The Central Park 5 Connection
Unfortunately, Caitlin's falsified experience has occurred many times over. She was extremely lucky in that the person who accused her actually realized the fault in his accusations. There have been many other cases, however, where innocent men and women been wrongly convicted of crimes they never even came close to committing.
In the case of the Central Park 5, 5 young African American and Hispanic American boys, aged 14-16 years old, were wrongly arrested for raping a woman who was jogging at night in Central Park in April 1989. All were tried, convicted, and sentenced to prison. They were said to be "wilding" in park that night according to many media sources. Detectives aggressively interrogated them and four of the videotapes of their confessions were presented in trial, where all of the defendants described how they attacked the jogger in great detail. Unfortunately, all of the young men felt they needed to confess because they were told they would be released if they gave information about the case. They were also pressured and badgered, which elicited their false confessions.
Thirteen years after the trials, Matias Reyes, who was already in prison for other crimes, stepped forward on his own and confessed to the crime, similar to the student in "The Library" coming forward and saying he falsely remembered the shooting. The case of the Central Park 5 revealed 5 false confessions from the one investigation. Unfortunately, this is not a unique case, as many others have been falsely accused because of faulty interrogation tactics. which can elicit false confessions from innocent people.
Interrogation is a guilt-presumptive process, which is led by an authority figure asserting their belief. The interrogator measures their success on their ability to get a confession. One would hope that interrogators would be open minded, but psychology research suggests that once people create a belief, they selectively look for and interpret new data to verify that belief. Also, research shows that once a person forms a belief, they also unwittingly form behavioral support for that belief. This bias is extremely unhelpful for anyone who has been wrongly accused, because interrogators go into interviews already with a belief in their mind. Hopefully, in the future, interrogations will be filmed to show the interrogation process and so the jury can make up their own minds on who is guilty and who is actually innocent. This needs to change, because the Central Park 5 is a disturbing case, but it is not unique in the justice system.
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A still from "The Library" play