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Kalaroga Shark Media. Good morning. I'm Garrett Fisher, Wednesday May sixth,
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twenty twenty six, and this is day two of our
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Fighting Back series. Yesterday we left Corey Wise an adult prison,
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sixteen years old, convicted of a crime he didn't commit.
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Sentence as an adult, held at Riker's Island and then
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transferred through four different adult prisons over the next several years,
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asking to be kept in protective isolation for extended stretches
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because the violence inside was so severe that isolation was
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safer than being around other people. His entire young adulthood
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from sixteen to twenty nine, spent behind bars for a
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rape that the DNA evidence had already before a single
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trial began, established he didn't commit. Today we pick up
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there and what happens next is one of those moments
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that makes you believe, against everything that the system has
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shown you, that the truth sometimes finds its way out anyway,
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not because of the system, not because of any detective
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or prosecutor or judge, but because of a chance encounter
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in an upstate New York prison between Cory Wise and
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the man who actually did it, Mattias Reyes, was seventeen
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years old on the night of April nineteenth, nineteen eighty nine,
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the same night Tricia Maylee was attacked in Central Park.
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He was already a predator. In the days surrounding the
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Central Park attack, Reyes committed a series of other rapes
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in and around the park using the same method, a
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single attacker working alone, targeting women jogging or walking alone
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in isolated areas. One of those attacks happened just days
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before the Central Park assault. The victim of that attack
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described her assailant in detail, including fresh stitches in his chin.
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Police had Reyes's name in their files, they did not
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connect him to Melee. In the months that followed the
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Central Park attack, Reyes continued. He raped and murdered a
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pregnant woman named Lord's Gonzales in her apartment. He was
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eventually caught, convicted, and sentenced to thirty three and a
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third years to life, not for the Central Park attack,
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which everyone believed had already been solved, but for the
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other crimes. He went to prison in nineteen ninety one
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and disappeared into the system just another inmate while five
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innocent men served out sentences for something he had done
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alone for a decade nothing and then in two thousand
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and one, a chance of geography, Corey Wise had been
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moved to Auburn correctional facility in upstate New York. Mattias
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Reyes was there too. They met. What happened between them
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in that prison is something Reyes has described in interviews
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and to investigators. He recognized Wise from the coverage of
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the Central Park five case, understood that Wise was serving
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time for something Reyes himself had done, and experienced what
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he described as a crisis of conscience. He told a
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corrections officer he had information. He eventually came forward and
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told investigators that on the night of April nineteenth, nineteen
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eighty nine, he had attacked and raped Tricia Maylee, that
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he had acted alone, and that he had never encountered
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the five young men who had been convicted. He provided
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details that only the actual perpetrator would know, details about
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the specific location, the sequence of events, the route he
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took through the park, information that had never been made
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public and could not have been guessed. The Manhattan District
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Attorney's Office convened an independent panel to investigate. They took
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his account apart, looking for holes. The DNA from the
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crime scene was subjected to the more advanced testing that
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had become available since nineteen eighty nine. It matched Reyes.
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Every biological sample from the crime scene pointed to one
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man acting alone. On December nineteenth, two thousand and two,
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a New York Supreme Court justice vacated the convictions of
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all five the Central Park five. Entroon McCrae, Kevin Richardson,
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use of Salam, Raymond Santana, and Corey Wise were exonerated.
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The charges were dismissed after a combined total of more
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than forty years behind bars for a crime they did
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not commit. They were legally innocent by then. McCrae had
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been out since nineteen ninety six, Santana since nineteen ninety five,
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Salam and Richardson since nineteen ninety seven. Corey Wise had
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walked out of prison in August two thousand and two,
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just months before the formal exoneration, the last of the
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five to be released, as he had been the first
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to enter adult prison and the one who had served
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the longest. They were already out. The exoneration was a
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piece of paper, but it mattered because without it, they
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were still convicted felons in the eyes of the law,
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which affects, housing, employment, voting rights, every part of a life.
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The exoneration didn't give them back. Was taken, but it
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cleared the record, It said officially in writing that the
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State of New York had gotten it wrong. The people
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who still wouldn't believe it. You would think that a
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DNA confirmed confession from the actual perpetrator would be the
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end of it. It was not. The lead prosecutor on
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the original case, Elizabeth Letterer, maintained for years that the
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five may still have been involved, that Reyes could have
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been an unindicted coejaculator, as one detective memorably and grotesquely
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put it, the idea being that maybe, somehow five teenagers
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had also attacked Tricia may Lee that night in addition
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to Reyes, even though there was zero physical evidence of
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anyone else's presence, even though Raya said he acted alone,
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even though his account was consistent with a single attacker assault,
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and even though the seaman the only biological evidence came
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exclusively from him, The head detective on the case called
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Reyes's confession this lunatic case cox a wild story and
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said people were foolish to believe it. And in twenty fourteen,
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when the city finally settled the civil lawsuit for forty one
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million dollars. Donald Trump wrote an op ed in the
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New York Daily News calling the settlement a disgrace and
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relaying that a detective close to the case called it
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the heist of the century. A DNA confirmed confession from
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the actual rapist, and the settlement paid to five wrongly
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convicted men was called a heist. That's the environment these
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five men walked back into when they were released. Not
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a city that said we failed you, We're sorry, how
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do we make this right? A city or at least
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large loud portions of it, that still thought they were guilty,
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still thought the settlement was an outrage, still thought that
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five black and Latino men from Harlem must have done
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something wrong in that park, even if it wasn't exactly
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what they'd been convicted of. They fought that environment for
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eleven years. The civil lawsuit was filed in two thousand
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and three. The city fought it, contested, it delayed it.
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The five men and their attorneys spent over a decade
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in litigation, not against some private corporation, but against the city.
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They grew up in the city that had taken their youth,
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the city that was spending taxpayer money to avoid admitting
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what two juries, a corps of detectives and an entire
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prosecutorial apparatus had done to them. After the break, the
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forty one million dollar settlement, the legal reforms that came
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from this case and where five men who had every
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reason to be broken ended up instead. On June nineteenth,
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twenty fourteen, eleven years after the lawsuit was filed, New
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York City agreed to a forty one million dollar settlement
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with the five men, roughly a million dollars for each
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year each of them had in prison. The city did
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not admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement. That standard
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practice in civil cases, and it matters here because it
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meant that no one was ever officially held responsible. The
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settlement said we will pay you. It did not say
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we did something wrong. Here is who did it, and
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here is what happened to them. Yusef Salam said it
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plainly in a twenty nineteen interview. No amount of money
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could have given us our time back. He was fifteen
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when he was arrested. He was in his late thirties
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by the time the settlement arrived. A million dollars a
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year sounds significant until you understand what a year in
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prison between the ages of fifteen and twenty two actually costs,
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not just in money, but in education, in relationships, in
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the compounding opportunity that people who weren't in prison were
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accumulating while they were locked up. The settlement was the
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best available legal remedy. It was not justice, and the
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people responsible for what happened to them, the detectives who
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ran those thirty hour interrogations, the prosecutors who put those
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contradictory confessions in front of two juries while knowing the
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DNA excluded their clients. The officials who fought the exoneration
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for years. None of them faced criminal charges. None of
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them lost their jobs as a direct consequence of what
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they did to these five kids. The system that failed
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the Central Park five protected the people who ran that
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system right to the end. That's not a mistake. That's
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a choice, and it's a choice the City of New
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York made repeatedly, over more than two decades, every time
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it had an opportunity to hold someone accountable and chose
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not to. What changed because of them. Here is what
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the Central Park five case did produce and it matters
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legal reform, real lasting reform that has changed how interrogations
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of miners are conducted in this country. Because of this
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case and others like it, in New York and roughly
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twenty four other states have passed laws requiring the electronic
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recording of full interrogations, not just the videotape confession at
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the end, the whole interrogation, from the first question, the
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hours before the cameras turned on, the psychological pressure, the
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lies about evidence, the isolation, all of it now has
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to be on record in states with these laws. It's
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an incomplete reform. The laws vary by state, not every
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jurisdiction has adopted them, and recording an interrogation doesn't automatically
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prevent coercion. It just makes coercion harder to deny. But
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it is something. It is a concrete change in how
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children are treated inside interrogation rooms, and it came directly
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from what happened to these five men they're suffering. Produced
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protection for the next generation of teenagers who end up
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in a room with detectives and no lawyer. The case
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also changed how prosecutors and courts think about false confessions
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as evidence. The research on false confessions partiarticularly among juvenile
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suspects who confess at dramatically higher rates than adults, has
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grown substantially since nineteen eighty nine, and the Central Park
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five case is one of the most studied examples of
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the phenomenon. Twenty seven percent of people exonerated by DNA
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evidence had originally confessed to the crime. It happens, It
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happens with documented regularity, and the Central Park five case
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is part of why the legal system is now slowly
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beginning to treat a confession as something to scrutinize rather
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than something to accept at face value. This is the
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part of the story I want to end on because
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it's remarkable and it deserves to be said out loud.
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Corey Wise, the one who served the longest thirteen years
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in adult prison starting at sixteen, took his settlement money
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and used a significant portion of it to fund the
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Cory Wise Innocence Project at the University of Colorado Boulder,
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a legal clinic dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people. A
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man who had everything taken from him by a broken
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system turned his settlement into a machine for fixing that
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system for other people. If you are looking for the
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definition of someone who earned the right to be bitter
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and chose not to be. That is Corey Wise. Raymond
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Santana became an activist and entrepreneur, using his platform to
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advocate for criminal justice reform and founding a clothing line
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whose proceeds support wrongful conviction work. Kevin Richardson lives in
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New Jersey with his wife and daughters and speaks regularly
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about juvenile justice. Ron McCrae, who was the most private
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of the five during the years of coverage, eventually chose
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to speak publicly, including in the Netflix series When They
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See Us Now, about what the experience did to his
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family and particularly to his father, who pressured him to
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confie and who McCrae said never fully recovered from the
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guilt of that moment. And Yusuf Salam, who at fifteen
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was the only one of the five who refused to confess,
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who held out through the interrogation while the others broke
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around him, is now a member of the New York
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City Council representing the Central Harlem district where he grew up.
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He ran in twenty twenty three, won his primary and
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a landslide, and took office in twenty twenty four, he
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campaigns on easing poverty and fighting gentrification, and he talks
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about his wrongful conviction not as a wound, but as
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a credential. I am really the ambassador for everyone's pain,
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he said, In many ways, I went through that for
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our people, so I can now lead them. In twenty
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twenty two, the city unveiled the gate of the exonerated
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at the northern entrance to Central Park, the same park
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where their lives were upended, in honor of the five men,
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a plaque, a gate, an acknowledgment in bronze and stone
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that the city got it catastrophically wrong, and that these
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men are owed something it can never fully repay. Donald
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Trump has still never apologized. I want to say something
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plainly before we close this story, because I think it
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gets lost sometimes in the legal language and the settlement
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figures and the documentary coverage. What happened to these five
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boys was not a system malfunction. It was the system
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functioning exactly as it was designed to function in nineteen
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eighty nine New York, which is to say, it was
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designed to produce fast arrests that satisfied a terrified public
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and It was designed to treat black and Latino teenagers
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from Harlem as suspects first and human being second, and
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it produced exactly those outcomes with ruthless efficiency. The interrogation
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tactics were legal. The decision to prosecute despite contradictory confessions
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and exclud voting DNA was a prosecutorial choice, not a
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procedural error. The media coverage was the predictable result of
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a press corps that understood what its audience wanted. And
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the eighty five thousand dollars full page ad was a
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real estate developer doing what real estate developers do, reading
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a room and amplifying whatever fear was already in it.
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None of those people went to prison, none of them