On this day in New York · April 19, 1989
The Central Park Jogger Case
A brutal attack in the park set off a citywide panic that convicted five teenagers who never did it, and it took a confession from the actual attacker, thirteen years later, to prove it.
The facts
- Date
- April 19, 1989
- Victim
- Trisha Meili, 28, an investment banking executive at Salomon Brothers
- The five
- Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Korey Wise
- Exonerated
- December 19, 2002, after Matias Reyes confessed and his DNA matched the scene evidence
On the night of April 19, 1989, 28-year-old investment banker Trisha Meili was attacked while jogging in Central Park, dragged nearly 300 feet off the roadway, raped, and left for dead in a ravine. She spent 12 days in a coma. Police picked up a group of Black and Latino teenagers who had been in the park that night, and after hours of interrogation, five of them, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise, signed confessions that contradicted each other and didn't match the physical evidence. All five were convicted in 1990 and 1991 and sent away. None of their DNA matched what was recovered from the scene. In 2002, a convicted rapist and murderer named Matias Reyes admitted, on his own, that he alone had attacked Meili, and his DNA confirmed it. A judge vacated all five convictions that December.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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This is the ultimate shriek of alarm.
New York Governor Mario Cuomo, quoted in the New York Post days after the attack
Source: Wikipedia -
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.
Assistant District Attorney Nancy Ryan, in her December 2002 affirmation recommending the convictions be vacated
Source: Wikipedia
Why it still matters
The case became the textbook example of how a wrongful conviction actually happens: scared teenagers, hours of interrogation, and a rush to judgment (Donald Trump ran full-page newspaper ads calling for the death penalty before any trial). It reshaped how New York pays for its mistakes, with the city settling with the five men for $41 million in 2014 and the state adding $3.9 million in 2016.
Sources
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