Central Park Five Summary

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The Central Park Five is in reference to the infamous case where five african american and hispanic youths were falsely convicted of raping Trisha Meili. In the late 1980s, Korey Wise, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Yusef Salaam, Antron McCray were convicted without substantive proof of being involved in the act. The young boys were coerced into providing false confessions by law enforcement, which ultimately was the only evidence for their conviction. It was not until 2002 that the truth came out and Matias Reyes was the assailant. Nearly all media regarding the central park five was racially charged.
This case involved both the ideal victim and the ideal criminal. Trisha Meili was a 28-year-old woman with a prosperous future on Wall Street ahead of her. Conversely, the five boys associated with the case were seen as
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Much like Rolling Stone’s ‘A Rape on Campus,’ the journalists focused too heavily on a single source. If the journalist would have dug deeper into the story, then they would have realized that the times and locations of the boys and Meili submitted in the criminology did not match up, The five men were in a completely different area at the time of the assault. There was never investigation into why none of the five’s DNA was found. There was never investigation into the placement of her belongings. There was never investigation regarding the 18” trail in which the event took place. These all should have been red flags for journalists and should have been investigated. If journalist had directed the public to these gaps in the story, then investigators may have been pressured into finding more information. Ultimately, there could have been a different outcome in the case if journalists shed light on and investigated the discontinuity of the case, which would in turn would have given the five boys years to their lives that they were stipped