Jun 18, 2019 · Following a lengthy investigation into the convictions, then-Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau recommended in December 2002 that all charges against the Central Park Five be thrown out.
May 31, 2019 · Ava DuVernay's limited series When They See Us revisits the case of the Central Park Five: five teenagers who were arrested and convicted of a brutal crime they did not commit.In 1989, a white ...
May 25, 2019 · In 2002, District Attorney Robert Morgenthau withdrew all charges against the Central Park Five, and their convictions were vacated. Wise, who was still in prison at the time, was released early.
Oct 21, 2002 · The Central Park Five. When Trisha Meili’s body was discovered in New York City’s Central Park early in the morning on April 20, 1989, she …
Following their clear exoneration, the Central Park Five filed a civil lawsuit against the City of New York for, among other things, malicious and wrongful prosecution. For more than a decade, the New York officials refused to settle the claim.
In the immediate aftermath of the crime, officers from the New York City Police Department (NYPD) put the focus on six African American and Hispanic American teenagers: Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise.
In the Spring of 1989, Trisha Meili, a 28-year-old woman, was jogging in a secluded area of the park. Around 9:30 PM, she was assaulted and raped — suffering severe injuries that left her comatose for nearly two weeks.
Despite maintaining their innocence, the Central Park Five’s contention that their confessions were coerced didn’t gain credibility until June 2002, when Matias Reyes claimed sole responsibility for raping and beating Meili. Reyes, a convicted murderer and serial rapist, was serving a minimum 33-year prison sentence when he confessed to the crime.
The Central Park Five are Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam and Kharey Wise, who later changed his first name to Korey. At the time of their arrests, they were between the ages of 14 and 16 years old. While all five had initially confessed to participating in the Central Park attacks (confessions from Wise, McCray, ...
While Meili fought for her life at Metropolitan Hospital in Manhattan, police charged seven teenagers in connection with the crimes. Meili, who was commonly referred to as the “Central Park jogger,” has said she does not remember the attack.
Just days after the attack, the billionaire entrepreneur took out full-page ads in four major New York City newspapers that said, “bring back the death penalty, bring back our police!” The ad went on to make a case for the reinstatement of the death penalty so that the Central Park Five could be executed for their alleged crimes.
Reyes, a convicted murderer and serial rapist, was serving a minimum 33-year prison sentence when he confessed to the crime. His DNA matched genetic material found at the crime scene and he provided details of the assault that led investigators to take his claim seriously.
Richardson was convicted of attempted murder, rape, sodomy, assault and robbery in connection those same attacks. Wise was convicted of sexual abuse and assault in connection with Meili’s attack, but was acquitted of all counts related to the other two joggers.
Richardson also was sentenced to 5 to 10 years in a juvenile facility. Wise, the only teen tried as an adult, was sentenced to 5 to 15 years in prison. The Central Park Five served between 5 and 12 years but all of them had been released before their convictions were vacated in 2002.
Then in the second trial, Howard Diller was Richardson's defense attorney and Colin Moore was Wise's. In 2002, when Matias Reyes confessed to attacking the jogger, there was a defensive motion to set aside the previous convictions.
Diller and Moore differed greatly on approach, which fractured the team; Moore wanted to aggressively cross-examine the victim (which he did go on to do), though Diller disagreed. Per a 1990 New York Times article, Diller threatened to move for a mistrial if Moore grilled the woman on the stand.
Ava DuVernay's limited series When They See Us revisits the case of the Central Park Five: five teenagers who were arrested and convicted of a brutal crime they did not commit. In 1989, a white woman jogging in Central Park was attacked, raped, beaten, and left for dead. Five boys of color were arrested for the crime, though there was no evidence (and only coerced confessions) linking them to it. The lawyers who defended the Central Park Five weren't able to prevent them from being convicted, and they spent years behind bars before they were cleared.
When Bill de Blasio became mayor, the city finally settled with the Central Park Five in 2014. Most of the defendants received $7 million apiece. Wise received $13 million. The city of New York, however, stuck by its police and prosecutors, not admitting to any wrongdoing by either.
A total of 10 people were charged and either convicted or pleaded guilty to various crimes in the park. Richardson, Salaam, Santana, Wise and McCray eventually became known as "the Central Park Five.". Each teenager, except for Salaam, either implicated himself or one of the others, on video, in the attack on Meili.
In court, Minton said, the jurors were "riveted" as they watched the tapes of the teenagers' interrogations. "The looks on the jurors' faces when they watched those videotapes told a devastating story for the defense. You could see it. The jurors were engaged," he said. "They nodded their heads in some cases.
By April 20, 1989, of the approximately 50 teenagers questioned in the Central Park attacks, Richardson, Salaam, Santana, McCray and Wise were in police custody and being questioned in the Meili case.
Watch the full story on "20/20" Friday, May 24, at 9 p.m. ET on ABC. Patricia and Gerry Malone were making their way through the park on a high-speed tandem bike when they encountered the group. "We saw this whole line of kids," Patricia Malone recalled.
On the night of April 19, 1989, police were scrambling to respond to calls about 30 to 40 teens who were harassing people in the park. "Basically we took over that whole park, just walked down the street and beat people up," said Tony Montalvo, who said he was in the group that night.
Trisha Meili known as The Central Park Jogger is seen here in this April 8, 2009 file photo. Eric Reynolds, a former New York City detective who was on duty in the park that night, called the night "chaotic" with all the 911 calls.
When the five former teens convicted in the case were finally exonerated, many community leaders decried the miscarriage of justice that sent the Central Park Five to prison. The case became a flashpoint for illustrating racial disparities in sentencing and the inequities at the heart of the criminal justice system.
pinterest-pin-it. (L-R) Antron McCray, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, and Korey Wise , all of whom served prison sentences after being wrongly convicted in the Central Park jogger case, pictured in New York in 2012. Michael Nagle/The New York Times/Redux.
An April 21, 1989 story in the New York Daily News reported that on the night of the crime, a 30-person gang, or so-called “wolf pack” of teens launched a series of attacks nearby, including assaults on a man carrying groceries, a couple on a tandem bike, another male jogger and a taxi driver.
Richardson and Santana, both part of the alleged “wolf pack,” were arrested for “unlawful assembly” on April 19, before police learned of the jogger’s attack. They were detained for hours before their parents were eventually called.
According to New York magazine, police told reporters the teens used the word “wilding” in describing their acts and “that while in a holding cell the suspects had laughed and sung the rap hit ‘Wild Thing.’”.
City officials fought the case for more than a decade, before finally settling for $41 million dollars. According to The New York Times, the payout equaled about $1 million for each year of imprisonment, with four men serving about seven years and Wise serving about 13.
With the attack occurring during a particularly violent era in New York City —1,896 homicides, a record at the time, took place a year earlier in 1988—police officers were quick to find somewhere to point the blame.
Wise was the only one of the group that went to adult prisons having been arrested at 16. Ironically, Galligan was also the trial judge in the murder and rape case of Reyes, whose admission overturned the conviction of the Central Park Five.
She assigned Elizabeth Lederer to the Central Park Jogger case almost immediately (replacing assistant district attorney Nancy Ryan ) and assembled a team determined to respond to a fear-based citywide demand to get a handle on youth crime.
She was the victim of a particularly brutal rape, beaten to the point of permanent brain damage, her skull fractured, her eye socket crushed, and left to die by a shallow, muddy ravine in the park.
Trisha Meili, then a 28-year-old white female investment banker went jogging in Central Park. She couldn’t have known that as many as 35 teenagers were also in the park that night participating in what was labeled as “wilding,” or randomly attacking unsuspecting people.
Back in 1989, the Big Apple was an open, bubbly pot of hell …. April 19, 1989 was the height of the crack epidemic and the city was a hotbed of violence. In the first half of the year, 837 murders were reported, as were 1,600 rapes, more than 43,000 robberies and 34,000 assaults, according to The New York Times.
Clements left the Manhattan D.A.’s office in 1991 and hasn’t been able to speak about the Central Park Five because he was advised not to as their civil suit moved forward. The outcome of which was a $41 million settlement with New York City, which he vehemently disagrees with.
Director Ava DuVernay center with the central park 5 Raymond Santana left, Kevin Richardson, Korey Wise, Anthony McCray and Yuesf Salaam attend the world premiere of “When They See Us” at the Apollo Theater on Monday, May 20, 2019, in New York.
It took more than a decade and the election of a new mayor (Bill de Blasio), but New York finally finally settled the lawsuit for $41 million. And as the man who had wrongfully served the most time in prison, Korey received the largest portion of the settlement: $12.2 million.
Eventually, Korey met murderer and serial rapist Matias Reyes in prison, and Matias confessed to be to being the actual, lone perpetrator of the Central Park Jogger rape. A DNA test (along with Matias's knowledge of the details of the crime) confirmed his guilt, and in 2002, Korey was released from prison. By that time, he had served 12 years.
In 2015, he donated $190,000 to the University of Colorado's chapter of the Innocence Project, which then changed its name to the Korey Wise Innocence Project at Colorado Law in his honor. To this day, Korey's friend Yusef says he still feels "pain" for unintentionally bringing Korey into the Central Park Jogger case — and the release ...
As viewers have watched the four-episode series , however, one character's story has struck them as especially heartbreaking — and that's the story of Korey Wise.
As seen in the Netflix miniseries When They See Us, Korey was tried and sentenced as an adult in the Central Park Jogger case. Jharrel Jerome, the actor who played Korey in When They See Us, is now nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie. Every last part of watching Netflix miniseries When They See Us is ...
Where Korey Wise is today. Korey Wise attends the premiere of Netflix miniseries When They See Us in New York City. Today, Korey still lives in New York City, where he works as a public speaker and criminal justice activist.
Actor Jharrel Jerome plays Korey Wise in the Netflix miniseries When They See Us. Netflix. The teenager was initially sent to Rikers Island, the infamous New York City jail. And as is shown in the fourth and final episode of When They See Us, it was a rough time for him: Just a kid thrust into a group of adult criminals, ...
To this day, the supervising prosecutor of the Central Park Five case, Linda Fairstein, maintains that the interrogation and trial methods used under her watch in the Central Park Jogger case were fair and lawful.
DNA evidence and Matias's knowledge of details of the Central Park Jogger rape ultimately confirmed his guilt, and the Manhattan District Attorney at the time, Robert Morgenthau, had Korey released from prison and the Central Park Five vacated of all charges.
It didn't take long for police to connect Matias to a series of other crimes in the area, and under interrogation, he confessed to one murder, five rapes, and two attempted rapes. He went to trial not long thereafter, where he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 33 years to life in prison.
Matias was only a teenager when his brutal crime spree began. In 1988, when he was just 17, he committed his first attempted rape, holding a 27-year-old woman at knife-point as he threatened to assault her. This woman was able to talk Matias out of raping her, and she walked away unharmed.
Growing up. According to his 1991 interview with psychologist N. G. Berrill, Matias Reyes was born in Puerto Rico in 1971. He claimed he moved to New York with his mother before they ultimately went their separate ways when Matias was 15 or 16 years old.
The first four boys were sentenced to five to 10 years in a youth correctional facility, and the fifth boy (16-year-old Korey) was five to 15 years in an adult prison.
Ever since the May 31 release of Netflix's wildly popular miniseries When They See Us, the real-life story of the so-called "Central Park Five" has shot back into the spotlight. But the wrongful conviction of these five black and Latino men (Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise ), ...