Central Park Jogger Case Analysis Essay

Minorities and people of color have suffered and endured multiple hardships and disadvantages within the United States of America. Today I’ll be talking about the Central Park jogger case. The Central Park jogger case, also known as the Central Park Five because of the five men falsely imprisoned for the assault, was a horrific attack that occurred in Central Park in 1989. The defendant was brutally attacked, causing her to lose her memory. the circumstances surrounding the attack At least 14 suspects were identified by police, and five of them were arrested. Regardless of the lack of significant evidence connecting them to the assault, they were found guilty. When evidence was revealed, five of the men, known as the Central Park Five, were declared that they were actually innocent, but this did not happen until they had been imprisoned for years in jail.

The Central Park Five case is a huge examination of how the justice system can sometimes fail. I would like to acknowledge a few key characters and components in this five-part series. Yusef Salam who was 15; Kevin Richardson who was 14; Raymond Santana who was 14; Korey Wise who was 16, and Antron Mcray who was 15; four of them were African-American, and one was Hispanic. While Patricia Meili's assault was the most brutal one, it was not the first similar case assault in the central park; there had been similar attacks on eight other victims. In fact, they were also charged with the attempted murder of an unrelated victim, John Loughlin.

The first five names listed above were pretty average minorities living in New York City in the year 1989. It all started one night when a huge group of teenagers decided to go to the park and play basketball. Patricia Meili went on a late jog that exact night and sadly she didn’t return. Patricia was beaten and sexually assaulted and she remained in a coma for nearly 2 weeks and without no memory of the attack... Her assault was the result of “wilding.” This concept suggests that it was an activity by a gang of youths going on a protracted and violent rampage in a public place, attacking people at random: Two men found her body and they reported it. Police arrived at the scene and rushed Meili to the hospital. 

First, Richardson and Santana were taken by police, on reports of intimidating behavior and muggings. And then salaam, wise, and McCray were taken the following day- The wise story was the most tragic of them all. He wasn’t considered a suspect at the time but wanted to offer moral support to Salaam and then the police decided to question him by putting him in a position that was uniquely vulnerable. He also suffered from a hearing problem which made it easier for him to be pressured, coerced, and manipulated by the police. He was 16 at the time which meant he did not go to a juvenile center but to an adult prison instead.

Soon focus shifted to the assault on Meili, and the five boys Salaam, McCray, Santana, Wise, and Richardson were all told that if they confess to raping her they would be allowed to go home. Not only did they make them lie, but they were beaten, starved coerced by Assistant District Linda Fairstein before being sentenced for crimes that they did not commit, and more. This wasn’t something that was out of the ordinary for minorities. 

This resulted in those five boys serving time, they missed out on that ranged from six to 13 years for what then-New York City Mayor Ed Koch called” the crime of the Century,” They missed school prom, graduation, and going to college, and more. Every single one of those boys was found guilty without their DNA matching the DNA found at the crime scene and no eyes witness. The city of New York wanted them dead. Donald J Trump a real estate developer at the time spent $85,000 on printing local ads that printed “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE.” This was noticed and applauded by the residents of New York City. Never before have so many people come together to spread mass hysteria in an effort to get teenage boys arrested for a crime they did not commit.

This left the central park five distraught, deep down they knew they did nothing wrong in that park. Part of the problem was the prosecutors in charge of the case. Linda Fairstein was one of the main prosecutors of the central park five case;

played a major role in the Central Park Five case, she was the lead chief prosecutor While she was operating on the Central Park 5 case, she was obsessed with having to prove the boys' guilt no matter what. Thirteen years later, Matias Reyes, who was serving a life sentence for murder, admitted to assaulting Meili. in May 2002, and The DNA found at the scene of the crime matched the semen recovered from the victim at the time. Eventually, Central Park 5 settled a wrongful conviction lawsuit with the City of New York for $41 million.

However, the indisputable and overwhelming evidence of their innocence did not change the mind of Fairstein, who contended that all of the boys found guilty and exonerated in the Central Park 5 case were guilty. She later left the DA's office to become a fiction writer, but her career was cut short when people began to boycott her work due to her involvement in the Central Park Five case. As represented in the Netflix series "when they see us," she allowed the boys to be detained and questioned and coerced into pleading guilty. Fairstein attempted to sue for defamation after the series was published.