ToW #29 - Documentary by Ken Burns: The Central Park Five

Judicial Injustice

    Without fail, every era of United States history has a great injustice committed by the legal system: Dred Scott vs. Sandford of 1857 invalidated the citizenships of African Americans; Plessy vs. Ferguson of 1896 legalized segregation; the Sacco and Vanzetti Trials of 1921 killed two Italian immigrants for being anarchists; Korematsu vs. U.S of 1941 legalized the mass forcing of Japanese-Americans into detention camps; and the Central Park jogger case of 1989 falsely convicted five teenagers of rape, assault, robbery, and riot. These teenagers, who had been detained for being around Central Park at the time of a few crime reports, were brought into a police station, interrogated harshly, coerced into fabricating confessions, and ended up serving sentences ranging from five to thirteen years. The Central Park Five is an account of those teenagers' misfortunes brought to life by the ever-acclaimed Ken Burns, detailing their baseless and torturous interrogations, their tired and incongruous confessions, their horror at the outcries of New Yorkers (including calls for the death penalty), and their unjustified prison sentences. 

    While the testimonies of the Five and of various historians prove outright that the teenagers were completely innocent, questions were raised upon the reveal of a lawsuit filed by the Five against the city of New York. Despite being exonerated in 2002 and filing the lawsuit in 2003, the Five have yet to reach a settlement with the City. The New York Times reports that the proceedings have taken so long because "the city's lawyers were 'dragging their feet'". In this delaying action by New York lawyers, the City is unintentionally but unjustifiably taking more years away from the Five's lives. Though it may be reasonable for the City to take some time attempting to lower the Five's claims of fifty million dollars each, eleven years is far too long for those men to go without reparations. Now all in their late thirties, the Five have given their entire young adulthoods to the injustice done to them twenty-five years ago.

    If this were 2004 and the men had already entered in negotiations, I would consider their price of $250 million higher than it should be. After all, millions of people have much worse than years of their life spent without freedom done to them without reparations paid in any sense of the word. But, by sheer principle, if someone is wronged by wasting years of their life and then voluntarily spends more years seeking what they believe would right the wrong, they deserve that reparation. And, understanding that the decision to delay must be bureaucratic in nature, very likely to involve some corruption of morals or of practice, the scales of justice impossible tilt even farther in favor of the Five. But promise now shows: after pledging a quick settlement for the Five in his campaign, Mayor Bill de Blasio has spurred recent settlement talks to take place. It looks like, after every little injustice and hardship that they have endured, the Central Park Five -- that is, Yusef Salaam, Antron McCray, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, and Kharey Wise -- finally have some legal meetings to look forward to.