PUBLISHER'S NOTE: This Blog is interested in false confessions
because of the disturbing number of exonerations in the USA, Canada and
multiple other jurisdictions throughout the world, where, in the absence
of incriminating forensic evidence the conviction is based on
self-incrimination – and because of the growing body of scientific
research showing how vulnerable suspects are to widely used
interrogation methods such as the notorious ‘Reid Technique.’
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog:
------------------------------
PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "When They See Us shows detectives using manipulation, intimidation and violence to interrogate the boys without lawyers or family members present, wearing down the frightened, tired and hungry teens during hours of questioning until they agreed to make videotaped “confessions” in the hopes they’d be allowed to go home. There was no DNA or other physical evidence tying the boys to the attack, nor any eyewitnesses, but they were convicted in two separate trials thanks to those confessions, despite discrepancies in the accounts and the fact they had recanted. They served six to 14 years behind bars (in adult prisons in Wise’s case) before serial rapist Matias Reyes confessed. I tell Jackson, Underwood and fellow American actor Christopher Jackson, who plays Raymond’s lawyer, that I watched the series’ courtroom scenes feeling the teens would have to be exonerated based on the lack of evidence, despite knowing the outcome of the case. “You just described our experience shooting it,” says Christopher Jackson. “I would imagine it’s the same (experience) that the viewer has,” feeling “shock, frustration, astonishment” and also “impotence we couldn’t change what we knew was coming. “One of the things I want people to come away knowing is that this kind of thing happens all the time,” adds Underwood. “A lot of Black and brown people who see this project, they know what to expect. They’re gonna get railroaded. When people survive it and come out the other end, it’s something to celebrate.” The Central Park Five did indeed come out the other end."
------------------------------
STORY: "Here’s why the story of the Central Park Five has to be told today, says Joshua Jackson," by reporter Debra Yeo, published by The Toronto Star on May 26, 2019. (Debra Yeo is a deputy entertainment editor and a contributor to the Star’s Entertainment section.)
GIST: Canadian actor Joshua Jackson was just 10 and living in British Columbia when five teenagers, four Black, one Hispanic, were charged with raping and assaulting the white woman known as the “Central Park Jogger” in New York in April 1989. “I don’t think I ever had a formed opinion of it at that age,” he says in a phone interview. But that doesn’t alter his passion for telling the story now of what happened to those boys. He co-stars as the lawyer of one of the teens in Ava DuVernay’s Netflix miniseries When They See Us. The boys’ convictions were vacated in 2002, after they had already spent years in prison, when the real rapist confessed. They were awarded $41 million (U.S.) in 2014 to settle a lawsuit against the city. Yet, there are still people who maintain the so-called “Central Park Five” were involved in the attack, among them Donald Trump, who took out full page ads advocating for the death penalty after the five were arrested. When They See Us sets out a heartbreakingly convincing case that they were victims of an egregious miscarriage of justice by a system that concluded their mere presence in the park that night was proof of their guilt. “Part of the reason why I think this story is so important and pertinent right now, I think we still have that same rush to judgment,” says Jackson, who plays lawyer Mickey Joseph, who defended Antron McCray, just 15 when he was arrested. “Part of the way that judgment is formed is by media narratives. The broad public narrative was that these children, these boys, were thugs, a gang, were a wolf pack wilding out in the park. It is important to remember that didn’t happen by accident. “It was part of a concerted effort to dehumanize these children so they could be railroaded through the system.” American actor Blair Underwood plays Bobby Burns, lawyer for Yusef Salaam, who was also 15 at his arrest. Underwood calls what happened to the teens “a slow lynching” as opposed to today’s “swift and unjust administration of judgment against undeserving Black men and women and children,” as seen in cellphone and body cam videos of Black people assaulted and killed by police. “It’s all in the same category of crimes against humanity,” he says. And Jackson has a special message for Canadian viewers who might be tempted to “wag (their) fingers and say, ‘Gosh, it’s so terrible down there.’” The injustice visited on people of colour in When They See Us “is very much what we do to the First Nations,” he says. “It’s the robbing of a culture and the systematic injustice visited upon a culture. That is our corollary.” On April 19, 1989, 28-year-old investment banker Trisha Meili was raped, savagely beaten and left for dead while out jogging in Central Park. That same night, Kevin Richardson and Raymond Santana, both 14, were arrested for “unlawful assembly” for being part of a group of teens accused of harassing joggers, cyclists and others in a different part of the park. Police quickly concluded the boys had been involved in Meili’s attack. McCray, Salaam and Korey Wise, 16, were brought in for questioning the next day. When They See Us shows detectives using manipulation, intimidation and violence to interrogate the boys without lawyers or family members present, wearing down the frightened, tired and hungry teens during hours of questioning until they agreed to make videotaped “confessions” in the hopes they’d be allowed to go home. There was no DNA or other physical evidence tying the boys to the attack, nor any eyewitnesses, but they were convicted in two separate trials thanks to those confessions, despite discrepancies in the accounts and the fact they had recanted. They served six to 14 years behind bars (in adult prisons in Wise’s case) before serial rapist Matias Reyes confessed. I tell Jackson, Underwood and fellow American actor Christopher Jackson, who plays Raymond’s lawyer, that I watched the series’ courtroom scenes feeling the teens would have to be exonerated based on the lack of evidence, despite knowing the outcome of the case. “You just described our experience shooting it,” says Christopher Jackson. “I would imagine it’s the same (experience) that the viewer has,” feeling “shock, frustration, astonishment” and also “impotence we couldn’t change what we knew was coming. “One of the things I want people to come away knowing is that this kind of thing happens all the time,” adds Underwood. “A lot of Black and brown people who see this project, they know what to expect. They’re gonna get railroaded. When people survive it and come out the other end, it’s something to celebrate.” The Central Park Five did indeed come out the other end. We see the real men’s faces at the end of the miniseries, just before the credits roll. Four of the five are fathers now. Santana founded a clothing company and Salaam is an author and public speaker. Wise, the only one of the five to remain in New York, started the Korey Wise Innocence Project, which provides free legal counsel to people who are wrongfully convicted. Joshua Jackson had a chance to meet the men while making When They See Us “and shared this very intense experience of reading through the first two scripts in front of them. We were recreating the end of their childhoods, the worst experience of any of their lives.” Afterwards, he and other actors at the read-through asked them questions. “I was amazed at their grace in the situation: to invite us into their lives, to revisit that space with people who were mostly strangers, to give us access to that first-hand. “We did the best we could to honour their story.”
https://www.thestar.com/
Read entire Wikipedia account at the link below. Here is a passage - but a very relevant one: "Accusations by Donald Trump: On May 1, 1989, real estate magnate Donald Trump called for the return of the death penalty when he took out full-page advertisements in all four of the city's major newspapers. Trump said he wanted the "criminals of every age" who were accused of beating and raping a jogger in Central Park 12 days earlier "to be afraid".[82] The advertisement, which cost an estimated $85,000,[82] said, in part, "Mayor Koch has stated that hate and rancor should be removed from our hearts. I do not think so. I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer ... Yes, Mayor Koch, I want to hate these murderers and I always will. ... How can our great society tolerate the continued brutalization of its citizens by crazed misfits? Criminals must be told that their CIVIL LIBERTIES END WHEN AN ATTACK ON OUR SAFETY BEGINS!" (Trump's caps); [83] In a 1989 interview with CNN, Trump said to Larry King: "The problem with our society is the victim has absolutely no rights and the criminal has unbelievable rights" and that "maybe hate is what we need if we're gonna get something done."[84] Lawyers for the five defendants said that Trump's advertisement had inflamed public opinion. After Reyes confessed to the crime and said he acted alone, one of the defendants' lawyers, Michael W. Warren, said, "I think Donald Trump at the very least owes a real apology to this community and to the young men and their families."[82] Protests were held outside Trump Tower in October 2002 with protestors chanting, "Trump is a chump!"[82] Trump was unapologetic at the time, saying, "I don't mind if they picket. I like pickets."[82] After the city announced in June 2014 that they would settle with the defendants for more than $40 million, Trump wrote an opinion article for the New York Daily News. He called the settlement "a disgrace" and said that the group's guilt was still likely: "Settling doesn't mean innocence. ... Speak to the detectives on the case and try listening to the facts. These young men do not exactly have the pasts of angels."[85] According to Yusef Salaam, Trump "was the fire starter", as "common citizens were being manipulated and swayed into believing that we were guilty." Salaam and his family received death threats after papers ran Trump's full-page ad. Warren argued that Trump's advertisements played a role in securing conviction, saying that "he poisoned the minds of many people who lived in New York City and who, rightfully, had a natural affinity for the victim," and that "notwithstanding the jurors' assertions that they could be fair and impartial, some of them or their families, who naturally have influence, had to be affected by the inflammatory rhetoric in the ads." The Guardian wrote in 2016 that the case and the media attention reflected the racial dynamics at the time; a similar attack took place soon after in Brooklyn on May 2, 1989,[86] involving a black woman who was raped and thrown from the roof of a four-story building, but received little media attention.[42] Her case was brought to Trump's attention. He visited the victim in the hospital and promised to pay her medical expenses.[87][88] It is not known whether Trump actually paid anything.[89] In October 2016, when Trump campaigned to be president, he declared that the Central Park Five were guilty and stated that their convictions should never have been vacated. Trump told CNN: "They admitted they were guilty. The police doing the original investigation say they were guilty. The fact that that case was settled with so much evidence against them is outrageous. And the woman, so badly injured, will never be the same."[90] Conservative commentator Ann Coulter presented an argument describing the actions of the attack, Trump's ad, and the nuances of the case within the prism of DNA knowledge of the 1980s.[91] Trump's statement attracted criticism from the Central Park Five themselves[92] as well as others, including Republican U.S. Senator John McCain, who called Trump's responses "outrageous statements about the innocent men in the Central Park Five case" and cited it as one of many causes prompting him to retract his endorsement of Trump.[93] Salaam said that he had falsely confessed out of coercion, after having been mistreated by police while in custody, deprived of food, drink or sleep for over 24 hours.[94] Documentarian Ken Burns called Trump's comments "out and out racist" and "the height of vulgarity".
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog:
------------------------------
PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "When They See Us shows detectives using manipulation, intimidation and violence to interrogate the boys without lawyers or family members present, wearing down the frightened, tired and hungry teens during hours of questioning until they agreed to make videotaped “confessions” in the hopes they’d be allowed to go home. There was no DNA or other physical evidence tying the boys to the attack, nor any eyewitnesses, but they were convicted in two separate trials thanks to those confessions, despite discrepancies in the accounts and the fact they had recanted. They served six to 14 years behind bars (in adult prisons in Wise’s case) before serial rapist Matias Reyes confessed. I tell Jackson, Underwood and fellow American actor Christopher Jackson, who plays Raymond’s lawyer, that I watched the series’ courtroom scenes feeling the teens would have to be exonerated based on the lack of evidence, despite knowing the outcome of the case. “You just described our experience shooting it,” says Christopher Jackson. “I would imagine it’s the same (experience) that the viewer has,” feeling “shock, frustration, astonishment” and also “impotence we couldn’t change what we knew was coming. “One of the things I want people to come away knowing is that this kind of thing happens all the time,” adds Underwood. “A lot of Black and brown people who see this project, they know what to expect. They’re gonna get railroaded. When people survive it and come out the other end, it’s something to celebrate.” The Central Park Five did indeed come out the other end."
------------------------------
STORY: "Here’s why the story of the Central Park Five has to be told today, says Joshua Jackson," by reporter Debra Yeo, published by The Toronto Star on May 26, 2019. (Debra Yeo is a deputy entertainment editor and a contributor to the Star’s Entertainment section.)
GIST: Canadian actor Joshua Jackson was just 10 and living in British Columbia when five teenagers, four Black, one Hispanic, were charged with raping and assaulting the white woman known as the “Central Park Jogger” in New York in April 1989. “I don’t think I ever had a formed opinion of it at that age,” he says in a phone interview. But that doesn’t alter his passion for telling the story now of what happened to those boys. He co-stars as the lawyer of one of the teens in Ava DuVernay’s Netflix miniseries When They See Us. The boys’ convictions were vacated in 2002, after they had already spent years in prison, when the real rapist confessed. They were awarded $41 million (U.S.) in 2014 to settle a lawsuit against the city. Yet, there are still people who maintain the so-called “Central Park Five” were involved in the attack, among them Donald Trump, who took out full page ads advocating for the death penalty after the five were arrested. When They See Us sets out a heartbreakingly convincing case that they were victims of an egregious miscarriage of justice by a system that concluded their mere presence in the park that night was proof of their guilt. “Part of the reason why I think this story is so important and pertinent right now, I think we still have that same rush to judgment,” says Jackson, who plays lawyer Mickey Joseph, who defended Antron McCray, just 15 when he was arrested. “Part of the way that judgment is formed is by media narratives. The broad public narrative was that these children, these boys, were thugs, a gang, were a wolf pack wilding out in the park. It is important to remember that didn’t happen by accident. “It was part of a concerted effort to dehumanize these children so they could be railroaded through the system.” American actor Blair Underwood plays Bobby Burns, lawyer for Yusef Salaam, who was also 15 at his arrest. Underwood calls what happened to the teens “a slow lynching” as opposed to today’s “swift and unjust administration of judgment against undeserving Black men and women and children,” as seen in cellphone and body cam videos of Black people assaulted and killed by police. “It’s all in the same category of crimes against humanity,” he says. And Jackson has a special message for Canadian viewers who might be tempted to “wag (their) fingers and say, ‘Gosh, it’s so terrible down there.’” The injustice visited on people of colour in When They See Us “is very much what we do to the First Nations,” he says. “It’s the robbing of a culture and the systematic injustice visited upon a culture. That is our corollary.” On April 19, 1989, 28-year-old investment banker Trisha Meili was raped, savagely beaten and left for dead while out jogging in Central Park. That same night, Kevin Richardson and Raymond Santana, both 14, were arrested for “unlawful assembly” for being part of a group of teens accused of harassing joggers, cyclists and others in a different part of the park. Police quickly concluded the boys had been involved in Meili’s attack. McCray, Salaam and Korey Wise, 16, were brought in for questioning the next day. When They See Us shows detectives using manipulation, intimidation and violence to interrogate the boys without lawyers or family members present, wearing down the frightened, tired and hungry teens during hours of questioning until they agreed to make videotaped “confessions” in the hopes they’d be allowed to go home. There was no DNA or other physical evidence tying the boys to the attack, nor any eyewitnesses, but they were convicted in two separate trials thanks to those confessions, despite discrepancies in the accounts and the fact they had recanted. They served six to 14 years behind bars (in adult prisons in Wise’s case) before serial rapist Matias Reyes confessed. I tell Jackson, Underwood and fellow American actor Christopher Jackson, who plays Raymond’s lawyer, that I watched the series’ courtroom scenes feeling the teens would have to be exonerated based on the lack of evidence, despite knowing the outcome of the case. “You just described our experience shooting it,” says Christopher Jackson. “I would imagine it’s the same (experience) that the viewer has,” feeling “shock, frustration, astonishment” and also “impotence we couldn’t change what we knew was coming. “One of the things I want people to come away knowing is that this kind of thing happens all the time,” adds Underwood. “A lot of Black and brown people who see this project, they know what to expect. They’re gonna get railroaded. When people survive it and come out the other end, it’s something to celebrate.” The Central Park Five did indeed come out the other end. We see the real men’s faces at the end of the miniseries, just before the credits roll. Four of the five are fathers now. Santana founded a clothing company and Salaam is an author and public speaker. Wise, the only one of the five to remain in New York, started the Korey Wise Innocence Project, which provides free legal counsel to people who are wrongfully convicted. Joshua Jackson had a chance to meet the men while making When They See Us “and shared this very intense experience of reading through the first two scripts in front of them. We were recreating the end of their childhoods, the worst experience of any of their lives.” Afterwards, he and other actors at the read-through asked them questions. “I was amazed at their grace in the situation: to invite us into their lives, to revisit that space with people who were mostly strangers, to give us access to that first-hand. “We did the best we could to honour their story.”
When They See Us debuts May 31 on Netflix."
The entire story can be read at:
The entire story can be read at:
Read entire Wikipedia account at the link below. Here is a passage - but a very relevant one: "Accusations by Donald Trump: On May 1, 1989, real estate magnate Donald Trump called for the return of the death penalty when he took out full-page advertisements in all four of the city's major newspapers. Trump said he wanted the "criminals of every age" who were accused of beating and raping a jogger in Central Park 12 days earlier "to be afraid".[82] The advertisement, which cost an estimated $85,000,[82] said, in part, "Mayor Koch has stated that hate and rancor should be removed from our hearts. I do not think so. I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer ... Yes, Mayor Koch, I want to hate these murderers and I always will. ... How can our great society tolerate the continued brutalization of its citizens by crazed misfits? Criminals must be told that their CIVIL LIBERTIES END WHEN AN ATTACK ON OUR SAFETY BEGINS!" (Trump's caps); [83] In a 1989 interview with CNN, Trump said to Larry King: "The problem with our society is the victim has absolutely no rights and the criminal has unbelievable rights" and that "maybe hate is what we need if we're gonna get something done."[84] Lawyers for the five defendants said that Trump's advertisement had inflamed public opinion. After Reyes confessed to the crime and said he acted alone, one of the defendants' lawyers, Michael W. Warren, said, "I think Donald Trump at the very least owes a real apology to this community and to the young men and their families."[82] Protests were held outside Trump Tower in October 2002 with protestors chanting, "Trump is a chump!"[82] Trump was unapologetic at the time, saying, "I don't mind if they picket. I like pickets."[82] After the city announced in June 2014 that they would settle with the defendants for more than $40 million, Trump wrote an opinion article for the New York Daily News. He called the settlement "a disgrace" and said that the group's guilt was still likely: "Settling doesn't mean innocence. ... Speak to the detectives on the case and try listening to the facts. These young men do not exactly have the pasts of angels."[85] According to Yusef Salaam, Trump "was the fire starter", as "common citizens were being manipulated and swayed into believing that we were guilty." Salaam and his family received death threats after papers ran Trump's full-page ad. Warren argued that Trump's advertisements played a role in securing conviction, saying that "he poisoned the minds of many people who lived in New York City and who, rightfully, had a natural affinity for the victim," and that "notwithstanding the jurors' assertions that they could be fair and impartial, some of them or their families, who naturally have influence, had to be affected by the inflammatory rhetoric in the ads." The Guardian wrote in 2016 that the case and the media attention reflected the racial dynamics at the time; a similar attack took place soon after in Brooklyn on May 2, 1989,[86] involving a black woman who was raped and thrown from the roof of a four-story building, but received little media attention.[42] Her case was brought to Trump's attention. He visited the victim in the hospital and promised to pay her medical expenses.[87][88] It is not known whether Trump actually paid anything.[89] In October 2016, when Trump campaigned to be president, he declared that the Central Park Five were guilty and stated that their convictions should never have been vacated. Trump told CNN: "They admitted they were guilty. The police doing the original investigation say they were guilty. The fact that that case was settled with so much evidence against them is outrageous. And the woman, so badly injured, will never be the same."[90] Conservative commentator Ann Coulter presented an argument describing the actions of the attack, Trump's ad, and the nuances of the case within the prism of DNA knowledge of the 1980s.[91] Trump's statement attracted criticism from the Central Park Five themselves[92] as well as others, including Republican U.S. Senator John McCain, who called Trump's responses "outrageous statements about the innocent men in the Central Park Five case" and cited it as one of many causes prompting him to retract his endorsement of Trump.[93] Salaam said that he had falsely confessed out of coercion, after having been mistreated by police while in custody, deprived of food, drink or sleep for over 24 hours.[94] Documentarian Ken Burns called Trump's comments "out and out racist" and "the height of vulgarity".
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/
