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The Central Park Five

nytimes.com

71–80 of 83 posts

Re: The Central Park Five

#71
post #62
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, I'm not a lawyer but apparently you are. I'll post these questions and promise to honestly read what you respond with. I'm not trolling. Correct my thinking: They were 14, 15, 16 at the time. Older teenagers you said. Do you agree with the fact (is it?) that one of them was actually younger than 16 and questioned without his parents present? Does that matter at all to you as a lawyer? If you feel they are not ch…

> Hey, I'm not a lawyer but apparently you are. I'll post these questions and promise to honestly read what you respond with. I'm not trolling. Correct my thinking: They were 14, 15, 16 at the time. Older teenagers you said. Do you agree with the fact (is it?) that one of them was actually younger than 16 and questioned without his parents present? Yes. But he (Salaam) claimed to be sixteen and produced a transit doc…

You mentioned the convicted were tied by evidence connecting them to the crime scene regarding other crimes, right?

This article from NYT seems to directly contradict that, saying they were convicted based on confessions.

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/28/nyregion/new-slant-on-jog...

What's missing? Is this inaccurate? Where can I read about the evidence you are noting?

Edit: I misread the article, it doesn't say entirely based on confessions. There is still lots of contradictory information in this article to things said in other places here on HN.

Re: The Central Park Five

#72
post #66
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, if you trust the entities producing the evidence, there was. List the evidence, and an intellectually honest guy would have to concede that it's all based on trust. So it really does come down to, who do you trust? I think the only thing we can say for certain is none of these guys committed the crime they were convicted of. And even that is only because we actually have the DNA, not because we trust the actua…

They were convicted of more than just that crime, first of all. Second, I don’t think there is any indication the police fabricated evidence here. I think confessions are weaker evidence than we assume, and should be treated with more suspicion. I think the police and prosecution pursued a case while ignoring the inconsistencies in the confessions. But there is no indication that anyone manufactured evidence or tried…

I know they were convicted of more than one crime. That's my entire point. We have no idea which crimes they were guilty of, if any, or which they were innocent of.

The only thing we know is, they didn't commit the crime that we have the DNA for. And again, we know that because we have DNA, not because we have to trust some perp or some cop.

Point is, any evidence that requires trust in the police, or the defense, is suspect. And you have to choose who you should believe. But you really won't be able to say with certainty that such evidence is not of tainted colour. You just don't have honest enough people in the system to do that. What happened here, is that people ignored all the exculpatory evidence. Even though it certainly agitated against the veracity of other "evidence" that had been "collected" by the police. Once that decision was made, a bad outcome was a virtual certainty.

Re: The Central Park Five

#73
post #71
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hey, I'm not a lawyer but apparently you are. I'll post these questions and promise to honestly read what you respond with. I'm not trolling. Correct my thinking: They were 14, 15, 16 at the time. Older teenagers you said. Do you agree with the fact (is it?) that one of them was actually younger than 16 and questioned without his parents present? Yes. But he (Salaam) claimed to be sixteen and produced a transit doc…

You mentioned the convicted were tied by evidence connecting them to the crime scene regarding other crimes, right? This article from NYT seems to directly contradict that, saying they were convicted based on confessions. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/28/nyregion/new-slant-on-jog... What's missing? Is this inaccurate? Where can I read about the evidence you are noting? Edit: I misread the article, it doesn't say en…

The motion to vacate the convictions actually has some of the evidence. The conviction for the rape was mostly based on the confessions, but there was also hair evidence. (Hair evidence isn’t very reliable.) https://web.williams.edu/Psychology/Faculty/Kassin/files/CPJ.... I don’t think it’s in the motion, but there was also a witness, Melody Jackson, who testified that one of the defendants told her (while incarcerated waiting trial) that he hadn’t raped the victim, but had held her down while another did. Also, another one of the young men arrested that night named one of the accused as the rapist: https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-myth-of-the-central-park-f...

> In addition to the confessions, one of the other boys, while in the back of a patrol car, cried that he “didn’t do the murder,” but that he knew who did: Antron McCray. The boy beside him, Kevin Richardson, agreed: “Antron did it.” The jogger hadn’t yet been found. Later on, after Raymond Santana had been interrogated about the rape, he was being driven to another precinct. Without prompting, he blurted out, “I had nothing to do with the rape. All I did was feel her tits.”

However, several of the five were also convicted of other attacks. Indeed, part of the motion to vacate rests on the notion that they couldn’t have participated in the rape together, because they were involved in the other incidents:

> And, beginning at about 9:24 p.m. and continuing until roughly 9:45, a series of four male joggers were set upon on the jogging path at the northern end of the Central Park Reservoir. Two of the male joggers escaped essentially unharmed, but two, Robert Garner and John Loughlin, were assaulted. Garner was not seriously hurt. Loughlin, however, was knocked to the ground, kicked, punched, and beaten with a pipe and stick. He was knocked unconscious, and sustained significant but not life-threatening injuries.

(It’s essentially undisputed that Salaam had carried a pipe into the park that night.)

> 98. An additional issue is raised by the other incidents which took place in the park. For while the nature and locations of those incidents made it seem logical to believe that the defendants had attacked the jogger, the timing of events made it hard to understand when they could have. Shortly after their initial entry into the park, the larger group of which the defendants were a part temporarily split up. As a result, not all of the defendants participated both in the incidents that occurred along the East Drive and in the attacks at the reservoir; but at least some of them did. Given the times when each of those events were estimated to have occurred, it is difficult to construct a scenario that would have allowed the defendants the time to interrupt their progression south, detour to the 102nd Street transverse, and commit a gang rape.

The whole document dump is here: http://interactive.nydailynews.com/project/central-park-five. You’re not going to find accurate commentary about this topic, so I’d go ahead and read the primary materials. (For example, some of the facts Ann Coulter recites in her article on this are factually correct, for example the fact that the accused admitted to coming to the park to commit crimes and never retracted that part. I’m not going to link it here because the article also has a lot of garbage commentary.)

Re: The Central Park Five

#74
post #73
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mentioned the convicted were tied by evidence connecting them to the crime scene regarding other crimes, right? This article from NYT seems to directly contradict that, saying they were convicted based on confessions. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/28/nyregion/new-slant-on-jog... What's missing? Is this inaccurate? Where can I read about the evidence you are noting? Edit: I misread the article, it doesn't say en…

The motion to vacate the convictions actually has some of the evidence. The conviction for the rape was mostly based on the confessions, but there was also hair evidence. (Hair evidence isn’t very reliable.) https://web.williams.edu/Psychology/Faculty/Kassin/files/CPJ... . I don’t think it’s in the motion, but there was also a witness, Melody Jackson, who testified that one of the defendants told her (while incarcera…

You've demonstrated a lot of good faith engagement with me. Thank you.

Re: The Central Park Five

#76
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't break the site guidelines yourself, regardless of how bad another comment was. Racial and ideological rants are not ok here, let alone "I look down on pathetic white trash". Would you please review the site guidelines and use this site as intended? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Hi dang, thanks for all the work you do around here moderating. The article georgemonck linked goes into a lot of details of the case others here ignored, and yet he was banned while peisistratos is using racial slurs and mockingly refusing to discuss a single thing georgemonck's article gets wrong. It seems like peisistratos is not interested in engaging in meaningful conversation. Thanks.

georgemonck isn't banned. What made you think he was?

In terms of HN moderation, please remember two things: (1) one user's bad behavior does not justify another's breaking the guidelines (a.k.a. two wrongs don't make a right), and (2) HN moderators don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted, so consistent moderation isn't possible–we just don't have the resources. If you see a bad comment go unmoderated, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it.

Re: The Central Park Five

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't find DNA from any of the five. They found the DNA from a sixth person the couldn't identify. This person confessed to the crime years later (after the statute of limitations passed), and also claimed he acted alone in that particular attack (the five were part of a larger group participating in multiple random assaults on bystanders that night).

Got it. Then this sentence is incorrectly phrased: > The only person who's DNA was found there (who wasn't part of the five) is the person who claims that there was only one attacker (he confessed to the crime and made the claim that he was the only attacker after meeting one of the five in prison). Should be: > The only person whose DNA was found there is the person who claims that there was only one attacker (he co…

Your edit removes a vital piece of info, that the person whose DNA was found at the scene was not one of the five. The ops statement makes it clear the DNA comes from a sixth person, while your edit doesn't. In fact I don't even see how you asked your question.

Re: The Central Park Five

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm puzzled: did they actually put five people in jail, even though there was actually one perpetrator? It's actually a pretty complicated case. I'd recommend reading both the recommendation from Morgenthau to vacate the convictions[1] (which ended up happening) and the Armstrong report[2] (which came to the conclusion that the Central Park Five were most likely involved in the attack). Doctors involved in the case…

The Armstrong report is problematic. Its main goal is to justify the conduct of the NYPD and it does so by inventing new theories of the crime. In presenting the report the committee members themselves said that they could not rule out the possibility that the defendants are completely innocent of the crime (which is the definition of “reasonable doubt “). For some reporting on this committee at the time see https://…

The Armstrong Report was also authored by someone who had previously worked in the Knapp Commission, which investigated and exposed corruption in the NYPD. Additionally, reasonable doubt isn’t the standard in the court of public opinion and history. Obviously the conviction itself must live or die based on whether reasonable doubt exists. But if we want to sit here on a message board and speculate about what really happened, the reports conclusion of what “probably” happened may be a better standard. (There is an important distinction between the state’s failure to meet the burden of proof, and complete exoneration, as recent goings-on with Bob Muller demonstrate.)

Re: The Central Park Five

#79
post #39

Really fascinating to read the comments here. Lots of discussions about whether they truly were guilty of this crime or another. Not much being said about the fact that they were children and that even if they did commit another crime at another time or were witnesses to the crime or whatever, it's not necessarily a "good thing" that they were in jail long into adulthood. Hacker News showing its true colors here.

>Hacker News showing its true colors here.

Your high horse certainly isn't helping.

>Not much being said about [...]

What exactly are you getting at here?

Do you want everyone to talk about this to the exclusion of other aspects of the case? Or if there is some room for other topics, as long as there exists a certain percentage of us giving perfunctory agreement on this point?

Your post reads to me as a roundabout saying-without-saying accusation of moral failing among people who very well may agree with you, for wishing to discuss other aspects of this case.

Re: The Central Park Five

#80
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, since it might not be obvious to some readers: the fear your parents had about playing outside is what the police might do to you, as opposed to concerns about crime or general violence, is that correct?

Yes, and for good reason. NYC had a high crime rate in the 80s and 90s, once I was able to have my own day to day autonomy (mid teens, mid 2000s) the city was much safer. I understand the push for crime reduction policies, lots of minorities (who are victims of crimes themselves) wanted a tougher approach. Unfortunately the politics of the day was that the cruelest types of punishments won out. Three strikes and stop…

Stop-and-frisk feels like a major violation of rights, but it does work well. I think that doing this by surprise, or around where people live, is problematic. Setting up a limited region, with posted signs, is pretty reasonable. For example, the park might be such a region.

Three strikes doesn't seem to be a violation of rights, and it simply makes sense. Removing bad people will improve the community. Some people simply will not abide by the rules of civilized society, and it is a dangerous mistake to pretend otherwise.

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