[A-List] Wilding

["bon moun" <sherrynstan@xxxxxxx>]

"WILDING" AND OTHER CRIMES OF INJUSTICE

by Marty Jezer

    Many readers, I am sure, will recall the story of the "Central Park Jogger." She was the young white woman, an investment banker, who on April 19, 1989, was beaten, raped and left "in a puddle of mud and blood" in New York’s Central Park, near Harlem. That night, police arrested a group of young black teenagers "wilding" in Central Park. Shortly afterwards, and independent of the group’s arrest, the woman was found and taken to the hospital. She was near death and in a coma for twelve days. When she regained consciousness, she did not remember what had happened to her.

    Five of the youths were accused of beating and raping the woman. Four "confessed" to the crime on videotape though they later recanted. The fifth always maintained his innocence. All were convicted in a jury trial. The videotape, shown in court, was the prosecution’s main evidence. The twenty-hours of interrogation, leading up to the confession, had not been videotaped and was not considered by the jury.

    The case of the Central Park Jogger is one of the landmark crimes, like the murder of Kitty Genovese, that has become an urban legend to describe and condemn an entire culture. Kitty Genovese was the woman who, in March 1964, was attacked and stabbed to death over a 35-minute period in front of an apartment building near her home in Queens, New York. People in the building heard her screams but did not call the police or come to her rescue. The case was used to symbolize the lack of community in urban life; the fact that people could no longer depend upon one another as neighbors.

    In a similar way, the beating of the Central Park Jogger was used to signify a breakdown in the behavior of urban black youth. The media focused on it, as did politicians, to call attention to the alleged criminality of ghetto culture. Five poor black kids, whose lives were obviously leading them nowhere, destroying the life of a young white woman, obviously successful. Race, especially when mixed with class, always makes good copy.

    The murderer of Kitty Genovese was quickly arrested. He confessed to other killings and is now serving a life-sentence. The story of the Central Park Jogger seemed to have had a similar finality. The youths were tried, convicted and sent to prison. However, in a stunning rebuke to "the system" and its apologists, new evidence proves that the five youths were innocent.

    A few months ago, a convicted rapist named Matais Reyes confessed to the crime. A DNA test confirmed that he raped the jogger. More disturbing was the discovery that Reyes had raped another woman in the same place two days earlier. The police knew that that crime was committed by a single male. That they failed to inform the youths’ defense attorneys would have been enough, suggests New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, to have the case thrown out on a legal technicality.

    But that misses the point. The Harlem youths do not need a legal technicality to assert their innocence. They didn’t do it! The crime didn’t happen as portrayed by the prosecution, the media, and racist "let’s get tough on crime" politicians. In jail, the youths were consistently denied parole because they failed to show "remorse" for the crime they did not commit. More generally, black males and the community of Harlem were condemned for a crime of which they were not responsible.

    We’ve been down this road before. Remember the case of Charles Stuart, a wealthy Bostonian who murdered his girlfriend and then blamed it on a black male? The media went berserk over black criminality and the police arrested a hapless black innocent and charged him with the murder. Only when the white boyfriend confessed to the crime before committing suicide was the black man set free.

    Remember the case of Susan Smith in South Carolina? She killed her two children and also blamed it on a black male. To the credit of the South Carolina police, they investigated her story and charged her with the crime. She’s now in jail.

    Police and prosecutors often reflect the prejudices of the larger culture. They make mistakes and need oversight. The American Civil Liberties Union wants police to videotape not just confessions, but all interrogations. All the states should follow Alaska and Minnesota and pass such a law.

    In the Washington D.C. area, one sharp-shooting sniper has spread fear throughout the population. One supposed eye-witness has described him as "middle eastern." Is this a true description or a subjective perception shaped by prejudice, current events, and wishful thinking. I hope the police have not stopped looking at white guys on the basis of this one eye-witness.

    If the Central Park jogger had died, and New York had then had the death penalty, the five black youths might not be around to reclaim their reputations and enjoy their freedom. Since 1973, 102 people in 25 states have been released from death row with evidence of their innocence.

    One has to assume that among those executed were many innocents. Given these facts, support for the death penalty is no longer viable. Those who continue to support capital punishment are, in point of fact, advocating the murder, by government officials, of innocent people.

    Many New Yorkers stood up to protest the rush to justice in the case of the Harlem youths. They, in turn, were denigrated as "soft-on-crime, bleeding heart liberals." To arrest and convict innocent people, much less kill them, does not remove criminals from the street. Nor does it make our dangerous world any safer. This goes for all crime, even crimes of rape and murder and, especially now, brutal attacks of terror. All power to the bleeding hearts! Sending innocent people to jail or the execution chamber simply adds the victims of injustice to the victims of the actual perpetrators.

 

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Marty Jezer writes from Brattleboro, Vermont and welcomes comments at mjez@sover.net.