The Central Park Five
Introduction
The film portrays the Central Park jogger case from the five teenagers’ perspective, whose lives were somehow distracted and destroyed by the miscarriage of justice. A woman’s body was discovered in Central Park on the twentieth of April 1989 (Duru, 2003). She was barely clinging to life. Within days, Santana, McCray, Richardson, Salaam, and Wise confess to her beating and rape after several hours of aggressive interrogation by the seasoned homicide detectives. The five served complete sentences of six to thirteen years before a serial rapist named Reyes admitted to the crime, and DNA tests supported that confession. In 2002, there was a vacation of the Central Park Five’s original convictions by a judge based upon Reye’s confession. After a year, the five men filed civil lawsuits against New York City and the prosecutors and police officers involved in that case. on the nineteenth of June 2014, a report was given by the New York Times that the City had agreed to a settlement.
Background
The justice system of the united states has failed; it only has a legal system. The system is designed to follow the letter of the law and not the fairness spirit. The shocking and tragic story of the five teenagers who were forced to confess to a rape case they did not commit is a perfect example of how the United States lacks the justice system. That story was not exceptional since it fits a historical pattern of unjust arrests and wrongful convictions of Latino and black young men in the United States. Since 1989 when the onset of their arrest and questioning through trials, sentencing, and exoneration in 2002, the Central Park Five experienced despotic treatment from different state authorities (Meili, 2003). The dynamics framed the case regarding class and race, whereby the five young men were all presumed criminals in the law’s eyes from the start.
There are various lessons to be learned regarding central park five. They include racial prejudice, juvenile delinquency and justice, and effective crime investigation methods. In racial prejudice, the case was framed by the dynamics regarding class and race whereby the five young men were all presumed criminals in the eyes of the law from the start. The young men were already termed as criminals from their outward appearance, which is wrong in every way. Also, one of the five-spoke about how intense media coverage of that case was. There was a lot of racism that surrounded the entire proceedings and the public response to his dismissal. Juvenile delinquency is shown when four of the five young men were arrested. The four were all below the age of sixteen years apart of sixteen, and despite that, we all feel that they deserved a proper hearing; they were termed as criminals and forced to give wrongful confessions. They were tortured in the juvenile cells instead of correcting them since that is the juvenile system’s role.
The prosecutors were even not interested in any evidence like the DNA tests to confirm if they were responsible for the crime they were accused of or not. That brings us to the effective crime investigation methods. The use of forced confessions, which was an unsuitable method of collecting evidence, was the only type of evidence that landed the four of the five in the juvenile system. For the longest time, the five youths went through torturous terrain as their families underwent psychological torture because of their absence. All because of the rotten justice system. There could be other ways to convict the five, but the prosecutors had already judged them from their race and ages. They could have performed a DNA test to see if the traces matched what they were accused of (Sullivan, Dershowitz, 1992). After an exhaustive revisiting of the evidence in 2002, a convicted murderer who was also a serial rapist named Matias Reyes confessed to the crime. The charges made against the five were therefore dropped.
Significance to the field of study
Up-to-date, racial injustice has become so rampant in the US. Now and then, we see in the social media feeds videos of police called to investigate black people for only swimming in a pool, sleeping in their cars, sitting at a restaurant, or even going for a morning jog. It is also shown in the typical American prison’s racial makeup and the homogenous white population of a suburban Bay Area neighborhood. Also, in the lack of polling stations in communities of color and the political candidates’ typical skin color on their ballots. Systemic racism is part of the American foundation in the criminal justice system. The Americans have to play a role in reconciling with its racist past despite generations of social movements speaking against violent foundations found in the country. It has to start with the leaders and those in the criminal justice system.
The story of George Floyd is one of the saddest we’ve heard when the police chocked him to death without a proper hearing at the court of law. The series of these types of aggressive encounters with the law explores the history of white supremacy and racism manifested in every way in American society. Other horrifying stories include those of Breyonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. It’s about time that the justice systems decide to rectify the real, persuasive, and very perverse conditions that led to the killings of these people of color, among other violent deaths. The violent justice systems have to be dismantled, enforce inequality with brutal efficiency and create more just equitable systems.
References
Duru, N. J. (2003). The Central Park Five, the Scottsboro Boys, and the myth of the bestial black man. Cardozo L. Rev., 25, 1315.
Meili, T. (2003). I am the Central Park jogger: A story of hope and possibility. Simon and Schuster.
Sullivan, T. J., & Dershowitz, A. M. (1992). Unequal verdicts: The Central Park jogger trials. New York, NY: American Lawyer Books/Simon & Schuster.
