A 15-year-old lad, questioned through the dead of night by relays of police, is a ready victim of the inquisition ... .We cannot believe that a lad of tender years is a match for the police in such a contest. He needs counsel and support if he is not to become the victim first of fear, then of panic. He needs someone on whom to lean lest the overpowering presence of the law, as he knows it, crush him.

— U.S. Supreme Court decision, 1948, in Haley v, Ohio, a case in which ¡1 biack boy falsely confessed to murder WOLF PACK The Press and the Jogger

BY LYNNELL HANCOCK ing through 's streets was branded into the national consciousness. The boys, he crime thundered some oversized and awkward, others wiry across the airwaves and and defiant, became easy targets to mock, onto the newsstands. easy to degrade as animals, to dismiss as On April 19, 1989, i\ other people's children. Almost every young, white investment member of the white-dominated press Tbanker, jogging in Central Park, was accepted without much question that bludgeoned, raped, and left to die. mindless black and Latino adolescents The police soon charged a maraud- could go from wreaking violent havoc in ing group of teens with gang the park that night to carrying out a vi- . The tabloid headlines pumped jogger cious gang rape. fear into horror, WOLF PACK'S PRR', "The story was like a centrifuge," says announced the Daily near death I , a New York colum- News, in its first of many page-one after savage nist at the time, now a reporter for The stories. "Wilding — the newest term New York Times. "Everyone was pinned for terror in a city that lives in fear," attack by into a position — the press, the police, announced the on April irpvinggang the prosecution — and no one could 22. "Wilding" was defined by the Post press the stop button." Caught in the writers as a phenomenon not unlike dizzying force were five teens, aged the violent raves in A Clockwork Or- fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen, who had ange — "packs of bloodthirsty teens confessed in some detail to the brutal crime movies, they had only one from the tenements, bursfing with bore- after up to thirty hours of hiterrogation. goal: to smash, hurt, rob, stomp, rape. dom and rage, roam the streets getting The enemies were rich. The enemies Soon after, all five recanted, claiming tbey kicks from an evening of ultra-violence." were white. were tricked and coerced by the police. But In his April 23,1989, piece in the Post, few people listened. No physical evidence A SAVAGE DISEASE, Pete Hamill, the cele- City editors pitched in and drafted a linked the boys to the scene. All five were brated city columnist, painted a menac- powerful story line on the order of "Hero- convicted as rapists and sent to prison. ing backdrop that would color the cov- ic Woman vs. Feral Beast." David Krajicek, But thirteen years later, as the year erage to come: who covered the rape as police bureau 2002 wound down, 's district chief for the Daily News, recalls that re- attorney, , was They were coming downtown from a porters were under tremendous pressure forced to consider whether the criminal world of crack, welfare, guns, knives, to stay true to the top-down narrative. justice system had made some kind of indifference and ignorance. They were And in the competitive frenzy surround- coming from a land with no fathers .. mistake. .. They were coming from the anarchic ing the story, that narrative took on a hie Which leaves the press to consider its province of the poor. of its own, ultimately slashing the city into part in the drama. And driven by a collective fury, brim- two angry parts —• white and black, Wall ming with the rippling energies of Street and Harlem, law-abiding adults and What re-opened the case and all its old youth, their minds teeming with the vi- barbaric youtb. There was httle room for wounds was another confession, this one olent images of the streets and the nuance. Tbe image of savage kids rampag- backed up by DNA tests. Semen found in-

CJR lanuary/February 2003 side the victim and on her sock had always heen explained as belonging to a sixth mys- tery member of the young gang. It turned out to belong to a man named Matias Reyes, a thirty-one-year-old serial rapist. Reyes had a brutal record; he was infamous for gouging out the eyes of his victims. In prison for a murder and a series of , Reyes confessed in January 2002 to beating and raping the jogger in 1989, all alone. The kids, now young men who have all served their prison sentences, did not know him, The news sent many in the media into a maelstrom of unresolved ques- tions. Had the press lost its traditional, = healthy sense of skepticism in the horror ofthe moment? How much did an innate mistrust of teenagers, especially groups of black and Latino youths, play into the cov- erage? Was this case unique, or did it bend to end the explosive fear, to feel safer. Still future coverage of juveniles? others conceded that they had never re- At the same time, middle-class white As it turns out, some journalists and city garded the suspects as teenagers. (The people were slowly moving back to mid- officials, prompted by the Central Park Jog- boys' ages, in fact, had rarely been a focus town and reclaiming the symbol of the ger case, had been meeting informally and in press reports.) "I was really surprised, city. Central Park. Fear that ghetto crime considering such questions for years. The in reading recent accounts, to learn that could spoil this sanctuary struck a power- Group, as the informal salon came to be the defendants were only fourteen, flf- ful chord, especially among the rich and called, met first in the living room of Gerry teen, and sixteen at the time," says News- the elected. , the real-es- Migiiore, former public affairs director for da^s Sheryl McCarthy, one of the few tate magnate, would spend $85,000 on the city's department of probation, amid African-American journalists who cov- full-page ads calling for the death penalty the turmoil swirling around the jogger ered the case for the mainstream press. in the jogger case: "They should be forced case. It was an unusual gathering. There "I'm overwhelmed with sadness that, col- to suffer . . . ," Trump opined. "I want were reporters ft^om the four main city pa- lectively, they lost more than forty years them to be afraid." Mayor Ed Koch was pers (including the late New York News- of their lives for something they appar- often quoted calling the arrested boys day), papers usually in heated competition ently didn't do." "monsters" and complaining that juve- with each other. About a dozen journalists Looking back at the story, Migiiore re- nile laws were too soft. Pete Hamill, look- and city government officials talked, raged, mains struck by the tremendous pressure ing back now, remembers a city on edge, and even cried as they hashed out personal on reporters "to follow editors into the maybe over the brink. "Aside from the and professional conflicts. "It got very emo- abyss." Yet in 1989 the abyss, in many ways, savagery ofthe rape and the beating itself, tional," says Anne Murray, police bureau was New York itself. Crime was climbing there was a sense that the city was unrav- chief for the New York Post at the time, now to an all-time high of 2,000 homicides a eling," he says. "That young people fueled a private investigator. Murray attended be- year. In 1986 a group of bat-wielding by crack and rage, and armed with guns, cause she was conflicted about how the ed- white men from Howard Beach, in were out of control." itors had played the original story. "I knew Queens, chased a young black man onto Steven Drizin, who recently reviewed the coverage would be very different if the the Belt Parkway, where he was struck by a the confession tapes as supervising attor- victim weren't white." The ad hoc group car and killed. A little over a year later, a ney at Northwestern University's Children met several times in 1989, then continued Queens cop named Edward Byrne was and Family Justice Center, said the city's sporadically during the next decade, top- murdered assassination-style as he guard- high-pitched lust for prosecution fed by ping out at forty invitation-only guests, ed a drug-trial witness. The shooters were the media exposure made it next to im- and setthng into a core of ten. set to be sentenced as the jogger case was possible for these boys to get a fair trial. The Group met once again on Novem- unfolding. In August of 1989, thirty white And the reach of the Central Park jogger ber 14, after Reyes's startling confession, teens from Bensonhurst, , sur- story, he observes, was long, well beyond to discuss the implications of the news. rounded four black youths who had wan- its time and place. The case set the stage "Some were incredulous that they could dered into their Itahan-American neigh- for the reinstatement of New York's death have missed something," says Migiiore. borhood to buy a used car. One of the penalty. The papers ran demographic sto- Some in The Group said they had real- boys shot sixteen-year-old Yusef Hawkins ries like the Daily News's MORE CUBS FOR ized, in retrospect, that they had subcon- dead. Many thought, even expected, that CITY'S WOLFPACK, warning of growing sciously wanted the teens to be guilty — black teens would seek revenae. numbers of bellicose adolescents. Within a

A dozen journalists and city officials talked, raged, and even cried as they hashed out personal and professional conflicts raised by the case.

CJR lanuary/February 2003 39 few years, influential political scientists and Kharey Wise were all brought in for One suspect keeps changing his story, like Princeton's |ohn Dilulio would con- questioning. Reporters formed a chaotic clearly to please the prosecutor. "First, he clude that "teen superpredators" •—• sav- scrum outside the precinct as detectives said the logger was punched. Then, with age, godless, urban youth — would take pressed the suspects inside. prompting, it was a rock. Then, with over the city's streets hy the millennium. Most of the boys had been up for two prompting, it was a brick," says Drizin. As a rage against juvenile crime grew, days when the prosecutor finally turned The tapes are the end result of a long, nearly every state passed laws by the mid- on the videotape to capture their confes- unrecorded police interrogation, an ordeai nineties allowing children to be tried and sions. And the tapes are chilling to designed to break down a suspect's will. jailed as adults. "We ended up with some watch. Santana, fourteen, admitted to Kevin Richardson's mother claimed offi- of the most damaging juvenile laws in our "grabbing the lady's tits" as another boy cers cursed at her son, saying, "You know nation's history," says Driziri. "was smackin' her; he was sayin', 'Shut you fucked her." Wise complained that he up, bitch!' " McCray, fifteen, said he sim- was left alone with a detective who hat really happened on ulated sex "so everybody just know I did screamed and slapped him and promised the night of April 19, it." Kharey Wise, sixteen, considered the he could go home if he confessed. The trial 1989? For all the acute at- most vulnerable because of serious judge dismissed these arguments, allowing tention, the details are still learning disabilities, was the last to con- the tapes to be presented as evidence. surprisingly murky. We fess. "This is my first rape," he said, "and Without the confessions, the prosecu- Wdo know that somewhere around 9 P.M., a this is gonna be my last time doin' it." tion had no case. None of the boys had a group of about thirty Harlem teens gath- The press saw the confessions and con- record of violent arrests. None was linked ered near the Schomburg Plaza in Harlem cluded that the boys were guilty beyond a by DNA to semen or to any other evi- for a night of havoc in Central Park. The doubt, luvenüe experts watcbing the tapes dence found at the bloody scene, a fact gang took off, harassing and assaulting now, however, see disturbing inconsisten- that raised eyebrows. "It is often said that joggers and cyclists. After 10 P.M., five teens cies. Although the details they provide teenage boys can't make a peanut butter were collared at 102nd Street and Central about tlie muggings of other victims that and jelly sandwich without leaving evi- Park West, including Raymond Santana night are in harmony, the boys' descrip- dence," Drizin says. "The victim lost and Kevin Richardson. Sometime after tions of the rape are conflicting slories. three-quarters of her blood, and there midnight, the pohce got word of the bru- They identify different places, different was not a drop on these boys. Not a drop. tal rape of the investment banker. The fimes for events, and have different de- It's difficult to fathom." next day, Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam, scriptions of the crime scene, says Drizjn. The press paid scant attention to holes

FALSE CONFESSIONS: HOW THEY HAPPEN

n October, Governor George Ryan of Children and Family Justice Center sent Illinois pardoned four young men, "talking points" around to reporters, in- three of them shown in the photo to forming them of the youths' vulnerabil- Ithe right. They who had been con- ity, their inability to understand the law, victed as teenagers of raping and murder- or to muster criminal intent. Suspicions ing a twenty-three-year-old Chicago aroused, Possley asked to see the tran- medical student in 1986, After the Chica- scripts of the police interrogation. go Tribune cast doubt on the boys' con- That's when the case against the little fessions, new DNA evidence pointed to boys began to unravel. Four detectives two other men. This and other recent spoke to the boys separately; some held cases show how old-fashioned, skepti- their hands, others fed them Happy cal reporting can sometimes find holes Meals, The parents said they were un- in juvenile confessions. aware their children were considered suspects. The boys' stories kept chang- in July 1998, an eleven-year-old girl NOT GUILTY: Omar Saunders, Larry Ollins, and was found beaten and sexually brutal- Calvin O(lin5 learn that DNA tests will free them. ing. They said they hit Ryan with a rock, ized in the rubble of her Chicago neigh- but medical records indicated she was borhood. The death of little Ryan Harris skinny little boys could be capable of such killed by something much bigger. The v^-ould have likely disappeared in the clip a heinous crime. The first glimmer of doubt police interpreted their inconsistencies as morgue of violent deaths in poor neighbor- arose when the children appeared in court. signs of guilt. Possley understood them as hoods but for the detectives' surprising ar- "I think we were all expecting to see demon proof that young children are highly sug- rest Two neighborhood boys confessed to children — Damiens — based on the police gestible. "The first thing a seven-year-old the police that they killed Ryan for her bi- description," says Maurice Possley, a Chica- wants to do is to tell the man what he wants cycle. At seven and eight years old, they go Tribune reporter. Then in walked "these to hear," says Possley. were the youngest children in U.S, history to little squirts," who were so small they The Chicago Triburie dissected the tran- be charged with first-degree murder. couldn't see over the juvenile court bench. scripts, profiled the parents, and avoided The story became national news One weighed fifty pounds. The other suf- treating the suspects as adults in print, even overnight. Readers and reporters were fered from a debilitating speech defect. though they were being treated as adults in shocked, but few questioned how these Lawyers from Northwestern University's the courts. Finally, DNA evidence turned

40 CJR lanuary/February 2003 in the prosecution's case, riveted, instead, was found guilty of the most serious theories in the press, theories that place the by the horrifying but factually messy charge of attempted murder, mostly be- boys squarely at the rape scene. The sex tapes. "We had the confessions. They were cause the jury falsely believed that two crimes prosecutor posited turning each other in," remembers hairs found on his clothes were from the in and the Daily News that Richard Rosen, former city editor of the jogger. (The prosecution's expert witness either the teens beat and dragged the Daily News. "The feeling was that the sus- testified that it was impossible to say the woman into fhe woods where Reyes came pects had something to do with it." hairs were the jogger's, because the science along and raped her, or Reyes raped the Yet toward the end ofthe first trial, a few of hair identification was so inexact in woman first, leaving her hludgeoned body reporters were beginning to question the 1989. Still, in her closing arguments, the for the boys to further . script. When he entered the courtroom in lead prosecutor, Elizabeth Lederer, said On December 5, Morgenthau argtied July of 1990, recalls Dwyer, "I remember 1 unequivocally that the hairs found on in State Supreme Court that all the ver- had in my head these guys were guilty." Kevin "matched" with those of the vic- dicts should be set aside, based on the Then the testimony of a detective set off tim.) At his September 1990 sentencing new confession, the new DNA evidence, alarms: "I was skeptical because he was hearing, Yusef Salaam, fifteen, said, "I look and "troubling discrepancies" in the saying that the confessions were au in the upon this legal lynching as a test by my videotaped confessions. On December kids' voices." But they were not. The writ- God, Allah." The Post mocked the boy's 19, the court agreed, leaving the door ten statement signed hy Raymond Santana adolescent bravado with the headline: open for the defendants to launch a civil began: "On April 19,1989, at approximate- SALAi\M BAU)NEY. But more than a decade suit for their years lost behind bars. ly 20:30 hours, I was at the Taft Projects in later, the teenager looks like a soothsayer: the vicinity of E. 113th & Madison Avenue "Sooner or later," he added at the sentenc- If a crime like the rape ofthe Central Park .... We started walking uphill through a ing hearing, "the truth will come out." jogger occurred today, would the coverage path going westbound in the park when Once the new evidence came to light. be different? Former News editor Rosen, we observed a male/female couple." Dwyer District Attorney Morgenthau was forced now the New York editor at Bloomberg knew enough about kids to know that no to review the case video by video, transcript News, believes it would. "There would be fourteen-year-old talked like this. by transcript. Internal pressure was fierce more skepticism about police proce- But all five boys were convicted in State to maintain the guilty verdicts. Several dures," he says. "We know more about Supreme Court of various combinations prosecutors and police detectives whose DNA evidence, about false confessions, of rape, sodomy, sexual abuse, riot, and as- reputations were launched by the Central about juvenile issues. And New York is a sault. Sixteen-year-old Kevin JÎJchardson Park convictions recently aired competing different place."

the police case on its head. Lab results of them together with interviews with his avalanche of blood and hair evidence semen found at the scene matched that of family, his defense attorney, a homicide against Michael — which did not exist. a man in jail for the sexual assault of three detective, and experts on false confes- "The eleventh hour is rapidly approaching," other young girls. (It was also determined sions. Frame by frame, the film presents a Detective Chris McDonough told the boy. that the boys were not physically mature damning portrait of the overwhelming "Ail the evidence is going to be in. We put enough to even produce semen.) Damaged psychological power police can bring to a rush on some things that, quite frankly, is and shaken, the boys were exonerated. going to bury you. my friend." Citing these cases and others, legal advo- After two days and eight hours of grilling, cates around the nation are pushing to re- Michael began to believe the cops. Maybe quire police to videotape entire interroga- he did kill his sister, and simply could not re- tions, not just the final confessions. Only two member. Just as he was convinced his situa- states, Alaska and Minnesota, require this, In tion was hopeless, detectives offered him most cases, the tapes would prove the police two paths: he could talk and get heip, or he were conducting fair and lawful investiga- could refuse to talk and go to jail. "I would tions. But not in all cases rather die than go to jail," Michael cried. At Court TV's powerful Interrogation of that point, Michael started spinning the tale Michael Crowe, aired first in April 2001, MICHAEL CROWE: "It's going to be a lie " he thought the cops wanted to hear. "It's demonstrates the importance of full, taped going to be a lie," he began. "I did it because disclosure. In 1998, twelve-year-old Steph- bear against a distraught and vulnerable you said I did." anie Crowe was stabbed to death in her bed- young boy. His sister was dead. He was liv- When the session was over, the police room in Escondido, California. The police ing away from his parents in a home for arrested Michael for first-degree murder. decided that her fourteen-year-old brother abused children. And now the police were One year later, DNA evidence linked a Michael seemed suspiciously sullen after the accusing him ofthe unthinkable. mentally ill ex-con to Stephanies death. A murder. Detectives developed a theory that Michael protested his innocence at Superior Court judge threw out Michael's Michael, fueled by videogame-induced rage least eighty times, crying, wondering why confession on the basis that it was psy- and sibling jealousy, killed his sister. Officers the police kept telling him he stabbed his chologically coerced. Prosecutors were brought him in for questioning to prove it. sister. Detectives let Michael know they forced to drop their case against him. Fortunately for Michael's defense. Es- did not believe him, suggesting that he False confessions happen, especially condido police routinely videotape their stabbed Stephanie but might not remem- when children are involved. A vigilant juvenile interrogations. The Court TV pro- ber doing it. Then, they began to deceive press must keep smart watch. ducers acquired those tapes, weaving him. Detectives claimed they had an — LH.

CJR January/February 2003 41 That may he so. hi any event, there are Crime while Chasing Sex, Sleaze and W ournalism remains a subjective craft. journalistic lessons from the Central Park Celebrities. "It took on a life of its own." I Editors may be more skeptical of au- jogger case on a number of subjects: Meanwhile, at the same time the first • thority today, but they do not all be- Central Park jogger trial was going on, I lieve the Harlem boys were railroad- • FALSE CONFESSIONS thirty white teens in Bensonhurst, Brook- W ed by a frenzied press and a zealous hi 1989 reporters did not readily consid- lyn, cornered sixteen-year-old Yusef prosecution. The Daily News, which first er the possibility of false confessions. Hawki:is near a used-car lot and shot him published the Matias Reyes confession, Why would anyone confess in snch de- dead. New York Newsday referred to those followed its own scoop with a series of sto- tail, in front of their parents no less, to a arrested as "white young men." The Daily ries that played down its importance. One crime they did not commit? Yet experts News called them "a gang of thirty white piece quoted anotiytnous medical exam- say this bizarre phenomenon is as old as teens." The city's leaders were equally iners as saying the injuries to the jogger the Salem witch trials. An odd logic subdued. Mayor Koch painted the killing were tar too extensive for one man to have takes hold when someone is cornered as "an enormous tragedy." acted alone. Another quoted one of the and believes that shooting himself in the detectives defending the investigation, foot is the best escape. (See page 40.) • STUBBORN STEREOTYPES claiming that cops working in separate Police questioning is designed to he in- and New York News- groups could not have pulled off multiple timidating. It represents the force of the day each wrote profile pieces in the wake false confessions. "It's clear to me that for law bearing down with all its power. De- ofthe arrests. The results defied Hamill's the most part the police bent over back- ception and trickery are standard, and predictions, histead of street thugs, re- wards to insure they followed proper juve- legal. The interrogator will claim a friend porters found that most of these kids at- nile procedures," says Barbara Ross, who has already implicated the suspect, for ex- tended decent schools and lived in stable covers Manhattan criminal court for the ample, or cite nonexistent evidence. Juve- homes with two working parents. Sheryl Daily News. Ross was poring through niles, meanwhüe, are considered most McCarthy and Nina Bernstein of New 4,600 pages of the pre-trial hearings, susceptible to changing their stories to York Newsday wrote that Salaam attend- preparing a story as Morgenthau was de- appease their questioners. "A good cop," ed Catholic school and was described as ciding whether to set aside the convic- says the fomier Daily News bureau chief "not aggressive, very easy-going," by his tions. "It's hard to believe these confes- Krajicek, "can get a fifteen-year-old to say math tntor. Santana's schoolmates at his sions are not real," she says. basically anything he wants." alternative program said he was "his [im Dwyer at the Times was coming to own person, a straight-up guy" who a different coticlusion hy reading 15,000 • UNPROTECnVE PARENTS liked to draw. Antron McCray's father pages of tlie same documents. He broke Most ofthe Harlem boys were accompa- was a mechanic, his mother a day-care the story on October 5 that Reyes had nied by parents, so many reporters be- worker. His Little League sponsor said raped a woman two days earlier in the lieved coercion was a moot point. Not he was a "very shy, very respectable kid." same area of the park, a case that had gone so, say juvenile crime experts. Often par- But oddly enough, the details of these unreported to the defense in 1989. He also ents are just as intimidated and unin- kids' nonviolent existences did little to reported that the Harlem boys had consis- formed about risks their kids face as the derail conventional wisdom. Those who tently maintained their innocence in jail juveniles, according to Monica Drinanc, believed the boys were rapists saw these even though it cost them earlier parole attorney-in-charge at 's details as horrifying. Instead of casting chances. (Parole boards are lenient to con- Legal Aid Society. Contrary to expecta- doubt on their guilt, it made them seem victs who show remorse.) His coverage tions, parents rarely stop interrogations even more evil. They had no excuses. No helped shape an October 16 Times editor- and ask for a lawyer. crack-addicted mothers. No blackboard ial that argued: "The hysteria that sur- Sometimes parents unwittingly add jungle high schools. rounded the case may have cotitributed to the weight of their own authority to that The more common treatment was to a grave injustice." of the police. Antron McCray's father disparage the suspects. In a Daily News Both Ross and Dwyer would agree says he threw a chair across the room column. Bob Herbert, one ofthe few black that the media can no longer ignore the because his son kept itisisting he was in- reporters covering the case, made fun of importance of understanding juveniles nocent. "I said to Antron, 'Tell them both the boys' appearance and their lack and the policies that govern them in this what they want to hear,' " he told the of cash during the first trial. Herbert, now changitig world. More childreti are New York Post, " 'otherwise you're not a columnist for the Times, caricatured standing trial in adult courtrooms now going home.'" That's when the fifteen- them as "teenage mutants." He described than at any time in our nation's history. year-old confessed to holding the jog- sixteen-year-old McCray as a "wimpish This requires a vigilant press to report ger's arms while others raped her. pipsqueak" in June of 1990. He pointed from behind the interrogation doors, to out that Salaam wore two pistachio-col- inform beyond the shrill screams for re- • RACIAL CODE WORDS ored socks and Santana, by tlien fifteen, venge. Because the wolf pack, now as in The jogger case planted "wilding" into the apparently could afford neither bail nor a 1989, can be the media. • English lexicon, a term that came to define sports jacket. Jn his December 9, 2002, the inhurnanity of these kids. But it was New York Times column, Herbert called LynNetl Hancock, a former reporter for never clear where it came from — the the original jogger case coverage "racist" , the Daily News, and kids, the police, or the media ozone. "The and "way, way over the top." He cast blame Newsweek, teaches journalism at Co- word seemed to come out ofthe ether," re- on the authorities, on the violent climate, lumbia. She is the author of Hands to members Krajicek, a former professor at and on a "dopey defense strategy," yet did Work: the Stories of Three Families Columbia's journalism school and author not detail his personal contribufioti as a Racing the Welfare Clock, out in paper- of Scooped: Media Miss Real Stories oncompliant reporter. back this month.

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