Central Park jogger case

The Central Park jogger case (sometimes termed the Central Park Five case) was a criminal case concerning the assault and rape of Trisha Meili, a woman who was running in Central Park in Manhattan, New York, on April 19, 1989. Crime in New York City was peaking in the late 1980s and early 1990s as the crack epidemic surged. On the night Meili was attacked, dozens of teenagers had entered the park, and there were reports of muggings and physical assaults.

Six teenagers were indicted in relation to the Meili assault. They also faced additional charges related to the other attacks that night. Charges against one, Steven Lopez, were dropped after Lopez pleaded guilty to a different assault against John Loughlin. The remaining five—Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise (known as the Central Park Five, later the Exonerated Five)—were convicted of the charged offenses and served sentences ranging from seven to thirteen years.

More than a decade after the attack, while incarcerated for attacking five other women in 1989, serial rapist Matias Reyes confessed to the Meili assault and said he was the only actor; DNA evidence confirmed his involvement. The convictions, including those related to the other assaults, against McCray, Richardson, Salaam, Santana, and Wise were vacated in 2002; Lopez's convictions were vacated in July 2022.

From the outset the case was a topic of national interest. Initially, it fueled public discourse about New York City's perceived lawlessness, criminal behavior by youths, and violence toward women. After the exonerations, the case became a prominent example of racial profiling, discrimination, and inequality in the legal system and the media. All five defendants sued the City of New York for malicious prosecution, racial discrimination, and emotional distress; the city settled the suit in 2014 for $41 million.

Attacks

At 9:00 p.m. on April 19, 1989, a group of an estimated 20 to 32 teenagers who lived in East Harlem entered Manhattan's Central Park at an entrance in Harlem, near Central Park North. Some of the group committed several attacks, assaults, and robberies against people who were either walking, biking, or jogging in the northernmost part of the park near the reservoir, and victims began to report the incidents to police.

Within the North Woods, between 102nd and 105th Street, assailants were reported attacking several cyclists, hurling rocks at a cab, and attacking a pedestrian, whom they robbed of his food and beer and left unconscious. The teenagers roamed south along the park's East Drive and the 97th Street transverse, between 9:00 and 10:00 p.m. Police attempted to apprehend suspects after crimes began to be reported between 9:00 and 10:00 p.m. Michael Vigna, a competitive bike rider, testified that, at about 9:05 p.m., he was hassled by a group of boys, one of whom tried to punch him. At about 9:15 p.m., Antonio Diaz, who had been walking in the park near 105th Street, was knocked to the ground by teenagers, who stole his bag of food and bottle of beer. And Gerald Malone and Patricia Dean, riding on a tandem, said that a group of boys tried to block their path on East Drive south of 102nd Street at about 9:15 p.m.; Malone said that he and Dean sped towards the boys, causing them to scatter, though Dean said that a few grabbed at her; the couple called police after reaching a call box.

At least some of the group of teenagers traveled farther south to the area around the reservoir, and, there, four male joggers were "set upon" between 9:25 and 9:50 p.m. David Lewis testified that he was attacked and robbed about 9:25–9:40 p.m. Robert Garner said he was assaulted at about 9:30 p.m. David Good testified he was attacked at about 9:47 p.m. And, between 9:40 and 9:50 p.m., John Loughlin was "knocked to the ground, kicked, punched, and beaten with a pipe and stick"; he sustained "significant but not life-threatening injuries". At a pretrial hearing in October 1989, a police officer testified that when Loughlin was found, he was bleeding so badly that he "looked like he was dunked in a bucket of blood".

Rape of Trisha Meili

Patricia "Trisha" Ellen Meili, a 28-year-old, was going for a regular run in Central Park shortly before 9:00 p.m. While jogging, she was knocked down, dragged nearly 300 feet (91 m) off the roadway, and violently physically and sexually assaulted. About four hours later at 1:30 am, she was found naked, gagged, tied, and covered in mud and blood in a shallow ravine about 300 feet north of the 102nd Street Crossing, a wooded area of the park. The first policeman who saw her said: "She was beaten as badly as anybody I've ever seen beaten. She looked like she was tortured." Meili was so badly injured that she was in a coma for 12 days, not awakening until May 1, according to a May 3 interview with her doctor.

She had severe hypothermia, severe brain damage, severe hemorrhagic shock, loss of 75–80 percent of her blood, and internal bleeding. Her skull had been fractured so badly that her left eye was dislodged from its socket, which in turn was fractured in 21 places.

Meili was not identified for about 24 hours, and it took days for the police to retrace her movements of that night. By the time of the trial of the first three suspects in June 1990, The New York Times characterized the attack on the jogger as "one of the most widely publicized crimes of the 1980's".

Arrests and investigation

Arrests of Lopez, McCray, Richardson, Salaam, Santana and Wise

Police took custody of Raymond Santana and Kevin Richardson, both 14 years of age, at approximately 10:15 p.m. on Central Park West and 102nd Street. Steven Lopez, 15, was also arrested within an hour of several other attacks being reported to police. He was also interrogated.

Antron McCray and Yusef Salaam, both 15 years of age, were brought in for questioning later that day (April 20). They had been identified by other youths as participants in, or present at, attacks on other victims in Central Park. Korey Wise (then known as Kharey Wise), 16, accompanied Salaam for questioning, because they were friends, but was questioned himself.

Four of the six suspects, Salaam, Wise, Richardson, and Lopez, lived at the Schomburg Plaza, a mixed-income housing complex at the northeast corner of Central Park; two lived further north of there.

Analysis indicated that none of the suspects' DNA matched either of the two DNA samples collected from the crime scene (from the jogger's cervix and running sock), but results were reported as "inconclusive" by the police.

Confessions

The videotaped confessions started on April 21, after the detectives finished unrecorded interrogations during which the suspects were in custody for at least seven hours. Santana, McCray, and Richardson made video statements in the presence of parents. Wise made several statements unaccompanied by any parent, guardian or counsel. Lopez was interviewed on videotape in the presence of his parents on April 21, 1989, beginning at 3:30 a.m. He named others of the group by first names in the group attacks on other persons but denied any knowledge of the female jogger. None of the six had defense attorneys during the interrogations or videotape process. McCray, Richardson, Salaam, Santana and Wise told police they had been part of a makeshift group of about 30 people, some of whom had committed various crimes, some of who had merely observed those crimes. According to a later statement by District Attorney Nancy Ryan, "[a]ll five implicated themselves in a number of the crimes which had occurred in the park."

While the accounts offered of the crimes beside the rape were accurate, their accounts of the rape contained discrepancies as to "when, where and how it happened." Only Wise made any statement about the different times and locations of the jogger attack, and detectives had taken Wise to the park to observe the crime scene before he made his videotaped confession. None of the five said that he had raped the jogger, but each confessed to having been an accomplice—each youth said that he had only helped restrain the jogger, or touched her sexually, while one or more others had raped her. Their confessions varied as to who they identified as having participated in the rape, including naming several youths who were never questioned. In his untaped confession, Salaam went the furthest in admitting some culpability, claiming to have struck the jogger with a pipe at the beginning of the incident.

Although four suspects, all except Lopez and Salaam, confessed on videotape in the presence of a parent or guardian (who had generally not been present during the interrogations), each of the four retracted his statement within weeks. Together they claimed that they had been intimidated, lied to, and coerced by police into making false confessions. While the confessions were videotaped, the hours of interrogation that preceded the confessions were not.