Science Rewrote The Central Park Five Story

About this episode

The episode discusses the wrongful convictions of the Central Park Five and the systemic failures that led to their imprisonment.

Five teenagers from Harlem spent between 5 and 13 years in prison for a brutal Central Park attack they didn't commit—convicted entirely on coerced confessions that contradicted each other while DNA evidence never matched any of them. The real attacker, serial rapist Matias Reyes, confessed over a decade later from prison, his DNA proved it, and suddenly the whole case collapsed. The prosecutors and detectives who broke these kids down in interrogation rooms for 30 hours straight without parents or lawyers faced zero consequences, but the Exonerated Five are now fighting to make sure this never happens to anyone else.

People in this episode

Host: Charlie Cruz

Topics covered

• wrongful conviction
• justice system
• DNA evidence
• coerced confessions
• exoneration
• true crime

Keywords

• Central Park Five
• wrongful conviction
• Matias Reyes
• DNA evidence
• coerced confessions
• exoneration
• justice system

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Central Park Five, Exonerated Five

Places: Harlem

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