Watched the PBS documentary “The Central Park Five” (2012), created by Ken Burns, his daughter Sarah and his son-in-law David McMahon.
It covers all aspects of the Central Park jogger case (1989), the story of Trisha Meili, a 28-year investment banker who got raped in Central Park.
When her body was discovered 4 hours later, she was naked, gagged, tied up, covered in blood and on the verge of death.
She came out of her coma 12 days later with amnesia because of the incurred brain damage and spent six months in an acute care center where she learned to talk, read and walk again.
The detectives quickly rounded up five underage youths (four black boys and one Hispanic kid) who were just horsing around in Central Park.
They got convicted on the sole basis of confessions made under duress after long hours of questioning.
Small problem: they hadn’t been in that corner of the park nor had they seen the jogger.
It took seven years until the real culprit, serial rapist-murderer Matias Reyes, was found by chance.
This cockup happened because no involved party - police, D.A., journalists etc. - bothered to do their job properly. A defence lawyer who knew perfectly well the boys were innocent fell asleep in his chair in the courtroom!
And believe it or not, but a Manhattanite called Donald Trump got involved: he took out a full-page ad in the newspaper under the title “Bring Back the Death Penalty”.
And he still wanted to see the five men on the chair during the presidential campaign of 2016, even though their innocence was proven conclusively with, amongst others, the firmest DNA evidence.
