New York City Councillor Yusef Salaam: (False confession case); 'Wonkette' scribe Robyn Pennacchia says the Exonerated Five member "Is Being Real Classy About The Trump Verdict,' noting that: "In 1989, Donald Trump took out a full page ad in the New York Times calling for the Central Park Five to be put to death. It would later turn out that those 14- and 15-year-old boys he wanted to kill were entirely innocent and that someone else had committed the crime — which is why they are now known as the Exonerated Five instead. To this day, Trump has refused to apologize and has, in fact, continued to insist that they are guilty — despite the fact that we now know the assailant was Matias Reyes, a serial rapist who confessed and whose DNA was a match. Now, one of those boys, Yusef Salaam, is on the New York City Council and Donald Trump has been found guilty on 34 felony charges. Oh, how the tables have turned! You’d think Mr. Salaam would be gloating, but he’s not."

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 (especially young suspects)  are to widely used interrogation methods  such as  the notorious ‘Reid Technique.’ As  all too many of this Blog's post have shown, I also recognize that pressure for false confessions can take many forms, up to and including physical violence, even physical and mental torture.

Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog:

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BACKGROUND ONE:  (From headnote to a previous post; ( January 6, 2021)): "The 'Exonerated 5': Deceptive interrogations; False confessions; A first-hand account explanation as to why anyone would confess to a crime they did not commit - provided by three of the five men who were originally known as, 'The Central Park Five.'...Yusef Salaam, Kevin Richardson and Raymond Santana...At the time of our arrests in 1989, we were just boys — Kevin and Raymond, the youngest among us, were only 14 — and we came to be known as the “Central Park Five.” Now we are known as the “Exonerated Five,” and, largely because of Ava DuVernay’s series “When They See Us,” the world knows our stories. But what people may not realize is that what happened to us isn’t just the past — it’s the present. The methods that the police used to coerce us, five terrified young boys, into falsely confessing are still commonly used today. But in its coming session, New York State legislators have the power to change that."

 Yusef Saalem, Kevin Richardson and  Raymond Santana

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BACKGROUND  TWO: (From a previous post - April 5, 2023); " "In 1989, Salaam was one of five Black and Latino teenagers wrongly convicted of sexually  a white woman in New York’s Central Park.  At the time, Trump bought a full-page ad in The New York Times calling for the state to adopt the death penalty over the case. “I want to hate these murderers and I always will,” Trump wrote in his ad. “I am not looking to psychoanalyze or understand them, I am looking to punish them.” Despite Salaam and the four others — Korey Wise, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Antron McCray — being exonerated in 2002, as well as DNA evidence identifying the actual attacker, Trump never walked back his comments.  “You have people on both sides of that,” Trump said in 2019. “They admitted their guilt.” Last week, after the news of Trump’s indictment broke, Salaam called the moment “karma.” 

https://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2023/04/central-park-five-yusef-salaam-korey.html

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QUOTE OF  THE DAY:  "Even though Donald Trump wanted us executed even when it was proven that we were innocent, I do not take pleasure at today's verdict.

We should be proud that today the system worked. But we should be somber that we Americans have an ex-President who has been found guilty on 34 separate felony charges. And while today might not be as shocking as January 6th, it is equally profound."

Yousef Salaam:

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STORY: "Exonerated Five Member Yusef Salaam Is Being Real Classy About The Trump Verdict,"  by Robyn Pennacchia, an excellent scribe for the 'liberal' publication 'Wonkette whose motto is 'You can handle the truth' published on May 31, 2024.

SUB-HEADING: "Damn, some people are so impressive."

GIST: "In 1989, Donald Trump took out a full page ad in the New York Times calling for the Central Park Five to be put to death.

 It would later turn out that those 14- and 15-year-old boys he wanted to kill were entirely innocent and that someone else had committed the crime — which is why they are now known as the Exonerated Five instead. 

To this day, Trump has refused to apologize and has, in fact, continued to insist that they are guilty — despite the fact that we now know the assailant was Matias Reyes, a serial rapist who confessed and whose DNA was a match.

Now, one of those boys, Yusef Salaam, is on the New York City Council and Donald Trump has been found guilty on 34 felony charges. Oh, how the tables have turned!

You’d think Mr. Salaam would be gloating, but he’s not.

In a statement, Salaam said:

Even though Donald Trump wanted us executed even when it was proven that we were innocent, I do not take pleasure at today's verdict.

We should be proud that today the system worked. But we should be somber that we Americans have an ex-President who has been found guilty on 34 separate felony charges. And while today might not be as shocking as January 6th, it is equally profound.

On January 7th, a large majority of Americans agreed that Trump should never again lead this country.

Let us hope we wake up tomorrow with the same conviction.

We have to do better than this. Because we are better than this.

Salaam spent 1990 to 1997 in prison for a crime he did not commit. That he can think that after what he’s been through is … incredibly impressive. Clearly, the man is a hell of a lot classier than Donald Trump ever dreamed of being.

He’s not the only one to draw a parallel between the two situations.

“This is the same building that Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise all passed into, day after day, as they endured a show trial for a crime they did not commit,” Reverend Al Sharpton said in a statement.

“These children had to hear vitriol from people whose anger was incited by a man who spent a small fortune on full-page ads calling for their execution. Now the shoe is on the other foot. Donald Trump is the criminal, and those five men are exonerated. I’m reminded of Dr. King’s proverb that the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Again, that is some pretty impressive optimism and grace.

It’s still up in the air if Trump is actually going to be incarcerated or not, and a lot less up in the air if those who were already planning to vote for him will be put off by this conviction. 

But hopefully Salaam will be right and a majority of the American people will decide that they do not want to elect a man who was just correctly convicted of so many crimes.

I think we’d all like to believe that we’re better than that (even if other people make it real hard sometimes).

The entire commentary can be read at:

https://www.wonkette.com/p/exonerated-five-member-yusef-salaam?utm_medium=email

PUBLISHER'S NOTE:  I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. 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/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com.  Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.

SEE BREAKDOWN OF  SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG,  AT THE LINK BELOW:  HL:

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985

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FINAL WORD:  (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases):  "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."

Lawyer Radha Natarajan:

Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;

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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions.   They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!

Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;

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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:

David Hammond, one of Broadwater's attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, "Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it's the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.

https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-12348801

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