Here is an article about one of the exonerated Central Park 5 who spent five years in prison, now newly elected to the NYC council.
There are two points of note. The amusing one was that when asked whether he would abolish prisons, he said, in part that if prisons were abolished where would you send Donald Trump. This is really pointed since Trump had taken out full page ads in all the NYC newspapers demanding that they be executed.
But the most serious question that the article glosses over is this. When the real rapist confessed many years later (he was already in prison for life) they were able to verify it with DNA evidence. Which means they had to have made a rape kit. Which means that the authorities (the police and/or the prosecutor) had to have known that none of the Central Park 5 had matching DNA. But they concealed this fact from the defense. Which is contrary to law. Why weren’t they prosecuted?
I don’t know what was disclosed to the defense and when. But you can read the NY Times Article from 1990 (during the first trial) about how the FBI laboratory analyst testified that the “Semen Tested in Jogger Case Was Not That of Defendants.”
That’s staggering. They were convicted anyway and the conviction was sustained on appeal. I did not know that. Had I been the judge I would have directed an acquittal on this fact alone.
I think qualified immunity has limits. And I don’t think it affects the prosecutor. An honest mistake is one thing but this goes too far.
Congratulations to Mr. Salaam. The best way to combat the racism that allows such a travesty is to attack it from inside the system, with a position of relative power. I hope he makes progress, any bit is a step in the right direction.
I further hope that his new role somehow in the future allows him to fuck Donald Trump.
If an FBI analyst testified that the semen did not match the defendants, then it sounds as if the prosecution did make the rape kit available to the defense. If that’s true, then there’s no withholding evidence.
Maybe DNA analysis was just so new at the time that the judge and/or jury didn’t know how much weight to give it.
Why? Each of the five confessed to being an accomplice, but denied participating in the sex. They pointed that finger at each other (or other unknown males). I’m don’t think the theory of the case required any or all of the five defendants to have left semen at the scene. Certainly not for Salaam, who confessed only to hitting her with a pipe and groping her, and was never implicated in the sex, even by the others.
There were a lot of problems with the confessions that seem like they should have been obvious at the time, but I’m not sure that’s one of them.
I don’t understand what you think the prosecutor should have been charged with or why. Other than I suspect that the premise of your thread (withholding of the evidence) is likely mistaken.
The premise of this thread is that the results of the DNA testing were concealed (which appears to be false) or, if disclosed, were so obviously exonerating of all charges offenses to justify charging the prosecutor with a crime (which I disagree with).
My point is that the theory of the crime was that the victim was assaulted and raped by a group. The fact that a single person’s DNA was recovered and that it didn’t match any of the defendants only suggests that there was an additional perpetrator. If a jury was going to reject the entire premise that there was a gang rape, then they would need to reject the confessions and then the DNA testing isn’t really significant since the confessions were the primary basis for the prosecution.
I have to admit to not knowing that the lack of DNA evidence was presented at the trial. I guess those cops did a good job of forcing confessions. I will never be a juror, but if I were I would not trust a confession made without a lawyer present.