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Central Park Five. ^ P h o t o ^ y ^
Page 19
t0 th& courthouse- The story o f injustice is portrayed in the Ken Burns documentary “ The
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Wrongfully
from page U
saults throughout the park.
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1116 fllm dOCS 3 her° ic j ° b of
marshalling and making what sense
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is possible of these ultimately in-
^ d e n c e thatthe five tne„ ou, had no, the actual perpetrator “
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The filmmakers astutely note the evidence that someone else did criticism T h ^
similarities between there press that complain, i X X v e X t t a X X d r e
e
fromW
«»criminal ju sfi«
thinking that there was something
we can take away from it, and that
we'll be better people, I think what
N O Pverygood people
O a r ^ O r t e ^ u d g e o n ,/re
system, not least because it pro- Oregon Court o f Appeals and the
an occasion for deep reflec-
woman „/coZorm serve in r t o
accounts and the press that pre- sistent desire of the dominant cul- 10 years Far from makineriohre ”
.l0" ° " our co ec,lve bllndness lo capacity. Hermovie review column
ceded lynchings in the South de- hire to find some reaso“
cuse s o m X m ^ ?
8 8
7 *nS' 1,ut,onal »PPresston.
Opinionated Judge appears regu-
cades before. When the beaten injustice by continuine to die for rat e
o,
w a was wrongly
As expressed on camera by his- larly in the Portland Observer. You
woman was found, police rounded n ir e e v i d e n c e t h a t t e v i U ^
up a number of these kids, interro- how brought it on themselves.
1—
_
«
■ ■ — «
gated them for hours, and eventu-
The filmmakers'choice, instead,
ally obtained confessions from four to focus on the point of view of the
teenagers who barely knew each accused men seemed to me an ap-
other; those four implicated a fifth, propriate and rarely seen counter-
The confessions were completely balance to the enormous energy
inconsistent with each other and devoted to prosecuting them and
inconsistent with the physical evi- pillorying them in the press. It al-
dence, including DNA evidence, lows a flavor of the fear, naivete,
Each ofthe boys implicated the oth- and utter disenfranchisement that
ers, on promise of leniency which contributed to five children con-
they did not receive. They and their fessing to such heinous crimes,
families, functioning without coun-
What comes across is how so-
sel, were helpless and easily ma- cial inequalities functioned in this
nipulated. The boys were between case. These boys and their families
the ages of 14 and 16, and all re- were expendable. They did not have
canted their confessions shortly a sense of their rights, or a sense
after and have maintained their in- that they even had rights. I can't
nocence ever since.
think of a film that has done a com-
One ofthe remarkable things about parable job of reflecting on the real
these young men is how they come implications of such disenfran-
across in telling their stories. They chisement.
seem remarkably present and real,
All the while that these young
wounded but not hard-bitten. Part of men sat accused and then con-
what makes this film so important is victed, law enforcement had the
the respect they are accorded by the DNA of a serial rapist who was the
filmmakers, whohaveobviously taken real perpetrator, and whose DNA
the time to earn their trust.
was found at the scene. They did
Some of the reviews I've read not bother to investigate any other
complain that the filmmakers did not theories, though, after obtaining
push harder to find out if any of the four confessions that jibed neither
men were among the kids who com- with each other nor with the evi-
mitted other crimes that night, some- dence at the scene,
thing they all deny. To me, given the
The truth would never had come
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