A PROSECUTOR SPEAKS UP.(about the 1989 Central Park jogger case)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 02-DEC-02

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COPYRIGHT 2002 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

The case of the Central Park jogger, a young investment banker who was raped and nearly beaten to death on April 19, 1989, stood for years as a symbol of urban predatory violence. In the days immediately after the crime, five teen-agers admitted to police that they had assaulted the woman; they later pleaded not guilty, but they were all convicted and sentenced to prison terms ranging from five to fifteen years. Then, earlier this year, a man named Matias Reyes, who was serving a long prison sentence in another rape case, came forward and said that he alone had raped the jogger. Reyes's DNA matched semen that was found on the jogger and had never been tied to any suspect. The five men convicted in the case, who have all completed their sentences, recently sued to clear their names. In many quarters, the jogger case has now become a different type of cautionary tale--a symbol of the manipulation of young suspects, the risks of false confessions, and the...

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