NYC’s Ongoing Denial of the ‘Central Park Five’ Is a Disservice to Black, Latino Men
BY DERON DALTON
This essay is aggregated and courtesy of HuffPost Black Voices. Originally published on March 18, 2013.
I went to a movie screening of The Central Park Five Tuesday, March 5, 2013 and I’m still thinking about it. After watching this documentary and although covered heavily since 1989, I realized a much-needed young black male’s perspective has been missing from this ongoing case. The documentary, originally released on Friday, Nov. 23, 2012, gives these five innocent black and Latino men (Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise), the voices they were wrongly denied since falsely confessing to the horrific rape of the Central Park Jogger, Trisha Meili the night of April 19, 1989. As New York City continues to deny the Central Park Five compensation for six to 13 years each served in prison, denial of any wrongdoing and the racist injustice of the criminal justice system within this case is actually a continued disservice to all black and Latino men.
Although I could never feel exactly what these five men have felt for nearly 24 years, many black and Latino men can relate. And my skin color, age and sex connects me to them, puts me in that lonely corner with them, puts in that box of “the feared black man” with them and hence, puts me in their seats that night of interrogation. But like many black and Latino men, the five youths were seen as criminals from the very beginning without any chance of having real voices. Accused of a night of “wilding” or gangs of youths terrorizing innocent people through violent rampages, the youths were brought in for questioning related to other crimes that night in Central Park. After Meili was found hours later in Central Park, the five youths were viciously interrogated over the long course of a day until they falsely confessed — each saying they assaulted the victim, but didn’t rape her. After many hours of no sleep, no food, constant manipulation and interrogation from police, the youths gave their video confessions to get out of a bad situation, but instead helped in already-police-made convictions of each other. The five youths claimed their confessions were coerced by the police. In fact, the semen found at the scene of the crime didn’t match any of the youths, there were discrepancies in the youths’ confessions and the actual crime. But due to the videotaped confessions, all the rest of the evidence didn’t matter.
From the footage of the videotaped confessions captured in the documentary, I have enough common sense to realize the youths were lying about the confessions and noticeable inconsistencies with the youths stories and the majority of the youths not even knowing each other should’ve been a red flag. Wise’s body language in his videotaped confessions screamed help me… screamed I want out of this, that the words he was saying were in fact lies. Common sense told me when taken to the crime scene separately and both Wise, and Richardson pointed in different directions as to where the crime specifically took place that something was fishy about the accusations. Common sense told me, although in Central Park, the youths location close to the other crimes were nowhere near where the Central Park Jogger was savagely raped and were near impossible to be.
Read more at HuffPost Black Voices.
