anyone remember the Central Park rape case? 4 out of 5 of the defendants apprehended afterwards confessed to their part in a gang rape yet none of them was actually responsible.
Confessions
Four of the five confessed to a number of the attacks committed in the park that night, and implicated one or more of the others.[10][39] None of the five said they themselves actually raped the jogger, but each confessed to being an accomplice to the rape.[10] All five said that they themselves had only helped restrain the jogger, or touched her, while one or more others raped her.[39] Antron McCray said that a "Puerto Rican kid with a hoodie" had been the one who raped the jogger.[10] While he was incarcerated in the Rikers Island jail, Korey Wise told the older sister of a friend of his, according to her testimony, that he had only held the jogger down.[39]
Yusef Salaam made verbal admissions, but refused to sign a confession or make one on videotape. However, Salaam was implicated by all of the other four, and convicted at trial. Six others were charged with committing crimes in the park that night as well. They pleaded guilty and received sentences of six months to four and a half years.[10] On appeal, Salaam's supporters and attorneys charged that he had been held by police without access to parents or guardians. The majority appellate court decision noted that Salaam had initially lied to police in claiming to be 16, and he had backed up his claim with a transit pass that indeed (falsely, as it turned out) indicated that he was 16. When Salaam informed police of his true age, police permitted his mother to be present.[41]
Analysis indicated that the DNA collected at the crime scene did not match any of the suspects, and that it had come from a single, as yet unknown person.[2] Since no DNA evidence tied the suspects to the crime, the prosecution's case rested almost entirely on the confessions.[26] One of the suspects' supporters, Reverend Calvin O. Butts of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, told The New York Times, "The first thing you do in the United States of America when a white woman is raped is round up a bunch of black youths, and I think that's what happened here."[26]
Although the suspects (except Salaam) had confessed on videotape in the presence of a parent or guardian, they retracted their statements within weeks, claiming that they had been intimidated, lied to, and coerced into making false confessions.[2] Salaam confessed to being present only after the detective falsely told him that fingerprints had been found on the victim's clothing.[11] According to Salaam, "I would hear them beating up Korey Wise in the next room", and "they would come and look at me and say: 'You realise you're next.' The fear made me feel really like I was not going to be able to make it out."[42] While the confessions themselves were videotaped, the hours of interrogation that preceded the confessions were not.
