Central Park Jogger Case

On April 19, 1989, a 28-year-old jogger was brutally assaulted and raped while running in New York City's Central Park; she later chose to identify herself publicly, in 2003, as Trisha Meili. Five teenagers, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise, were convicted of the attack after videotaped confessions obtained following lengthy, unrecorded interrogations; their accounts differed from one another on the specific details of virtually every major aspect of the crime, and all five recanted within weeks, saying they had been intimidated, lied to and coerced by police. They served sentences ranging from seven to thirteen years before serial rapist Matias Reyes confessed in 2002 that he alone had committed the assault; DNA evidence confirmed his account, and the five convictions were vacated that December. The case became a widely cited example of racial profiling and inequality in the legal system, and of how false, internally inconsistent confessions can be obtained from vulnerable suspects under sustained interrogation.