[This is very carefully worded. But it heavily suggests that all the kids convicted in the famous Central Park Jogger case -- aka the "Wilding" case -- might well have been framed. When you consider how much play this case got, and how significant it was culturally -- it was the nadir of the race & crime-baiting politics of the 80s, whose institutionalized solutions still in many ways form our world today -- that would be pretty jawdropping news.]
New York Times September 6, 2002
DNA in Central Park Jogger Case Spurs Call for New Review
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN and SUSAN SAULNY
S emen found on the sock of the victim in the notorious Central Park
jogger case 13 years ago has been conclusively linked by DNA tests to
a convicted murderer-rapist serving a life term in an prison upstate,
a law-enforcement official familiar with a sweeping new investigation
of the case said yesterday.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the
DNA tests proved beyond question that the convict, Matias Reyes, 31,
had raped the jogger, who was found battered and near death on the
night of April 19, 1989, when bands of marauding youths attacked nine
people at random in the park.
But the official said that the proof of Mr. Reyes's involvement did
not necessarily have a bearing on the convictions of five young black
and Hispanic men who were found guilty in 1990 of attacking the
28-year-old white investment banker, largely on the basis of their own
graphic, detailed confessions. All have served their sentences, though
one is still in jail in an unrelated case.
Since last spring, Manhattan prosecutors have been reinvestigating the
case in the light of a claim by Mr. Reyes that he alone had waylaid,
raped and beaten the jogger. He said he struck her with a tree branch,
dragged her into a ravine, beat her with a rock, raped her and walked
away with her radio.
In recent days, lawyers for three of the five youths convicted in the
case have contended that Mr. Reyes's confession and especially his
claim to have acted alone proved that their clients had been
wrongfully convicted. They insisted that the youths' confessions had
been coerced, and noted that no DNA or other conclusive forensic
evidence against them had ever been produced.
The defendants were "manipulated through psychological coercion,"
Michael W. Warren, a lawyer who represents Kevin Richardson, Antron
McCray and Raymond Santana, said at a news conference yesterday.
He said the confessions of his clients, and of Yusef Salaam and Kharey
Wise, who were also convicted, had been scripted by detectives and
bore contradictions that should have been "red flags" to prosecutors.
Mr. Warren has filed a motion in State Supreme Court in Manhattan
seeking to have the verdicts dismissed on the basis of Mr. Reyes's
confession and other new evidence, including the DNA findings. He
plans to present his case at a hearing on Monday before Justice
Eduardo Padro.
Roger Wareham, another lawyer representing Mr. Richardson, Mr. McCray
and Mr. Santana, compared the case yesterday to that of the Scottsboro
Boys, nine black teenagers who became national symbols of racism in
the 1930's after they were charged in Alabama with raping two white
women, one of whom recanted.
In the Central Park case, the victim survived but lay in a coma for 12
days and, after awakening, had no memory of the attack and was unable
to provide details or identify any suspects. Now 41, she is married,
lives in Connecticut and is writing a book about her life.
As the victim of a sex crime, she was never identified publicly, but
is expected to disclose her name in the book.
Prosecutors have always said that some 30 youths were involved in
attacks on people in the park that night, and have said that as many
as 12 had joined in the assault on the jogger.
While DNA was a crude scientific tool in 1989, it was good enough,
experts said, to exclude the five principal suspects. However, because
DNA found in the cervix of the jogger had no match among the suspects,
prosecutors acknowledged that at least one unknown attacker had got
away.
The five youths eventually convicted in the attacks were picked up in
the park on the night of the attacks and later made what prosecutors
called self-incriminating statements, in writing and on videotape, in
the presence of their parents or other adult relatives, and after
being offered and refusing immediate access to lawyers.
These statements proved to be powerful evidence. They spoke of wilding
in the park, randomly attacking people. None of the five admitted
raping the woman, but the youths accused one another of kicking her,
hitting her with a rock or a pipe and holding her down while others
assaulted her. Mr. Reyes's name was not mentioned in any of the
statements.
The defendants, all but one under 16 at the time of the crime, were
prosecuted as juveniles. Mr. McCray, Mr. Santana and Mr. Salaam were
sentenced to 5 to 10 years for rape and assault; Mr. Richardson was
convicted of attempted murder, rape and sodomy and received 5 to 10
years, and Mr. Wise was convicted of assault and sexual abuse and was
given a term of 5 to 15 years.
Months after the Central Park attack, Mr. Reyes was arrested in the
rape and murder of a 24-year-old pregnant woman on the Upper East
Side. In October 1991, he pleaded guilty to that crime and to three
other rapes and was sentenced to 33 1/3 years to life in prison.
Last spring, saying he had found God and felt compelled to confess,
Mr. Reyes told the authorities that he had raped the Central Park
jogger. His assertions were taken seriously because prosecutors knew
that DNA found on the victim had never been identified.
The confession prompted an extensive review of the case by
investigators for the Manhattan district attorney, Robert M.
Morgenthau, in which witnesses and evidence still available after 13
years was re-examined. Among other things, investigators learned that
hair found on Mr. Richardson was not the jogger's, as prosecutors had
contended at his trial. In addition, blood found on a stone with which
she was said to have been struck was found to be someone else's.
Last June, a senior prosecutor said that preliminary DNA tests had
shown that Mr. Reyes's genetic material was consistent with some of
the evidence at the scene of the attack but that a conclusive match
had not yet been found.
The conclusive link has now been established between Mr. Reyes's DNA,
which had been placed in a state databank after his conviction, and
the DNA found in the semen on the jogger's sock. But proof that he
raped the jogger may have no practical legal effect on Mr. Reyes
because a five-year statute of limitations for prosecuting nonhomicide
cases ran out long ago.
Moreover, the discovery of Mr. Reyes's role may or may not have a
bearing on the validity of the five convictions in the case. That
could depend on whether any links are found between Mr. Reyes and the
convicted men.
"The DNA shows he was involved in the rape of the jogger," the
official said of Mr. Reyes. "But it is unlikely that he was acting
alone, or that he was the only one. We don't really know if he was
with the others. He may have grabbed her and then they came along, or
they may have grabbed her and then he came along. We may never know."
Mr. Warren took another view. "There is no DNA match with any of the
defendants," he said yesterday. "Yet there is a DNA match to Mr.
Reyes. These are significant facts."
And he quoted Mr. Reyes as saying, in a July interview at the Clinton
Correctional Facility with a private investigator Mr. Warren had sent,
that he had been "the sole rapist."
"Reyes stated that he acted alone during this entire incident, that no
one else was there, and that he does not know any of the defendants,"
Mr. Warren said in his court papers.
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