More than two decades later, New Yorkers still feel the impact
of the “Central Park Jogger” case: the arrests of five teenage boys
— all African-American or Latino — falsely charged with raping a
young woman and leaving her for dead.
The woman, a 28-year-old investment banker, was found unconscious
in the park on the evening of April 19, 1989. After extensive
questioning, the police publicly declared that the boys, some as
young as 14, had confessed. No physical evidence linked them to the
crime. Over the next year and a half, juries convicted the
youths.
Natalie Byfield,
Ph.D., now Assistant Professor of
Sociology at St. John’s University, was a reporter for the
New York Daily News. At the time, she was assigned to
follow the victim’s recovery. Yet as the investigation unfolded,
Dr. Byfield — and some of her colleagues — became uneasy. “There
were aspects of the case I questioned all along,” she said. “Things
simply didn’t add up.”
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