I'm not sure the Central Park Five really want a civil trial on what happened the night of April 19, 1989, but by suing Donald Trump for defamation, that's what they're going to get.
The alleged defamation was Trump's typically garbled response to Kamala Harris' lie at ABC's presidential debate last month, about something that happened 35 years ago. She claimed that Trump had called for "the execution of five young Black and Latino boys who were innocent."
Actually, Trump's much-maligned ad in The New York Times never mentioned the Five, who weren't remotely eligible for the death penalty, anyway. If everyone involved here weren't a public figure, Harris' accusation, as well as the Five's legal filing, and every Times story for the past decade mentioning the ad, would all be defamatory, too.
But since they brought it up, let's have a trial! Truth is an absolute defense to defamation, and one thing the public hasn't gotten much of is the truth about the Central Park Five: Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson and Korey Wise.
Here's some testimony we'd like to see:
How did the detectives get the boys' parents to go along with videotaping their sons as they confessed -- falsely, they now claim -- to the rape of the jogger, in addition to vicious attacks on bicyclists, joggers and other park-goers?
Weren't the detectives worried that if they bullied five innocent boys into making false confessions, the jogger might suddenly emerge from her coma and be able to identify her attackers? What if she woke up and blurted out, “My boyfriend did it!”? Boy, would their faces be red.
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In any event, it will be great to see those videotapes again!
As long as the detectives were making up confessions anyway, why not have the youths forthrightly admit to raping the jogger? Instead, all five readily admitted to the other crimes, but each of them minimized their role in the rape, as is typical for suspects in sex crimes cases. They confessed — to the police, to detectives and to their friends and acquaintances -- only to fondling or restraining the jogger while others raped her.
Thus, for example, when Santana was picked up by the police, he blurted out, “I had nothing to do with the rape. All I did was feel the woman’s tits.” The police didn't know about the jogger yet. How did Santana?
Melody Jackson, sister of a friend of Wise's, volunteered to the police that Wise told her he didn’t rape the jogger, he “only held her legs down while Kevin [Richardson] f—ked her.”
(Maybe not strictly relevant to the case at hand, but how dumb does she feel now, thinking this admission would help Wise?)
How did Wise know that -- as Detective August Jonza's contemporaneous notes show -- someone he thought was named "Rudy" had stolen the jogger's Walkman? Police had no way of knowing about the Walkman until 13 years later, when serial rapist Matias Reyes said so.
If it wasn't the Five -- and I'm assured it was not -- then who really bashed ex-Marine John Loughlin in the head with a lead pipe, kicked and beat him unconscious, putting him in the hospital for two nights? Why would Loughlin identify one of the Five as his attacker in a police lineup?
Subpoenas will also have to go out to the other 30 or so youths in the park that night because so many of them implicated members of the Five in both the beatdowns and the rape -- such as overhearing a couple of them laughingly say they "made a woman bleed."
It's always been a mystery why Salaam (New York City Council member, honored speaker at the Democratic National Convention and namesake of a gate to Central Park) confessed to the attack immediately after Detective Thomas McKenna told him, “I don’t care what you say to me. We have fingerprints on the jogger’s pants.”
Upon hearing that, Salaam said, “I was there, but I didn’t rape her.”
But why, Yusef? Why confess if you knew your fingerprints couldn't possibly be anywhere near the jogger, of whose rape you are entirely innocent? Maybe the videotape will jog your memory.
Salaam also told detectives that one of the wilding youths said, “Let's get a white girl.” Who said that? If Salaam made it up, I'll be very disappointed in him.
We'll need to hear from Wise's acquaintance Ronald Williams, who told police that the day after the wilding, Wise said, “You heard about that woman that was beat up and raped in the park last night. That was us!”
When the case was reopened in 2002, Williams stuck by his story.
Having had 35 years to think about it, does Richardson finally have an explanation for how the crotch of his underwear got smeared with semen, grass stains and dirt that night?
The last two crucial witnesses are confirmed rapist Reyes, whose DNA was on the jogger, and then-assistant district attorney Nancy Ryan, who pushed through the Five's "exoneration," despite their detailed, videotaped confessions and guilty verdicts from two majority-minority juries.
Questions for Reyes: When you confessed to raping the jogger, did you know you could not be punished for it? Did you know you would instead receive a favorable prison transfer? You were in the same prison as one of the Five, Wise. Are other inmates telling the truth when they say he was threatening you unless you signed an affidavit prepared by his lawyer, claiming you acted alone?
Is your former cellmate telling the truth when he says you did not, in fact, act alone, but heard the jogger's screams and ran over to join the fun?
For ADA Ryan: Why did you prohibit the police from interviewing Reyes?
If DNA is the only acceptable evidence in a criminal trial, how were homicides proved before the 1990s, when DNA evidence first began to be used in criminal trials? Would “videotaped confessions” figure into your answer?
Is it true that your bitter office rival was Linda Fairstein, head of the sex crimes unit, who oversaw the original cases? How much did it burn you up that she caught the case instead of you?
I have many more witnesses I'd like to put on the stand, including the jogger's doctors, who say they distinctly saw many different handprints on the jogger's body, and that her injuries prove that Reyes could not possibly have acted alone.
This is a wonderful opportunity to prove the truth in a court of law! They asked for it.
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