In 1989, five black and Latino teens, 14 to 16 years of age, found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time, not in the trivial sense, but in a city out of control amid crime, racial tension, and gross economic disparities at a time when the citizenry was desperate for solutions. How and why they confessed falsely to the beating and rape of a white female jogger in New York's Central Park is the subject of the documentary The Central Park Five, based on the research of Sarah Burns and on her book of the same name. The first edition of her book in 2011 was subtitled A Chronicle of a City Wilding, referencing a group-violence phenomenon to which the 1989 crime was misattributed. More important, Burns was characterizing the city of New York and its institutions as a mob engaged in wilding, with these boys, the Central Park Five, as the victims.
A family affair, The Central Park Five film is the product of Sarah Burns, her father Ken Burns, and her husband David McMahon. The documentary is superbly crafted and meticulously researched. The subject matter is complex: the metropolis as an adapting organism, the inequalities of capitalism, race relations, the crack epidemic, the disenfranchisement of lower class youth, and, as Mayor Ed Koch stated, “putting the criminal justice system on trial.” The five suspects became acquainted after each of them had given statements implicating themselves and each other, using information fed to them by detectives or from their imaginations during prolonged and intense interrogations. New Yorkers were fed up; something had to be done about youths running wild in the streets. A defenseless young woman beaten, raped, and left for dead in Central Park, the holy of holies? Intolerable!
The five suspects were Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Korey Wise, Yusef Salaam, and Raymond Santana, Jr, all Harlem residents. There was no evidence against them besides their incongruent statements. Defense questions about how they were mirandized were all rejected by the presiding judge, Justice Thomas Galligan. In her book and film, Burns highlights what forensic psychiatrists know: judges are loath to suppress confessions, because it would prohibit some prosecutions. Four of the youths, with their perplexed parents watching, gave videotaped versions that were shown to the jury. On his mother's advice, Salaam declined. Our impression was that the parents' effectiveness was undermined by several factors: specific misdirection by police and officials, shock from hearing their sons' incriminating statements, and the pervasive social dynamic of low socioeconomic status interacting with law enforcement. Worse, a long-sought serial rapist, Matias Reyes, aka the East Side Slasher, who had been apprehended but never investigated for this incident, was the perpetrator. Although Reyes had been prosecuted for other crimes, the detective handling him failed to see whether Reyes' DNA matched that found on the victim. It would have derailed the prosecution of the boys, who served nearly 7 years as juveniles, except Wise, who was sentenced as an adult and served about 12 years. Reyes, sadly, did not emerge until 2001, when he discovered that Wise, who was still in prison, had been serving time for Reyes' crime. Reyes took responsibility, and there was a DNA match. New York's Supreme Court overturned the convictions in 2002. Civil litigation filed in 2003 has yet to produce a result for the men, now struggling to rejoin mainstream society.
The book, The Central Park Five: The Untold Story Behind One of New York City's Most Infamous Crimes, is a fascinating study of the intersection of culture, psychology, and the politics of fear. Burns points out that the Central Park Jogger case was not an aberration; rather, it was the culmination of pent-up rage in a city held hostage by violence. In each of the six book chapters, she guides readers through the disturbing yet uncomfortably conceivable maze of events and social dynamics that ultimately led to misapplied justice. Chapter One transports readers to the palpable social tensions pervading New York City in the late 1980s, providing an unnerving bird's-eye view of the movements of the Central Park Five on April 19, 1989, and the horrifying crime that would lead to the boys' arrests. Chapter Two focuses on the general police interrogation process and the typical tactics that police employ to elicit confessions. Then, with meticulous detail, Burns describes the boys' interrogation experiences, the various tactics they faced, and the futile efforts of their parents, who were outmaneuvered in their attempts to get their sons home. In Chapter Three, the media's role and the power of racial stereotyping in the case is explored within the context of America's historical racial divide. Chapter Four carefully contrasts the physical evidence of the crime against the mismatched statements of the boys and traces the evolution of introducing DNA evidence into rape cases, the type of evidence that would ultimately lead to the exonerations of the Central Park Five. Chapter Five provides detailed accounts of the criminal trials and eventual convictions of the Central Park Five, while offering insights into the courtroom strategies of the defense and prosecution. Chapter Six describes the painful aftermath that faced the Central Park Five following their convictions and the events that ultimately led to their exoneration. The book's epilogue provides readers with a glimpse at the remarkable recovery of the Central Park Jogger and the struggles of the Central Park Five in their attempts to acclimate to a world that had moved on without them.
The Central Park Five film captures the climate and culture that permitted an institutional blindness that wrought a grossly unjust outcome. Four of the Central Park Five, now adults, are interviewed on camera and one off. In page-turning fashion, we are led, painfully, through press coverage, politics, ambitious prosecutors, protests, and the sacrifice of the defendants to the juggernaut of a city in need of healing. As New York Times reporter Jim Dwyer pointed out, New York was a “social moat” dividing two cities: “Truth, reality, and justice were not part of it.”
The film compels viewers to confront the misconception that an innocent will not bear false witness against himself, as we watch the unfolding events that move the boys from their true denials of guilt to their fateful false confessions. It humanizes the Central Park Five, permitting a view of their individual lives and experiences in a manner that often was absent amid sensational media coverage. This approach is well balanced with attention to the life of Trisha Meili, the Central Park Jogger, a testament to the ability to survive such a horrific crime. Although traumatic brain injury prevented her from remembering the incident, she testified in one of the trials and has written a memoir of her recovery.1 There are newly filmed appearances by Mayors Koch and Dinkins, attorneys, journalists, historians, family members, and psychologist Saul Kassin. Archival footage of Mayor Koch and Governor Cuomo demonstrates the self-congratulatory “We got 'em!” attitude meant to instill confidence among New Yorkers. Dr. Kassin, well known in academics2 and now before a mass audience, explains the process of self-incrimination. Juror No. 5, the holdout after 10 days of deliberation, tells us how he succumbed to group pressure to convict, proving Dr. Kassin's point about how ordinary people under pressure act in inexplicable ways. Burns' broader point about the residual risk of rushing to judgment, even in our postracial society, is worth bearing in mind as we are awash in news of violence.
The book and film illuminate a fundamental question regarding confessions: since we have a right not to self-incriminate, why would any innocent person confess to a crime? Quick answer: psychological and psychiatric factors, with results later regretted. The evaluation of false confessions seldom appears on the radar screens of most forensic psychiatrists. Perhaps it is due to the apparent futility of asking a court to disregard what is already a settled matter. Or perhaps the study of false confessions is seen as the domain of social psychologists. Its importance has been most spectacularly demonstrated in the postconviction work of the Innocence Project. About 25 percent of convictions overturned through DNA evidence were based on false confessions or admissions.3 Mental disability is a significant factor in producing false confessions that place innocent defendants on death row.4
Although the phenomenon of false confessions was described in the mid-19th century,5 it was not on public display until over 200 persons confessed to the Lindbergh Baby kidnapping and murder in New Jersey in 1932. The convicted and executed Bruno Hauptmann never confessed; his guilt is still controversial. In the past several years, The Journal has embraced a role for forensic psychiatrists6 and social psychologists7,8 in formulating a scientific basis for testimony. Although it is obvious that a variety of mental disturbances may give rise to false or unreliable evidence,9 how ordinary individuals can incriminate themselves is a counterintuitive process that is hard to sell in court.8 Jurors may regard guilt or innocence as a function of the perceived coerciveness of an interrogation.10 Juveniles, under increasing protection from courts, are especially vulnerable to interrogators.11 The film and book make the rationale for those protections seem self-evident.
On a practical level, expert witnesses, who were absent from the Central Park Five's legal proceedings in 1990, can shed light on the dynamics of confessions. The film and book go a long way toward explaining how justice can go awry when police and the public need sacrificial lambs, and suspects are manipulated into mistaking self-incrimination for an exit door. We highly endorse both media presentations to forensic practitioners. There is little doubt that false confessions exist. Now let us apply what we know to help courts deal with this troubling problem.
- © 2013 American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law
