Central Park Jogger Case Study

I’m writing my essay on the Jogger Case and it’s miscarriage of Justice. In 1989 while a woman was jogging in Central Park she was raped and assaulted. Five teenagers was convicted and incarcerated, they served seven years of jail time for the crime. False confessions played a large role in their conviction. The Central Park jogger case set a record for brutality-it was a violent rape in which the victim was also badly beaten. She was hospitalized for a lengthy amount of time. The five teenagers were black, ranging from the ages 14 to 16 years of age, the victim was white. Some say that things began to go wrong right there-that the race factor trumped a search for the truth. All of the boys made statements to the police. However no one admitted to actually having any sexual contact with said victim. Even at the time, it was clear that his modus operandi matched the rape and assault of the jogger, but prosecutors did not follow leads relating to Reyes. No physical evidence linked the five boys to the crime and their confessions were implausible and mutually contradictory, but the boys were still convicted.

In the Central Park jogger case: The boys were told that hairs linked them to the victim’s body, which turned out not to be true. Interrogators are encouraged to falsely tell suspects they believe them to be guilty, and that another suspect or physical evidence has implicated them. Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau’s report supporting reversal of the convictions reveals other troubling aspect of the five suspects’ confessions-besides investigator’s lies that physical evidence linked the boys to the victim’s