“The Central Park Five”, the wrongly convicted teens, Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam, Korey Wise, Raymond Santana, and Kevin Richardson in the Central Park jogger case, were as much victims of the brutal rapist, Matias Reyes as Trisha Meili, the rape victim herself. In the stunning new four part series on Netflix, the illegitimate process that resulted in their 1990 convictions is played out in agonizing fashion. Suffice to say, they were tricked and, in at least one instance, beaten into falsely confessing to the crime. The same police method of having one person give false evidence against another was used against David McCallum and Willie Stuckey–recordings and all–leading to the same result.
I won’t go into the details of the case; one can watch Ava DuVernay’s “When They See Us” on Netflix for the gory details. But immense good has come out of yet another wrongful conviction film, just like “David & Me” and “West of Memphis”. The two prosecutors, Linda Fairstein and Elizabeth Lederer have suffered consequences from which lifelong prosecutors are immune. Both women parlayed their fame from the case into university jobs and, in the case of Fairstein, a writing career. Lederer was forced by Black students to resign from Columbia University’s prestigious law school. Fairstein was pushed out of Vassar College by protesting students as well. She also lost her publisher, Dutton.
Perhaps unscrupulous prosecutors (or those who manufacture wrongful convictions as opposed to making errors) will take note. They may not be able to hide behind the law anymore. I would also include those prosecutors such as Dan Satterberg of King County, Washington, who sustain wrongful convictions (Sebastian Burns and Atif Rafay) or fail to investigate obvious travesties of the law. Or police investigators who manufacture false confessions either through inducements or force. Anyone who knowingly pursues a wrongful conviction to further their own career is committing a crime or crimes as great as the one they are investigating: kidnap and forcible confinement.