In April 1989, five teenage boys from New York City found themselves embroiled in one of the most controversial cases of the decade. They became recognized as the Central Park Five after they were accused of raping and nearly beating to death a fleeing woman, later identified as Tricia Maili, a 28-year-old banker. Although all of the boys confessed to having participated in the rape of Maili, they later said that these confessions were coerced by police and made during intense interrogations. All five guys were convicted in the case and sentenced to between five and 15 years in prison (Rogers, 2018). Although, more than a decade later, they were all released from their sentences in 2002 after convicted rapist and murderer Mathias Reyes confessed to beating and raping Maili that night. By then, the Central Park Five had served six to 13 years in prison.
New York was extremely dangerous than it is today. Relationships between the races were strained, especially for the police. Meanwhile, Donald Trump (then a real estate mogul in New York) was convinced that the boys were guilty of rape. He spent $ 85,000 (now about $ 138,000) on four full-page ads in New York newspapers entitled ‘Return the Death Penalty, Return Our Police!’ From the beginning, the influence of the media in the case of the ‘Five of Central Park’ is obvious (Rios, 2020). Before the teenagers were even transferred to court, the media had already portrayed them as criminals and essentially found boys guilty of the crime. The way papers and television reported the case and talked about the guys clearly intended to make people believe that the five teenage boys were guilty. They used words like savages and pack of wolves to create a bad image before they could justify themselves.
In 2003, all five sued New York City authorities for $250 million in moral damages. They accused the NYPD and prosecutors of unlawful detention, malicious prosecution, and racial discrimination. The final amount of compensation was $41 million, and although it is one of the largest payouts in U.S. history, the years spent in prison are irretrievable (Rogers, 2018). It is good that the real culprit is found and punished, but the fates of these five people might have turned out differently if not for the false accusations.
References
Rogers, E. B. (2018). Saving Central Park: A History and a Memoir. Knopf.
Rios, S. B. (2020). Rebalancing the extra-judicial scales: Documentary aesthetics and the legacy of the Central Park Five. Synthesis: an Anglophone Journal of Comparative Literary Studies, 13, 70-92.