"False" Confessions And The Central Park Five
06/17/2014
A+
|
a-
Print Friendly and PDF

A science and sociology blog has a thing about false confessions:

How Can We Prevent False Confessions From Kids and Teenagers?

Pacific Standard: The Science of Society

By Lauren Kirchner • June 17, 2014

A new study shows that most cops use the same interrogation techniques on both adults and juveniles—and why that needs to change.

One of the most compelling aspects of the infamous “Central Park jogger case,” in which five young boys between the ages of 14 and 16 were convicted of a violent rape, is the question of why all of the boys would have given detailed confessions about the crime that they did not commit—a crime of which they would only be acquitted 12 years after their convictions. [More]

While the problem of false confessions among young, low-IQ juveniles may be a real one, the "Central Park Five" case is a bad example, because there's no real evidence, as we've repeatedly shown here on VDARE.com, that they were any less guilty than they said they were. Ann Coulter said

Of more than three dozen hoodlums brought in for questioning, only 10 were charged with any crimes, and only five of those were charged with raping the jogger. All those charged with the jogger's rape gave detailed, corroborated, videotaped confessions, after full Miranda warnings, four of the five in the presence of an adult relative.

Recall that none of them—including the police—could have known whether the jogger would emerge from her coma and be able to identify her attackers. (She emerged, but blocked all memory of the attack.) All five confessed to assisting the attack on the jogger, but none to raping her themselves. That's enough for a rape conviction....

Melody Jackson, whose brother was friends with defendant Kharey Wise, testified—reluctantly—that she talked to Wise by phone when he was at Rikers Island and that he told her that he didn't rape the jogger, he “only held her legs down while Kevin (Richardson) f–ked her.” She originally volunteered this information to the police thinking it would be helpful to Wise.Ann Coulter: What You Won't Read In The Papers About The 'Central Park Five'

The "exoneration" were based on a guy who's in jail for life claiming he did it all by himself, a thing that appears to have been physically impossible, and the fact that he was the only guy whose DNA was found. Sometimes DNA isn't found because the rapist failed to achieve penetration and/or intromission.

Robert K. Tanenbaum , quoted by Nicholas Stix

Det. [Thomas] McKenna’s memo book entry of statements made to him by the defendant Yusef Salaam:

“Hit her with pipe/she went down and hit her again/. . . Kevin [Richardson] f—-d her. . . To me it was something to do.

“It was fun.”

“It Was Fun”—Robert K. Tanenbaum vs. The Central Park Five, 25 Years Later

Kevin Richardson is on one of the "false confessions" referred to by Lauren Kirchner above, he's one of the people who sued New York City for convicting them after they confessed.

That's why I'm not worried too much over the problem of false confessions.

Print Friendly and PDF