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Central Park Five Case Study

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Central Park spreads across 843 acres in the heart of New York. It is a calming place where people take their families for a relaxing day, walk their dogs, and exercise by running or walking through. This is a place known for its relaxing views and a place where you would believe a lack of violence to be. This all changed with the Central Park Five case. The Central Park Five case took place in 1989, this case was when five teenage males, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Yusef Salaam, and Korey Wise, were charged with the rape and assault of Trisha Meili. These five boys were all present in Central Park the night of Meili’s assault and that night, April 19th 1989, they were taken to the central park precinct. They were questioned for over twenty-four hours and forced to give a false confession. They were proven innocent thirteen years later when Reyes admitted to the crime and was proven guilty. All of the boys spent at least seven years in prison for this crime they did not even …show more content…

He shows how he feels about the whole case and how the boys were falsely accused. He focused on how the boys’ “innocence never go the attention that their guilt did” (Wilder). These boys were guilty from the very beginning until proven innocent thirteen years after the crime was committed. Usually it’s the other way around and a person is innocent until proven guilty. The public was so caught up in the prejudice of the case and just assumed since there was a high crime rate in black and Hispanic boys that they had to have done it. They just wanted justice for the jogger but they never thought of the people on the other side of this case because there was a chance that they could have been guilty. Wilder stated that “these were five kids who we tormented, we falsely accused, we pilloried in the press, we attacked, we invented phrases for the imagined crimes that we’re accusing them of”

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‘The Central Park Five’ documentary details the events that led up to the arrest, conviction, and exoneration of five teenage boys: Raymond Santana, Korey Wise, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, and Yusef Salaam. On April 19, 1989 Trisha Meili a 28 year old investment banker was out for a jog when she was sexually assaulted, beaten, and left clinging for her life. A short time there after the assault was said to have been done by the 5 teenage boys ranging in ages from 13 to 16.The night of the crime the boys were out misbehaving, with a larger group of boys. The court found them guilty of rape, assault, and robberies in 1990. During the late 1980’s, New York City was plagued with violence and the ever increasing issues with racism and classism,

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Throughout The Central Park Five documentary, I enjoyed diving into the personal lives of the five wrongfully convicted victims and witnessing their sides to the story. Unfortunately, during their case, their “guilt” received far more coverage and attention than their innocence ever did (Burns, Burns, & McMahon, 2012). Therefore, this documentary humanized these children and let the viewers see them as normal kids, as opposed to the “bad kids” that the media said “attacked for fun” and were a part of a “teen wolf pack” (Burns, Burns, & McMahon, 2012). I appreciated the film’s attribution to history aspect of New York City; the footage of a city consumed by crime and racial tension, in the midst of the AIDS outbreak and the savage crack wars (Burns, Burns, & McMahon, 2012). While this film was playing, the strategically directed storyline allowed me to feel as if I was there during this case and as if I knew the victims personally.

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Because most human eyes do not see equal there was slim chance that justice could be served. To change the mind of the courtroom he had to get into the minds of the people within it. Knowing a few key things about the movie will better explain the situation in the courtroom. The time period of the story is based off of the early 1980’s in the South. The father and daughter are African American and the killers are white men.

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When Mayella, and Bob Ewell, lie to the jury, they do it to make themselves look good. They went out of their way to make an official case about the scenario. Therefore it put Tom Robinson’s own life on trial for something he did not commit. Bob, got to do The only reason Mayella, and what they did, was because of the racial discrimination during that time. Everything that took place in the courtroom shows the loss of childhood innocence and extreme racial prejudice.

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The jury deliberated for a long time because some of the members were hesitant to convict Tom Robinson. However, they eventually found him guilty because of the racial prejudices that existed in the town. But in the end, the jury found Tom Robinson guilty because they were influenced by their racial prejudices and because they believed the testimony of the white accusers over that of the black defendant. Nothing mattered at the end because they were not able to see past the color of Tom Robinson's

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He did this by making the jury think resulting in the jury taking “ So long” on Tom’s case decision (Lee 276). Both raised awareness by trying to explain why people should have given blacks a chance and that it could result in “A shadow of a beginning” or something even bigger (Lee

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