Oh yeah, this shit does happen. And not just in the South, pre-1970, under separate-but-equal law. Atticus Finch would have a field day with The Central Park Five, a group of black & Hispanic kids wrongly convicted of a gang rape in Manhattan in April of 1989. All five of the teens served at least seven-year sentences.
The tragedy of The Central Park Five is not necessarily the miscarriage of justice. We know that happens. The true tragedy is that this particular miscarriage was so vehemently executed with such little investigation or common sense that you’ll be left convinced that injustice is a norm. Now, we should preface a few conclusions here – the justice system in general hasn’t been anxious to convict. Within just a few years of this outcome, the Rodney King pummelers would go scot-free, as would OJ. This is not the golden era of the 
American judiciary. But this particular cluster-rape of injustice sticks out and I’m glad Ken Burns brought it to the attention of the world.
The facts are these – on a school night in April of 1989, a lone woman jogger was savagely beaten and raped in Central Park. Meanwhile, not far away, a group of 25+ ethnic youths were troublemaking in the park. When the woman was discovered, police canvassed and collected several of the spirited youngsters. Under intense coercion, the kids were browbeaten into confession. None of the boys admitted more than relatively passive involvement, but all said they participated as minor onlookers, pointing fingers at others (whom they may or may not have known) in promise that they would get to go home after an intense day of interrogation. The taped confessions became the lynchpin for the prosecution and essentially the only evidence in the case. Nothing about the rape suggested the kids had anything to do with it; nothing about the crime scene suggested a gang and the DNA evidence didn’t match any of the convicted.
The venue here is key — Manahattan may well have been a cess-pool of crime-ridden filth, but for some reason, even the most vile of inhabitants believe that Central Park is off-limits. I’m guessing you have to be there to understand. The kids were tried in the press and convicted long before any real facts came to light.
This entire case became, “well, we may not have gotten THE main rapist, but we got some rapists.” Oh, bless you, justice. By the way, there was a serial rapist on the loose in Manhattan at the time, but nobody connected the dots. That’s some good policin’, Lou. The Central Park Five is told mostly through the eyes of the adults these kids became while in jail. They are decidedly calm about their fates. It’s been years, but still, I’d be pissed off. It’s a credit to the men they have become. This movie is about their stories and the power of the mob mentality. This wasn’t the Jim Crow South, so why? Why was NYC in such a frenzy to convict? We’d love to think this doesn’t happen or certainly can’t happen again, but of course it can. Pull off a stunt ugly enough to incense the American public and you can get us to invade a random country. Five boys? Five black/Hispanic boys? Easily discarded lives.
Mob mentality rules New York City
A quick conviction is the only deemed pretty
Every Little Thing is no hit for these Police
The tune instead: No justice, no peace
Rated NR, 119 Minutes
D: Ken Burns, Sarah Burns & David McMahon
W: Ken Burns, Sarah Burns & David McMahon
Genre: Diatribe
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: ACLU
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Jim Crow sheriffs
