DNA in Central Park Jogger Case Spurs Call for New Review

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Fri Sep 6 17:08:30 PDT 2002


[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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