Since the creation of the justice system it has had its flaws, but it’s biggest has to be the wrongful imprisonment of people. Although things have gotten better, it does still happen, and deserves more recognition. These people need our help since we’re the only ones that can.

In 1989, a very well known crime occurred. It was the evening in New York, and a group of about 40, Black and Hispanic, teens were going around Central Park and doing what they called “wilding.” While some of them were just running around with their friends, others were hurting people and harassing homeless people. The same night a 28-year-old white woman, Trisha Meili, had been jogging in the park. This was also at the time racism was still a thought in the back of some peoples’ mind. Patrol officers, began to stop what they were calling a riot, and they picked up over 20 teens to take them to the station.

Later that night, Trisha Meili, was found at the park, extremely injured, leaving her in a coma that would last 12 days. Detectives began to comb through the streets looking for teens, 18 or older, fitting the Black or Latino description, assuming they were at the park that night, and could have been involved in Meili’s assault.

Of the 20 teens that were in custody, 14-year-old, Kevin Richardson had gotten a black eye in the midst of the police trying to take him in to the station. They believed it could have been caused by Meili during her assault so they took him in for questioning. There they violated several laws in questioning as he was interrogated by them for at least seven hours, without a parent present and they basically convinced him into saying he was involved. Police proceeded to do this with 4 other teens: Raymond Santana, 14, Antron McCray 15, Yusef Salaam 15, and 16-year-old Korey Wise. Wise wasn’t even initially a suspect but he was walking with Salaam when police stopped Salaam and said they wanted to take him to the station for questions about the night at the park. Wise didn’t want him to go alone so he went along.

Detectives even coached these children into making confession tapes where they confessed to taking place in the crimes, with information that was fed to them. The children were told if they confessed they would get into less trouble than for being at the park alone.

There was DNA found at the crime scene although it didn’t match any of the boys the prosecution still decided to go on with a trial where they claimed these five boys attacked Melli. Prosecutors relied solely on the statements they had from the boys, but the boys took back those statements. Their trials were split in half and in the end they were all found guilty of attempted murder, rape, assault, and robbery, and were convicted six to 13 years in prison.

Korey Wise, was the only one who was legally allowed to be questioned by detectives without a supervisor of a parent or guardian, because of his age, also struggled with hearing issues and a learning disability so he was especially vulnerable to the detectives’ aggressive questioning. He ended up giving both a written and videotaped confession. The details of his statement didn’t even match the details of the crime. Despite the lack of solid evidence, he was sentenced to five to 15 years, which were to be spent in an adult prison. He was still 16 and ended up being subject to violence, abuse, long periods of time in solitary confinement, and transfers to prisons extremely far from his family.

Eventually at one of the prisons, Wise met murderer and serial rapist, Matias Reyes. Reyes confessed to being the actual perpetrator, and with a DNA test, his guilt was confirmed.

Eventually the five men were cleared of their charges, and Wise was released from prison. Three of the men filed a lawsuit against the city of New York and after more than a decade, the lawsuit was settled for $41 million. Seeing Wise was the man who served the most time in prison he received the largest portion of the settlement: $12.2 million.

At the end of the day, however, they all still served time in prison and had time from their lives wrongfully stolen from them. Reyes remains in prison, but has a parole meeting scheduled for this year 2022. The five are in their 40s and have mostly moved away from New York. Their story has been turned into a four-part Netflix documentary-series called When They See Us (which I highly recommend). This case goes to show how much of a problem this is, and how little we know about it.  This was about 30 years ago, and is not well known at all. To learn more about wrongful convictions, go to https://innocenceproject.org.