Summary Of Central Park Five

For the general majority of current day Americans, the experience of the Central Park Five is seen as a journey of injustice—with the Five now widely regarded as innocent. It all started in 1989, when Central Park jogger, Trisha Meili, was attacked and raped. At the time all eyes were on the boys, whose actions in the park prior to the rape and confessions in the precinct branded them as prime suspects. The victim was left for dead in a ravine, sodomized and beaten to a point where she has lost most of her blood. Then the confession, along with the supporting evidence, of a single man—Matias Reyes—changed the perspective of the boys’ guilt. Even with the exoneration of the five young men, political commentary of the boys’ guilt still persists

While the Central Park Five now refute their own confessions, Coulter stresses that “All those charged with the jogger's rape gave detailed, corroborated, videotaped confessions, after full Miranda warnings, four of the five in the presence of an adult relative” (Coulter). With adults present and videotaping, there was no reason for the boys to give false confessions. These confessions alone are powerful enough to convict the Central Park Five, and during that time the defense had very weak arguments to counter the confessions. In the courtroom, “the showing of the videotape yesterday was regarded as the most damaging blow to the defense in the four weeks of testimony thus far”, and it set the course towards conviction (Sullivan). Any jury listening and watching a youth give such a damning confession would doubt the notion of innocence. During that initial period of the case in 1989 to 1990, many people had similar logic and perception of the five boys as Ann Coulter does now. The confessions must ring true, and appear to be clear as day; without a doubt, the boys are guilty of assaulting and raping the Central Park jogger. That mentality was what convicted the Central Park Five for all those years, and is what Coulter reignites in her