustion over a prolonged period of time. Subjects are isolated and often fed false information or given promises of leniency if they come clean.
While warnings are given prior to interrogations in the form of Miranda, young suspects tend to be the most vulnerable to false confessions, especially when left without parental guidance or counsel. This issue still very much plagues our justice system today.
Take for example Brendan Dassey in the Netflix documentary, Making a Murder. Brendan was 16 at the time of his interrogation. He was interviewed for hours without a parent or lawyer present. He was fed information about the crime that he may not have known otherwise, and was given false assurances that the investigators questioning him were on his side.
Dassey then gave several conflicting accounts of how he and his uncle Steven Avery killed victim Teresa Halbach, all while believing if he told the investigators what they wanted to hear, he would be able to return to class in time to turn in a project. Dassey has now served 13 years in prison for a conviction that was mostly based on this confession. Korey Wise served nearly the same length of time due to his confession.
Racial Bias
When news broke that a white investment banker had been raped by a gang of black and latino teenagers, racial tensions ignited. Natalie Byfield from the New York Daily News found that less than 5% of all the new stories from the time used the term “alleged” to describe the young men’s role in the attack, but instead most immediately assumed guilt.
As part of a large group of teenagers, the boys were running around Central Park that evening, “wilding.” This slang term was used to represent acting crazy and causing mischief, though not necessarily with violence. Investigators, and later reporters latched on to this phrase to amplify fears of young black men as “wolf packs” and “super predators.” It is easy to see how the media’s portal of these men as the “Central Park Five” and the language used to describe them lead to pressure to charge and then prosecute them.
Daily News
New York, New York
Sat, Apr 22, 1989
Comparatively, the media latched on to the “knock-out game” in 2013, where kids challenged their friends to punch random strangers. Many of the attackers were described as young black men and the victims white. It’s easy to see how our culture still perpetuates the idea of young black men as criminals to be feared much like they did in the early 1990s when the exonerated five were charged based on isolated incidents.
Today
Today much of the same issues that allowed Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam, Korey Wise, and Raymond Santana to spend a collective 35 years in prison still exist in our justice system. This is why programs like When They See Us are so important even 30-years later. Stories like the story of the “Exonerate Five” must be told to shed a light on issues that need to be changed. Issues that many people may not even be aware of.
Have you watched When They See Us? What were your thoughts?
