------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Dec. 19, 2002 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
FALSE CONFESSIONS AND A BILLIONAIRE'S CALL FOR VENGEANCE: HOW CENTRAL PARK YOUTH WERE RAILROADED By Monica Moorehead New York On Dec. 5, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau asked a judge to throw out the convictions of five young men in the 1989 Central Park jogger case, which had made national and international headlines. Since the original trial, defense attorneys and family members have maintained that the young men were innocent. This announcement comes several months after Matias Reyes confessed to the beating and rape of the young white woman while she was jogging in Central Park on April 19, 1989. DNA testing and other physical evidence have corroborated the Reyes confession. Reyes, who was sexually assaulted as a youth, has also confessed to the rape of other women as well as the murder of a pregnant woman. He is currently incarcerated. The Black and Latino youths convicted of the crime--Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana and Kharey Wise--were between the ages of 14 and 16 when they were arrested and charged as juvenile offenders. They all served their sentences in full, ranging from seven- and-a-half to 13-and-a-half years. None received parole--because they dared to maintain their innocence. Before the youths were ever formally charged with assaulting the jogger, they were tried and convicted in the media. They were described in demeaning, racist terms as a "wolf pack," "animals," "savages on a wilding" and much more. While they were working-class youths of color, the assaulted woman happened to be an investment banker. Ten days after their arrest, on May 1, 1989, billionaire real-estate developer Donald Trump paid $85,000 for inflammatory full-page ads that ran in Newsday, the Daily News, the Post and the New York Times. The ads were headed: "Bring back the death penalty. Bring back our police." They attacked the teenagers as "wild criminals" and concluded, "We must cease our continuous pandering to the criminal population." Four of the youths were convicted on their videotaped "confessions" and the fifth on the hearsay of a detective who interviewed one of them. A debate is now focused on how these "confessions" were coerced by the detectives and police, who interrogated the youths behind closed doors. Even with this new evidence, the district attorney's office can only recommend the dismissal of the convictions to the original judge in the case, Charles J. Tejada. Tejada is the only one with the authority to overturn the convictions of these young men tragically robbed of their youth by the racist criminal-justice system. GLEN RIDGE ATHLETES GET SLAP ON WRIST Another well-publicized rape occurred in 1989, this one in the suburbs of New Jersey. Ten white high-school football stars were charged with gang raping a 17-year-old mentally disabled white woman in a basement, using a broken-off broom and baseball bat. This came to be known as the Glen Ridge "incident." Only three of the accused were convicted. None did any time in prison because they were able to make bail during the appeals process. A state appeals court partially reversed the original convictions, stating that the victim had "complied with the sexual acts." In other words, "She asked for it." In covering this heinous act, the media never referred to these athletes as predators or animals. The tone conveyed was that "boys will be boys." REMINISCENT OF SCOTTSBORO CASE Rape, a horrific, dehumanizing form of violence against women, is endemic to class society, especially in an imperialist country like the United States. Every minute of every day, a woman somewhere in the country is raped because, regardless of nationality and class, women are still viewed as property and sexual objects. Most assaults go unmentioned in the press because rape happens so frequently. Women who take their attackers to trial take a great risk because they could easily end up being degraded by prosecuting attorneys and judges. Many progressives and communities of color have likened the Central Park case to the infamous Scottsboro case that occurred in Alabama more than 70 years ago. That case involved nine poor, African American men who were arrested and put on trial for the rape of two poor white women. These young men were convicted in a racist lynch mob atmosphere. Eventually, one of the women recanted her testimony and admitted that the cops coerced her into falsely accusing the young men of a crime they did not commit. The cases of the Central Park jogger and the young woman in Glen Ridge are not isolated incidents of rape, as the media like to indicate. Rather they are everyday occurrences. The racist use of the rape charge is also the norm in this society, and has resulted in the lynching of thousands of men of color, especially African Americans. The young men convicted in the Central Park jogger attack were victims of a horrible legal lynching on the part of the criminal injustice system. They should be exonerated of all these charges immediately and their families be granted full restitution for years of suffering. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. 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