Central Park crime and fight for justice
Central Park case is one of the most broadcasted crimes that happened four decades ago in the United States. It is a violent incident that occurred on the night of 19th April 1989, where thirty teenagers were involved in the assault and rape of a woman, Trisha Meili. The crime found other more eight attack victims on a fateful night at Central Park. The victims were black-skinned, and Meili was a white woman of 28years-old. It is believed that a group of 30-32 adolescents came from the Eastern side of Harlem and moved to Central Park at Manhattan’s. This group caused a number of assaults, muggings, and thefts against pedestrians, motorcyclists, and joggers on the upper side of the park. Many victims reported the matter to the authorities, and it raised concern in the whole city.
Being a serious crime as it was, the authorities started to pursue the suspects a few minutes from the time of the incident. On the ground in the corner of the park was a heartlessly beaten Meili who spent hours on the ground until past midnight when the police rescued her. Meili narrates that she used to perform consistent joggings at Central Park, and the day of the assault and rape was her worst of all. The traumatic animosity happened when he was banged down by an unknown man who later dragged her for almost 100 meters away from the road. Her experience with the suspect is that of a murderer. She was stripped, raped, and beaten to appoint of death. By this time, the police had commenced a thorough investigation and tracing the culprits in pursuit of justice. In less than a week, fifteen suspects were under police custody, and later faced the charges of robbery, sexual abuse, unrest, attempt murder, and assault.
Four Black-Americans and two Hispanic Americans underage who was arrested and charged with these crimes against Meili and John Loughlin. Two years after the crime, they pleaded guilty in a court of law and were reprimanded with lenient charges of shorter sentences. The trials of the other five suspects who were charged with rape and attack were grounded on a confession which the defendants made during police investigations. However, since they made the above confessions without the guidance of lawyers, they later pulled out and pleaded not guilty to the charges. Lucky enough for the defendants, none of the police evidence could convict them since both the DNA and semen samples collected at the scene of crime never matched with any of the victims. Due to this, the Central Park Five, as they were referred, were imprisoned between 5-15 years.
Although only one who never appealed the verdicts, the four lost the case once again in the petitioner court. Each of the four adolescents was sentenced to serve 6-7 years while the adult was imprisoned for13 years. The five other suspects, arraigned in court for attacks of other fatalities, accepted the charges and received shorter sentences.
As time progressed, 12 years since the day of the crime, A serial rapist Matias admitted to the police that he was responsible for the rape of Trisha Meili. True to his words, the convicted murderers’ DNA matched the police sample collected in 1989 at the scene of the crime. He gave other information as evidence that surely he was the long-time searched man. Nevertheless, Reyes was never convicted for rape because the law puts a limitation for conviction duration, and it had already passed. A year later, 2002, all the other five convicted suspects were freed, and their charges were introverted by the government under the intervention of a New York governor Robert Morgenthau.
The case would later become more dramatic of not complicated when the five were advised to sue the city for what they called illegal abduction, emotional torture, ethnic discrimination, and imprisonment. In 2003, the city declined to resolve the suits for over ten years since its attorneys believed the men had no chances of winning against the government. Conversely, after a shift of leadership, the city sort to resolve the matter in 2014 with the petitioners receiving over for $40 million. The suspects further sued the State of New York for more damages; the men won the case and received bountiful cash of $4.0 million in 2016.
The fate of Trisha Meili and other victims
After the traumatic cruelty in the hands of a heartless rapist, Meili suffered abnormal low blood temperatures, a condition that affects the heart, nervous system and other organs altering their ability to function. She further experienced brain damage, loss of blood, and more than 20 fractures in her entire body. Indeed, the police officer who found her off the road was right when she reported that she had never seen a person beaten the way Meili was. The doctor predicted that she would succumb to death because of the massive loss of blood and internal damages or stay in a coma for the rest of her life. For this reason, the attack was treated more of attempt murder than rape.
After frequent treatments, Meili became conscious after two weeks, and a week more later, she was receiving treatment at Metropolitan Hospital. It is at this point she could not read, walk, or talk. She had lost more blood and some senses. In June 1989, Meili was moved to Gaylord Hospital, an acute care facility where she stayed for six months in rehabilitation.
Meili returned to work in January 1990, where she had largely recuperated, with lasting disabilities associated with stability and loss of sight. Due to this trauma, Meili had lost memory of the severe attack at Central Park. She could hardly remember what happened a few minutes before she was knocked down.
Another man who was riding a bike was Michael Vigna, one of the teenagers tried to punch him, but he escaped.
Antonio Diaz was hit to the ground as he walked along the pavements in the park. The teenagers run away with his foodstuff and beer. He was beaten and left knocked out until a police officer rescued him.
Gerald Malone,, who was carrying Patricia on a bike, was chased by the group of unruly teenagers, but they afforded to run away. They rushed to a phone booth and called to inform the patrol officers.
Other members who were attacked by the group and reported the matter to the police station are David Lewis, Robert Garner, David Good, and John Loughlin. Most of the victims were white and a few of blacks
Arrest and detentions of the teenagers.
The police force was sent out immediately when the news of the attack broke out. Most of the victims called triggering the officers to respond as quickly as possible. They appeared driving unmarked vehicles and motorcycles and managed to find the gang of teenagers on the act. By 10.pm, the officers had arrested twenty youths. Most of them were on the Northern side of Central Park while others walked along the western part of the 102nd lane. Most of these youths who were 14years old were questioned for the attacks.
After the news of the condition of Meili broke to the police at past midnight, the officers intensified their search and managed to apprehend more suspects. Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam, and Korey Wise were arrested in connection to the rape and assault of Meili. The police officers had managed to interrogate tens of teenagers concerning the attack and rape of the sprinter. A 14year old Clarence Thomas was mentioned as one of the suspects for the rape but after interrogation and reexamination, he was freed from any involvement to the attacks. Furthermore, many suspects were arrested and detained in police custody for questioning.
The teenagers who were later referred to as the Central Park 5 were each grilled thoroughly for more than six hours in a video recorded tape which would later be used by detectives as evidence. The video recorded concessions were to be done by all the suspected youths some of them confessed in the presence of their parents while those who were above 16years declined to be in the company of their parents or guardians. For instance, Salaam argued that he was 16 years old, and he could only make the confession in the absence of parents or guardians. Nevertheless, attempts by his mother to get her a lawyer hit a hard object when furious Salaam decided not to sign the formerly written declaration or speak on a video camera.
The police officers are believed to have played a mind game to Salaam, hence driving him to make confessions that he was at the scene of rape. Frequently, the officers would beat up another suspect, Korey wise who was locked in a nearby cell with Salaam, and threaten him that he was the next. The fear of such a beating led him to make false verbal confessions to the police, just for his safety.
Collected police evidence and pretrial hearings
Four suspects had admitted to the officers about their presence or participation in the attacks at the central park. They confessed to have attacked John Loughlin, eaten him up, and took away his beer and some foodstuff. The unsigned document Salaam had recorded matched with the confessions of other suspects. However, the fact that he did not sign the documents led to a question of whether any court would accept such as evidence. What was common about the confessions is that they knew nothing about the rape on the female sprinter. The police had to determine whether there was another suspect away from the group of teenagers or the two crimes were interconnected.
The inconsistency in confession on the place of rape, the number of rapists and those involved in raping the jogger was completely dissimilar and none of them knew where it happened, nor confessed to have raped the woman. Though Salaam admitted to have hit the jogger with a pipe on her back, the admission is viewed as been made out of fear and not fact. Besides Salaam, all the other four teenagers had recorded confessions in the presence of their guardians or parents. Ironically, all of them retracted the declarations citing intimidation and threats from the detectives. The suspects are believed to have been compelled to admit their involvement in the assaults hours before they could sit in front of a videotape.
Pretrial hearings were presided by supreme court Judge Thomas Galligan from Manhattan. When listening to the trials of Salaams, Judge Galligan decided to use the unsigned confession of Salaam. Explaining his decision to use an unsigned report, the supreme court judge says that Salaam was not truthful since he had lied on information about his age and used illegal identifications. Unlucky enough, the four other suspects connected that Salaam was involved in the rape, adding weight on the information that he is not only telling lies but also the evidence shows that he was a suspect for the rape. Medical analysis distanced the suspects with the DNA found at the scene of crime since it never matched with any of the victims.
Trials sentencing and appeals
The trials of the six suspects were heard in two different groups. This would allow the classification of the evidence obtained by the police from different sources. From the evidence of five suspects, Lopez denied his involvement or appearance in the venue of the attack in her recorded video confession. However, the other suspects confessed against him, thus being treated as a possible attacker of the female jogger. Furthermore, like other suspects, Lopez was charged for crimes linked to the violence and stealing from Loughlin.
After all the evidence was submitted by both the defendants and the state, the judge slapped all the suspects with 5-15 years each. The teenagers had been held in juvenile custody since the pretrial hearings. Both Salaam and Raymond were sentenced for 6years and 8 months. Raymond had been released on parole but later dishonored it and was sentenced up to 7 years after being apprehended with illegal drugs.
Kelvin Richardson was jailed for 7years and later freed on bail. McCray was jailed for 5-10 years but later released on bond after 6years.
Korey was jailed 6-15 years charged for sexual assault, demonstration and violence. Having served for 13years and 8 months in different prisons, he met Reyes, who would later plead to have rapped and thoroughly harmed the female jogger, Meili. Due to his confession, and the matching of his DNA with that found at the crime scene, Korey was freed in 2002.
In conclusion, the attack, rape, assaults and violence at Central part remains to be a misery. From violence towards innocent joggers, pedestrians and motorist, to the beating and stealing and worse, more the rape of Meili. Later on, the use of wrongly acquired evidence before the court and the suspects withdrawing their statement looks dramatic, but the consequences are severe and real. The positioning and planning of the attack seem to have had a costly coincidence with the rape of Meili; thus a group of teenagers facing the hand of the law more than they could have imagined.