I posit that the evidence in the CP5 case renders their guilt of the assault more likely than not.
Read this article and tell me Im wrong. Ive received some pretty harsh reactions to saying this but none by anyone willing to discuss the actual evidence.
What evidence are you referring to? This is a lengthy article and after reading about a third it seems the gist is that someone confessed and the semen found on the victim was his.
Please no.
With all due respect, you’re saying you didn’t read the article but can summarize what it says?
Here’s a key paragraph.
Testimony was what made the case, chiefly the confessions of the young men. Santana, McCray, and Richardson made video statements in the presence of a parent or guardian, and Wise made several statements, on his own, as the law permits. Salaam told the police he was sixteen, and he produced identification to that effect, allowing police to interrogate him without a parent. After his mother arrived, the questioning ended, but his oral admissions were admitted into testimony. In addition to the confessions, one of the other boys, while in the back of a patrol car, cried that he “didn’t do the murder,” but that he knew who did: Antron McCray. The boy beside him, Kevin Richardson, agreed: “Antron did it.” The jogger hadn’t yet been found. Later on, after Raymond Santana had been interrogated about the rape, he was being driven to another precinct. Without prompting, he blurted out, “I had nothing to do with the rape. All I did was feel her tits.”
Giving a video confession with your parents present is not a coerced confession.
Another key piece of evidence:
There was one witness whose statement had not been solicited by the police. Melonie Jackson, the older sister of a friend of Korey Wise, talked to him after he called the house from Rikers Island. When she expressed her dismay about the rape, Wise said that he’d only held the jogger down. Jackson volunteered this information to detectives, just before the trial, in the mistaken belief that it would help Wise. When ordered to take the stand, she wept, but she still swore that the conversation had occurred, just as she’d said. In his authoritative 1992 account of the trials, Unequal Verdicts, Timothy Sullivan relates that the prosecution thought her a “perfect witness,” but the jurors, oddly, chose not to credit her testimony in their deliberations.
One acquaintance of Wise who said that he bragged about the rape before his arrest repeated his story for Armstrong in 2002; another said he didn’t remember what he’d said in 1989. Melonie Jackson, who testified about Wise’s call from Rikers, stuck by her story in 2002.
Her story never changed over 10 years, unlike the claim of coerced confessions.
There is no doubt that the serial rapist Matias Reyes raped her. But his word is pretty meaningless without corroborating evidence. A man who raped and murdered a pregnant women in front of her kids. The most likely scenario is he was looking for someone to rape and saw the riots going on and found easy prey.
They also confessed to the assaults of 4 other joggers in the park.
Please do not respond to the CP5 stuff in this thread. If it’s that important, can we get a mod to excise to a new thread?
I haven’t followed the CP5 case–besides watching When They See Us a few months ago and reading a few articles many years ago–for the same reasons I don’t keep up on Obama’s birth certificate.
That said:
It could be. Having your parents there (after the police had you alone in a room for hours) doesn’t make it automagically not coerced.
That doesn’t mean they deserve to go to jail for a crime they didn’t commit lol.
How much time should they have received for beating someone to nearly within an inch of their life?
I’m not saying there’s a correct answer. Im not saying that “justice” was meted out.
I’m saying this case being constantly used as a referendum of the failure of our justice system is a lie.
“I don’t keep up on Obama’s birth certificate.”
Comparing this to Birtherism seems like a pretty bad analogy. Though I think you are indirectly making my point for me in that ignoring truth in the name of social justice fuels the validity of all propaganda.
Ken Burns is a well respected documentarian who obviously chose to ignore some pretty key facts when he made “The Central Park Five.”
I haven’t seen “When They See Us” but I’ve read through the synopsis and the white washing seems pretty egregious.
popcorn
Just stfu
The comparison wasn’t to the truth/falsity of the claim; it was that it is years in the past and is (mostly) only still an issue today for Trump and Trumpsters. I imagine it’s a very rare person who just happens to really really care about this case decades later who isn’t influenced either by racism or support for Trump’s constant calls for them to receive the death penalty. Maybe you’re one of those rare people who just gets grabbed by a case and stays with it… I don’t know, and I’m not accusing you of racist/trumpist motives.
Did they do it? No idea. At first, when the news was reporting the confessions, etc., I’d probably say “Maybe/probably.” When the news was announcing exculpatory DNA evidence and police shenanigans I’d probably say “maybe not/probably not.”
There is at least a strong appearance of a prosecutorial misconduct of the type we hear about too often, of young black men who get railroaded by the system and lose decades or their entire lives.
You are presenting your argument as if it’s iron-clad, but it’s speculation, and a lot of “they could’ve done it.” You’re holding the prosecution to the lower bar reserved for the defense, then claiming victory.
If they did it, they served time and 4/5ths of them(?) have stayed clean and contributed to society. Even then, the attention this case brought to dodgy prosecutors and police is good. If they’re innocent, then all the better.
What evidence is there other than the false confessions? Like surely you had more than that to make your case?
There was one witness whose statement had not been solicited by the police. Melonie Jackson, the older sister of a friend of Korey Wise, talked to him after he called the house from Rikers Island. When she expressed her dismay about the rape, Wise said that he’d only held the jogger down. Jackson volunteered this information to detectives, just before the trial, in the mistaken belief that it would help Wise. When ordered to take the stand, she wept, but she still swore that the conversation had occurred, just as she’d said. In his authoritative 1992 account of the trials, Unequal Verdicts, Timothy Sullivan relates that the prosecution thought her a “perfect witness,” but the jurors, oddly, chose not to credit her testimony in their deliberations.
That’s weak as fuck. What else ya got?
Show me the evidence of this? This honestly sounds like an opinion formed by watching the Netflix series. That series has some undeniable misrepresentations. There’s a site called historyvshollywood that has a pretty good breakdown on “When They See Us.”
I can assure you it is very uncomfortable to make these posts. I enjoy and respect this community.
I was temp banned for making these claims when I first joined. I had read the Daily Beast article but didnt remember my source initially and was called out and rightfully so. Ive just seen this case mentioned probably a dozen times since then on here in various ways and just felt like people hadn’t really considered the evidence.
Im not meaning to present my case as iron clad. I’m saying everyone else sees it that way. I just don’t think racism is in play in this case no matter how many times it has happened before.
If you think thats “weak as fuck” then we are not going to agree on much. Please give me one reason that she would make that up.
This statement is also misleading as it’s been a pretty relevant topic of discussion during the Trump era for obvious reasons. Ive used it an attempt to convince deplorables of Trump’s racism.
I don’t remember nearly enough about the case to do this, but at the very least, it seems separating the kids and grilling them privately, and not letting them see their parents when both kids and parents were requesting it, is enough to invalidate the confessions. If this was a group of five white kids from Staten Island they’d be home the next day and nobody would be thinking about it.
Apart from that, what do they have? DNA evidence that points to someone else, and another person’s confession? Melonie’s testimony of a jailhouse phone call that the jury found unconvincing?
I’ll give you zero reasons why she made it up because that isn’t the weak part. The weak part is that a 16-year-old kid who was harassed by police and doesn’t seem to be all there thought he was exonerating himself. Falsely confessing to a lesser crime because the confesser thinks it will lead to leniency or exoneration is False Confession 101. Melonie Jackson apparently thought so as well! It’s right there in the part you quoted:
Melonie Jackson, the older sister of a friend of Korey Wise, talked to him after he called the house from Rikers Island. When she expressed her dismay about the rape, Wise said that he’d only held the jogger down. Jackson volunteered this information to detectives, just before the trial, in the mistaken belief that it would help Wise.
What else? The victim lost 75% of the blood in her body–nearly a gallon of blood. Surely there would have been blood everywhere. Show me the blood. I’ll even take hair, saliva, bite marks, foot prints, any kind of physical evidence placing them there. Anything at all.
History versus Hollywood? Ok. Thank god for the ability to mute threads.