New York Mayor Bill de Blasio is demanding a quick settlement of the lawsuit brought by the five men convicted of one of the most sickening crimes in the city's history: the attack on the Central Park jogger in 1989.
The plaintiffs are demanding $50 million apiece -- for going to prison for a rape that they committed, as detailed in Chapter 13 of "Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Destroying America." Abner Louima got $5.8 million for a shockingly brutal police assault on him, and he was just an innocent bystander.
The "Central Park Five," as PBS documentarian Ken Burns has dubbed them, aren't exactly Emmett Till (as Burns would have you believe). Even if they were innocent of the Central Park rape, which they aren't, the reason they were originally arrested was that they were rampaging through the park, assaulting people.
Even after they began denying the rape, the defendants continued to admit committing these other attacks. How'd you like to be one of the people badly beaten in the park that night watching your tax dollars go to pay your assailants millions of dollars?
All those convictions -- on the rape as well as the assaults -- have been vacated because an aging district attorney wanted a glowing obituary in The New York Times.
In 2002, the ancient Robert Morgenthau, Manhattan district attorney, issued a report recommending that the convictions in the Central Park rape case be vacated. Justice Charles Tejada (Fordham Law 2009 Hispanic Heritage Award winner!) granted his request.
Liberals are opposed to rape in the abstract, but when it comes to actual rapists, they're all for them.
The D.A.'s report was based solely on the confession of Matias Reyes, career criminal, serial rapist and murderer. Reyes had absolutely nothing to lose by confessing to the rape -- the statute of limitations had run -- and much to gain by claiming he acted alone: He got a favorable prison transfer and the admiration of his fellow inmates for smearing the police.
While dumping on the police for screwing up the investigation, Morgenthau wouldn't let the cops interview Reyes themselves, even though his "confession" was the sole evidence that he raped and brutalized the jogger by himself.
Not only were the police prohibited from interviewing Reyes or giving him a polygraph, but Morgenthau ordered other inmates not to talk to any police investigators about their conversations with Reyes. First the D.A. slimed the cops, then he ran interference for a rapist-murderer.
New York journalist Nicholas Stix reports that one inmate says Reyes told him he heard the jogger's screams and raped her only after the "Central Park Five" had finished with her.
The media proclaim those five rapists innocent based on their own over-excited reports that the DNA found on the jogger matched that of Reyes, but none of the others!
Yeah, we knew that. It was always known that semen on the jogger did not match any of the defendants. ("DNA Expert: No Semen Links to Defendants," The Associated Press, July 14, 1990.)
Hallmark should have a greeting card: "Guess whose semen wasn't found anywhere on the rape victim?" (Open card) "I'm so proud of you, son!"
Prosecutor Elizabeth Lederer expressly reminded the jurors of the missing rapist in her summation to the jury: "Others who were not caught raped her and got away." Now we know who "got away."
DNA wasn't the evidence that convicted the "Central Park Five." It's hard to believe now, but in 1989 DNA was rarely used to convict anyone, so it wouldn't have been carefully collected by police investigators. DNA identifications had only been invented a few years earlier and were not even permitted in New York courts until six months before the Central Park wilding.
This case was solved with old-fashioned police work. After the first 911 calls came in, the police arrested some of the thugs in the park that very night. Then they arrested those named as part of the wolf pack by the first detainees.
For example, one boy picked up in the park told the cops -- without prompting -- "I know who did the murder. I know who did the murder. I know where he lives and I'll tell you his name." He named one of the five convicted of the attack on the jogger, Antron McCray. (The night of the attack, no one expected the jogger to live.)
Of more than three dozen hoodlums brought in for questioning, only 10 were charged with any crimes, and only five of those were charged with raping the jogger. All those charged with the jogger's rape gave detailed, corroborated, videotaped confessions, after full Miranda warnings, four of the five in the presence of an adult relative.
Recall that none of them -- including the police -- could have known whether the jogger would emerge from her coma and be able to identify her attackers. (She emerged, but blocked all memory of the attack.) All five confessed to assisting the attack on the jogger, but none to raping her themselves. That's enough for a rape conviction.
In Antron McCray's 34-minute videotaped statement, for example, he said:
"Everybody started hitting her and stuff. She was on the ground, everybody stompin' and everything. ... I grabbed one arm, some other kid grabbed one arm and we grabbed her legs and stuff. Then we all took turns getting on her, getting on top of her. ... I just like, my penis wasn't in her. I didn't do nothing to her ... I was just doing it so everybody ... Everybody would just like, would know I did it."
There was other incriminating evidence, all of which is currently being ignored by the media and PBS documentarians.
Melody Jackson, whose brother was friends with defendant Kharey Wise, testified -- reluctantly -- that she talked to Wise by phone when he was at Rikers Island and that he told her that he didn't rape the jogger, he "only held her legs down while Kevin (Richardson) f--ked her." She originally volunteered this information to the police thinking it would be helpful to Wise.
(The District Attorney's report that recommended vacating the sentences described the above exchange as: "Wise replied that he had not had sex with her, but had only held and fondled the victim's leg.")
Other witnesses provided various corroborating details to the police, such as one who said Kevin Richardson told him, "We just raped somebody," and another who heard Raymond Santana and another boy laughing about how "we made a woman bleed."
Two witnesses independently told police they saw several of the defendants walking from the 102nd Street traverse area where the jogger was raped. One said he realized the significance of that fact only when he saw where the memorial to the jogger in the park was.
When Raymond Santana was being driven to the precinct the night of the wilding, he blurted out: "I had nothing to do with the rape. All I did was feel the woman's tits." Wait! Who said anything about rape? The cops had not asked him about any rape.
Two of the defendants, Santana and Richardson, independently brought investigators to the precise location of the attack on the jogger, something only the perpetrators could have done.
The evidence against Richardson also included his vivid description of the attack -- given on videotape, in the presence of his father -- and a deep scratch wound on his cheek that he admitted was from the jogger. Oh, also -- the crotch of the underwear from the night of the attack was stained with semen, grass, dirt and debris.
Contrary to media reports, there was hair, blood or semen on all five of the defendants.
In the opposite of a rush to judgment, two multi-ethnic juries deliberated for 10 days and 11 days, respectively, before convicting the five defendants of rape or sexual abuse -- as well as the other assaults that night, mysteriously vacated by Justice Tejada -- and acquitting all but one on the most serious charge, attempted murder.
But now de Blasio wants to hold down our legs while the "Central Park Five" rape us, again.
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