10 Mai 1989 Jahr - Central Park 5 Case

Beschreibung:

After a young white woman is found raped, brutalized and unconscious in Central Park, Five black youths between the ages of 14 and 16 are apprehended and later convicted of the brutal assault. Despite a complete lack of evidence and an inconsistent timeline, prosecutors seemed determined to connect them to the act. prosecutor Linda Fairstein coerced false confessions from the teens to patch the holes in her narrative. In 2002, over a decade after their imprisonment, a confession paired with DNA evidence exonerates the five. The 2012 film "The Central Park Five" chronicles the ordeal, as does the 2019 Docuseries "When They See Us."

Media coverage of the trial painted the boys as savages, some papers likening them to a "wolf pack." The depiction of black men as unruly and bestial is an ancient strategy employed to detach humanity from people of color, and further to justify their maltreatment. This case was so consequential in part because played into the belief that black men are predatory, and white women are their pray. The same ideology that rationalized the brutal murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till.

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/reckoning-media-central-park-five-on-the-media