Black Leaders Aspiring for Critical Knowledge, or BLACK, hosted a screening of the documentary “Central Park 5” on Thursday evening in the Student Center. The documentary illustrates a miscarriage of justice for five black and Latino teenagers from Harlem who were wrongly convicted of raping a white woman.
“The purpose of this screening is to highlight Central Park 5 and to give background to the Eastern student community,” Michael Wood, junior and secretary of BLACK said. “Because I’m pretty sure that [they] aren’t aware of the Central Park 5.”
The documentary addresses the separation of classes in 1989 New York City. The prosperity of Wall Street was juxtaposed by the extreme poverty of lower-class minorities who fell victim to random acts of violence.
It was in this environment that the Central Park 5 – Anton McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Korey Wise and Yusef Salaam – were convicted. On April 19, 1989, the boys went to Central Park with an assortment of other teenagers to find something to do.
“I told them there’s too much trouble at the corner. Go to the park,” Santana’s father, Raymond Santana Sr. said in the documentary, “So I feel guilty about that.”
That night, Trisha Meili, a 28-year-old investment banker, had been assaulted and raped in the northern part of Central Park.
The New York Police Department arrested over a dozen teenagers, including McCray, Richardson, Santana, Wise and Salaam. All of the teenagers arrested for the crime were either black or Puerto Rican, and none were older than 17.
The boys were on the verge of release until the full extent of Meili’s injuries were released by the local news.
“A lot of people didn’t do their jobs,” Jim Dwyer of The New York Times said about the scandal.
After hours of interrogation, the boys confessed to the rape and assault of Meili., and they were all arraigned on charges.
“I honestly think that it was convenient,” Wood said. “I think that if it had been five white kids they would have also been singled out. I think it was more about convenience than actually getting somebody’s attendance.”
The point was also made by the documentary that if this crime had occurred in another part of town or if the victim had not been white, then the case may not have received so much attention.
“The police controlled the story from the beginning,” journalist Lynnell Hancock said in the documentary.
When Meili finally recovered and gave her side of the story, the convictions stacking up against the boys began to fall.
At the time that Meili reported being attacked at the north of Central Park, Anton McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Korey Wise and Yusef Salaam were all in the middle of Central Park.
DNA evidence proved that none of them ever came into contact with Meili. Despite this, all five of the boys were convicted.
“The confessions felt genuine,” Juror #5 said. Juror #5 was the only juror featured in the documentary.
Meili herself testified, although she had no memory of the events. The prosecution in both trials centered on the coaxed confessions. The DA was relying on the confessions being genuine.
“Some of the officers were obviously lying through their teeth,” Juror #5 said.
The boys ended up serving time for a crime they did not commit. They were forced to finish their high school education from a jail cell.
The real rapist, Martias Reyes, known better as The East Side Rapist, confessed to the crime years later. After this, a reexamination of the case illustrated in the documentary revealed the gross mishandling of the investigation.
“If we knew then what we know now, we would never have even indicted them,” District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said in the documentary.
“I felt ashamed, actually, for New York,” historian Craig Stephen Wilder said in the documentary.
“The turmoil over their conviction overshadowed their innocence. We gave them a modest nod, then walked away from our own crimes.”
“I think that [the boys] need an honest apology from the media and from the police force,” Wood said. “And I also think that they need to be given what they have lost. They lost time.”
Wood does not feel that the Central Park 5 will ever receive the justice they deserve.
“If they were honestly going to handle the situation rightfully and justifiably, it would have been done,” Wood said. “I don’t think they have any intention of paying them or saying that ‘We made a mistake.’”
