The Central Park Five Quotes

“If DNA databanks, which can now be used to search for a DNA match across samples statewide and even nationally, had been available in 1989, Reyes might have been connected almost automatically to the Central Park Jogger rape. But even without this type of system, the myriad holes in the detectives' theory of the case and the evidence linking Reyes to the rape in Central Park should have been enough for them to make that connection on their own. Yet none did.”
― Sarah Burns, The Central Park Five: A Chronicle of a City Wilding

“Yet the rape of the Central Park Jogger was by no means an isolated incident. Twenty-eight other first-degree rapes or attempted rapes were reported in New York City in that same week, and none got anywhere near the attention that this one did. Eight of the victims were under sixteen. One was an eight year-old girl. The victims of those other rapes were overwhelmingly from minority communities, twenty-four of them being black or Latina women. Two were Asian. Trisha Meili was one of three white women raped that week. Two of the other rapes that week also took place in Central Park, and a rape two weeks later proved that an equally violent and horrific crime could go relatively unnoticed. On May 2, 1989, a thirty-eight-year-old African-American woman was accosted on the street in her Brooklyn neighborhood. She was forced up to a rooftop by at least two young men, who raped her and then threw her over the edge of the roof. She fell fifty feet into an air shaft, breaking both her ankles and sustaining numerous other grave injuries, but incredibly, she survived. Her attackers were also African-American. A few small articles appeared in the mainstream press detailing this attack and others, but their number paled in comparison to the coverage of the Central Park Jogger case.”
― Sarah Burns, The Central Park Five: A Chronicle of a City Wilding

“In the Central Park case, the teenagers were in custody for many hours, often without being offered food or the chance to sleep. Korey gave four different statements in four separate sessions, the last one ending more than seventeen hours after he was arrested. Elizabeth Lederer recorded Raymond's videotaped statement twenty-seven and a half hours after he first arrived at the precinct. The young men were often without their parents, though four of them were juveniles and Korey Wise, at sixteen, was hardly capable of protecting his own best interests in the interrogation room. Young people are especially susceptible to the pressures that can lead to false confessions. One study found that one-third of those who gave false confessions were juveniles, and half were under the age of twenty-five.”
― Sarah Burns, The Central Park Five: A Chronicle of a City Wilding

“Most of these techniques, including lying to a suspect about evidence against him or others who have implicated him, are perfectly legal and accepted. In fact, detectives are specifically trained in these methods, and there are few rules limiting what they can do in interrogations. In 1936, the Supreme Court decided in Brown v. Mississippi that evidence obtained through physical torture, in this case being hung from trees and whipped, was not admissible in a trial. In 1940, the Supreme Court overturned the convictions of three men in Chambers v. Florida because they had been held for nearly a week and subjected to continuous and intimidating interrogations in the presence of up to ten police officers at once before confessing. The court found that these extreme conditions, though not physical torture, still constituted circumstances that invalidated those confessions. Despite that second ruling, there is still no absolute definition of when this type of psychological pressure crosses the line and constitutes coercion or, worse, torture.”
― Sarah Burns, The Central Park Five: A Chronicle of a City Wilding