by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
It was a shameful entry in the annals of urban crime and punishment in America, and it should have been a shameful chapter in the life and times of Donald John Trump as well, but Trump, ever the narcissist, cannot admit that he was once very, very wrong.
Back in 1989 five young males between the ages of fourteen and sixteen were arrested and charged with the assault and rape of a young female jogger in New York's Central Park. The white jogger, an up-and-coming business professional, was not killed in the incident, but she was severely injured. Confessions were coerced form the five defendants - and later withdrawn - and they were remanded to prison where they served more than a dozen years. Then in 2002 their sentences were vacated after another man, a serial rapist, admitted committing the crime - an admission that was backed up by DNA evidence.
The original group - four Blacks and an Hispanic - were eventually awarded settlements a decade after their release that totaled $41 million from New York City and $3.9 million from the state of New York. Then, as a sort of capstone to their horrific ordeal, this year Netflix completed a four-part documentary on the travesty of justice entitled "When They See Us."
It's beginning to come to an end for all of the parties involved, save one.
Back in 1989 New York businessman Donald J. Trump got personally involved in the matter when he paid for a full-page newspaper advertisement which called for reinstatement of the death penalty - as a direct result of the arrest and publicity surrounding the Central Park Five - and for more policemen to be put into service on the streets of New York. Now, thirty years later after the coerced confessions have been withdrawn and after another man has been proven to have committed the heinous crime, Donald Trump still will not be shamed into apologizing or even admitting that he was wrong. He has again dredged up his Charlottesville "logic" about good people on both sides of the issue, and he seems to firmly believe that confessions cannot be coerced or recanted. At one point these young boys said they were guilty, so they must have been guilty.
And Trump is, after all, Trump, a man whose pronouncements are literally destined to be carved in stone. How could he possibly be wrong?
And the young men were, after all, minority youth - people with no value at all in the grand scheme of things. How could they possibly be innocent?
Citizen Journalist
It was a shameful entry in the annals of urban crime and punishment in America, and it should have been a shameful chapter in the life and times of Donald John Trump as well, but Trump, ever the narcissist, cannot admit that he was once very, very wrong.
Back in 1989 five young males between the ages of fourteen and sixteen were arrested and charged with the assault and rape of a young female jogger in New York's Central Park. The white jogger, an up-and-coming business professional, was not killed in the incident, but she was severely injured. Confessions were coerced form the five defendants - and later withdrawn - and they were remanded to prison where they served more than a dozen years. Then in 2002 their sentences were vacated after another man, a serial rapist, admitted committing the crime - an admission that was backed up by DNA evidence.
The original group - four Blacks and an Hispanic - were eventually awarded settlements a decade after their release that totaled $41 million from New York City and $3.9 million from the state of New York. Then, as a sort of capstone to their horrific ordeal, this year Netflix completed a four-part documentary on the travesty of justice entitled "When They See Us."
It's beginning to come to an end for all of the parties involved, save one.
Back in 1989 New York businessman Donald J. Trump got personally involved in the matter when he paid for a full-page newspaper advertisement which called for reinstatement of the death penalty - as a direct result of the arrest and publicity surrounding the Central Park Five - and for more policemen to be put into service on the streets of New York. Now, thirty years later after the coerced confessions have been withdrawn and after another man has been proven to have committed the heinous crime, Donald Trump still will not be shamed into apologizing or even admitting that he was wrong. He has again dredged up his Charlottesville "logic" about good people on both sides of the issue, and he seems to firmly believe that confessions cannot be coerced or recanted. At one point these young boys said they were guilty, so they must have been guilty.
And Trump is, after all, Trump, a man whose pronouncements are literally destined to be carved in stone. How could he possibly be wrong?
And the young men were, after all, minority youth - people with no value at all in the grand scheme of things. How could they possibly be innocent?
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