October 30, 2019 • 58 mins
On the night of April 19, 1989, a 28-year-old female jogger was brutally attacked and raped in New York’s Central Park. She was found unconscious with her skull fractured, and 75 percent of her blood drained from her body. Five teens from Harlem—all between the ages of 14 and 16-years-old—were tried and convicted of the crime in one of the most frenzied cases in the city’s history. The woman was dubbed the “Central Park jogger” and the accused teens became known collectively as the “Central Park Five.” One of those boys, Dr. Yusef Salaam, was just 15 years old when he was tried as a juvenile and convicted of rape and assault. He was sentenced to five to ten years in prison. In early 2002, Matias Reyes, a convicted murderer and rapist, admitted that he alone was responsible for the attack on the Central Park jogger. Reyes had already committed another rape near Central Park days earlier in 1989, using the same modus operandi. Although the police had Reyes’s name on file, they failed to connect Reyes to the rape and assault of the Central Park jogger. Eventually, the evidence from the crime was subjected to DNA testing and matched the profile of Reyes, who is currently serving a life sentence. On December 19, 2002, on the recommendation of the Manhattan District Attorney, the convictions of the five men were overturned. Dr. Yusef Salaam had served nearly seven years for a crime he did not commit. Since his release, he has become a family man, father, poet, activist, and inspirational speaker. He has committed himself to advocating for and educating people on the issues of mass incarceration, police brutality and misconduct, false confessions, press ethics and bias, race and law, and the disparities in America’s criminal justice system, especially for young men of color. He is featured in the 2019 hit Netflix series When They See Us.
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom
Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
In two thousand eighteen, I had the privilege of interviewing
use of Salam well now Dr us of Salam and
Dr Salam now Sirs. I love the way that sounds
on the board of the Innocence Project with me. He's
a father of ten children, extraordinary and he is an
accomplished and celebrated motivational speaker, an author, and a tremendous
(00:23):
advocate for criminal justice reform. Most dramatically, the story of
use of Salam and the four other wrongfully convicted boys
because they were just children when they were teenagers young teenagers,
and they were wrongly convicted, then known as the Central
Park Five, now known as the Exonerated Five, were featured
(00:43):
in the hit Netflix show and the hit it Hit
is not a strong enough for the smash Netflix show
when they see us sixteen Emmy Award nominations and it's
become a cultural phenomenon. It also has resulted in actual
consequences for the people who wrongfully prosecuted and persecuted Yusef
(01:04):
and the other kids. Both prosecutors have faced some censure.
I'm not strong enough punishments in my view for what
they did, but it really is a full circle turnaround
that couldn't possibly have been imagined back when this terrible
miscaracter justice was happening. Dr Yusef Salon's episode is one
of my favorites. I'm excited for you to hear it.
(01:32):
I've never been a trouble with my life. I didn't
even have a parking ticket. I didn't, you know what
I mean. I was brought up like cops are the
good guys. I didn't know what was going to happen,
but I do know that everything was stacked against me.
Everything like everything, this isn't supposed to happen this way.
I'm innocent. I know I'm innocent. I know I had
(01:54):
nothing to do with this. How is this possible? I
grew up trusting this is tims. I grew up believing
that every human being should boot the right thing. And
that's why, even though he Neil is dealing with cor
rough people, I wasn't going to brave anyone to get
me out of prison because I wouldn't live with the
funk that I braved my way out of my waystead
(02:14):
I'm not innocent, too proven guilty. I'm guilty until I
proved my innocence, and that's absolutely what happened to me
her system. Since I've been out ten years, it's come
a little ways, but it's still broke in a totally
little trust in humanity after what's happened to it. Welcome
back the Wrong for Conviction with Jason Flam That's me.
And today I'm actually a little bit um star struck
(02:39):
or awe struck because, um, we have as our guest
today Yusef Salam, who is one of the most inspiring
people I've ever had the privilege to be around. And
so Yusef, welcome to the show. Oh thank you for
having me. It is definitely my pleasure. And um, you know,
I always say I'm happy you're here, but I'm sorry
(03:00):
you're here because you never should have gone through this
in the first place. But it's really it's an incredible,
incredible story, both in terms of the you know, the
story itself and and the the total breakdown of the
criminal justice system uh that this case so perfectly um
(03:20):
um highlights, but also because of what you've how you've
managed to turn it into such an amazingly positive thing
and who you've become. So we'll get into that later though,
but let's go back in time. Like in the movies
when it gets all foggy and we go back as this,
because this goes back to the eighties, right, I mean, Um,
(03:44):
and I lived in New York. This is a New
York case. Is one of the most famous cases, the
Central Park Jogre case, or one of the most infamous
cases in the history of New York City. Um, which
is of course the media capital of the world. And
I lived in New York back then, and it was
it was crazy place. You were just a kid, um
years old, fifteen years old, unbelievable. I was. You know,
(04:07):
I'm a little bit older than you, so I was
in my late twenties already. But I remember like it
was yesterday. I mean, this case was blasted everywhere. This
was the crime wave, right, This was a time when
the only thing there was a lot of crime in
New York. But the hysteria around the crime was was
far exceeded the actual problem. Um. And you know you
(04:32):
were a young guy growing up. Um. And had you
prior to this horrible incident, had you had any dealings
with the law, had you ever been in trouble before?
So I think that, you know, when I look at
myself back then, being innocent, being you know, full of
(04:53):
promise and hope and and dreams and aspirations. You know.
My my so to speak, interaction with police officers or
authority figures was that we would see them in the
neighborhoods walking around. And you know, these were back when
the cops actually walked the beat and knew the people's
names that they you know, police and and so I
(05:14):
thought that police officers were very friendly, very very um helpful.
And you know, you you juxtaposed that with the backdrop
of today, and it's like a horror scene when you
look at what happened, you know. But my my interaction
was very I didn't have I didn't have any interactions.
(05:35):
And what I knew about police officers was that they
were they were your friends, and if you needed help,
you could call on them to help you, um and
they would come and they would help you because they
all public servants there to protect and serve. Right. So
you grew up like I did, thinking these are the
these are the good guys. A lot of us when
we were young boys, uh, we all you know, looked
(05:58):
up to every I looked at the most people in uniform,
everyone in uniform. I always thought that's a class of cliche.
You grow up wanting to be a fireman or a
police officer. A lot of young kids, you know, play
play act in those those roles. But this crime. I
want to talk about this crime because you know, interestingly,
the first guest we ever had on this podcast, and
now we're deep into our sixth season, right, so, um,
(06:22):
the first cast we ever had was Raymond Sntana, who
didn't an incredible interview, just an amazing, amazing man he is,
and uh did a great job um telling the story.
So you know, fans of the podcast would be familiar
with the case from that, but you have your own
perspective on it, and you know, and and there's a
very and I say that for a very specific set
(06:42):
of reasons. But going back to the case, this was
a case where a woman who was a Wall Street banker,
a white twenty eight year old woman from the Upper
East Side, was jockey in Central Park and she was
that it was dusk right um when she was attacked
(07:03):
and she was brutally beaten. When she was found. To
give people some perspective, she sev of the blood and
her body was gone, her temperate body temperatures eighty four degrees.
I mean, she was as close to dead as you
can be, and she had been raped and beaten to
within an inch of her life. And this triggered everyone's
worst fears, right because it was, oh my god, this
(07:26):
is the you know, uh, you know, an innocent woman whatever,
white and there was a whole racial aspect to it.
And man, when that happened, the news media went nuts
and there was a lot of pressure to solve this crime. Um,
do you want to add anything to to that description?
You know it was it was definitely a witch hunt,
sent a frenzy of a witch hunt, because when you
(07:48):
think about other people's projections, you know, folks look at
people from so to speak, the darker honies of society
as the worst of the worst. Um. You know, I'm
I'm I'm in the motivational speaking world now, and I'm
told that if you look at a person and address
a person as they should be, you raised the level
(08:09):
of what they could be, as opposed to trying to
be trying to address them as their circumstances are. Not
everybody who may be in those same circumstances maybe of
that particular elements and that's the thing that's unfortant, because
there was this some speak broad stroke rush, you know,
accusation uh these people type of rhetoric and talk. And
(08:34):
the notion was that of course they did it because
they're black and brown, and so you know when they
when they when the woman was found, you know, towards
the northern northern end of Central Park. There was this
just a desire for one to solve this crime, and
(08:54):
to solve this crime as quick as possible. And so
I remember me a cosh BacT and saying something like
people wanted to know how the how the criminal justice
systems in New York City will work, and they're going
to get a great opportunity as regards this case to
see how this system works. We're gonna go after us
(09:16):
with the full full arm of the law, you know,
and true to form despike wheels of justice mold us down.
But in in in their rush to judgment, they dropped
the ball in the worst way and allowed the will
criminals to continue to hurt name and ultimately murder. His
(09:39):
last at them, who was a young pregnant Latina woman.
He brandished his knife, came into her home. She said,
hold on for one moment and I thought, my da
is in the next room. He allowed her to do
so she put her children in the next moment, she
locked the door, and then he raped her and stabbed
for the death, killing her and her unborn child. And
(10:00):
that is I'm glad you brought that up, because it's
just it makes it makes anybody sick to their stomach.
And you know that that scene that you're describing is
right out of a horror movie. And um, and it
never should have happened, and it never needed to happen
because in this case, and it's it's so tragically common,
yourseff when you have uh, this tunnel vision and this um,
(10:25):
you know, this wilful framing of innocent people. And in
this case it's even worse because they really knew who
the guy was. I mean, first of all, they knew
and and so this woman never should have been killed.
The other women that he raped in the months following
the you know, the your your arrest never never should
have been raped. They should have gone on and had
(10:46):
their lives not destroyed the way they were. Um, those
kids would still have a mother. This the consequences of
the actions of the authorities in this case goes so
far beyond having this droid um young lives, five young lives,
and and your families, and how it defect it had
on your families. You know, it's amazing. I've seen the
(11:07):
picture of your mom when you were finally exonerated, and
she's and the joy is so amazing. But but going
back to this, the crazy thing is they knew from
the beginning that it was a single perpetrator because this
this poor woman was dragged into and the ground was wet, right,
and she was dragged into this area. You know, obviously
(11:28):
he wanted to take her to a secluded area. And
for people who are not from the city, who haven't
been to the city, Central Park is about three miles
long and about a mile wide. It's a big place.
And she was jogging up in the northern section of
the park. Um, So they knew that there was only
one set of footprints in the dewey grass. They knew
that there was only one There was only traces of
(11:50):
one person's bodily fluids. And as things progressed, even though
they had you guys, and they restued you guys, and
they we know, they interrogated you, each of you separately. Uh,
I don't want to hear about that, because Raymond's description
of that is truly terrifying when he went through for
you know, for hours on end, almost almost twenty four
(12:12):
hours without in Raymond's case, I know, in your case,
but without food or water or a lawyer or an
adult um and uh, ultimately ultimately everyone confess except you,
which is amazing too. I mean, the fact that you,
as a fifteen year old kid, under the most intense
pressure that anyone could ever face, scared out of your mind,
(12:37):
with your life at stake, still maintained your innocence is
I don't even know where that kind of strength comes from.
But okay, so explain the situation. So you were brought
at some point, you were arrested, You were with your
friends in the park. There was you know, it was
a sort of a chaotic night in the park, you know,
hot night. Whatever. How did this hall come down? How
(12:57):
did you come to be arrested? How did you have
been the police station? How did that after that? So
interestingly enough, if we if we can kind of show
the sneak shift off frame of reference to folks to
TV shows like C side UH to n C I
S two forensics, you know these types of things. What
we get is an understanding that just like you said,
(13:17):
they had information based on their skill set as police
officers and and um and so forth, to let them know, Okay,
this is what happened, they could recreate the crimes being
based on forensics alone. Okay, this happened first, This happened next.
If we saw the blood over here and then here
it is here. We were in Central Parts. We've never
(13:38):
denied being in Central Park, and all of the guys
who became known as the Central Park five were absolute
businesses to all of the mayhem that had gone on
in the park. With the exception of the rape of
the Jaga, no one had no idea a woman was raped,
didn't know anything about it. And so here I am.
(14:00):
At the time, I was about six ft two and
two inches, very slim. Had an outfit on that was
a sky blue jacket with sky blue matching pants. My
sky blue pants had artwork on it. I'm actually a
person who was going to LaGuardia Um Music and Art
for Arts, so I'm a great graphic designer, and I
(14:21):
drew some stuff for my pants that was just you
know how how people did back then, right, if we
can think about the t shows, what we know is
that when they start going into the community to try
to recreate what happened and to ask people what happened,
what they do is they say, okay, well, who who's there,
and folks in there in there thinking okay, damn what.
(14:47):
There was a guy. It was a tall guy. I remember,
it was a tall guy in the park with a
flat I was probably maybe the most stand out ish
looking for fellows because not only was our tall and lanky,
but what I had at on almost looked like I
was wearing white in the in the lights of the
central Park. And so of course no one knew my name.
(15:08):
None of us knew each other. I actually met Raymond
Santana and the other guys in prison. I only knew Corey. Why.
But as things go further, as you can imagine, they
go to the surrounding communities and start interrogating everyone. One
thing leads to another, and my name is mentioned, and
I'm finding out that the police officers are looking for me,
(15:31):
And I said, well, you know what, hey, I didn't
I knew I didn't do anything wrong. I'm with Corey.
Corey said Hey, I left the park almost right after
we went in. We said, well, let's sort of the
cops and to tell them what we saw and we'll
be home before our mom gets back. So when did
you get picked up? Like the crime happened at night
right and the publicity happened immediately after the crime, When
(15:54):
did you become aware of the cops were looking for you?
I became aware of it. I went to school the
next day. I was actually one of the only children.
I had school the next day. Um, I went to
school and next day came home from school and the
blocks were completely empty. It was the weirdest things that
you can imagine if children didn't have school. Everybody be
outside riding skateboard spikes, having fun to hanging out. And
(16:14):
I'm looking around him, like where's everybody at? And not
only that, I see a whole bunch of unmarked police cars,
and so I'm like, yeah, that's is crazy. Go upstairs,
not thinking anything. I've changed my clothes and come back
downstairs with my my playouts at this point, you know,
and Corey's girlfriend at the time comes up to me
(16:35):
and says, hey, when you see Corey, bring him to
my house. I need to show you all something that's
I said, I said, show no problems. So Corey, a
little while later we go up to his top his
girlfriend's house, and she shows us she turned the news
on it. At this point. It's maybe around uh for
a stock or something like that, and of course they
do the things breaking the music exclusives. Um women found
(16:58):
it as far uh supposed to go on. I'm not
understanding why she's showing this us. And then she looks
at us and says, hey, do you have anything to
tell me? And they're looking at her like, what's up,
what's up? What's going on? And she said that they're
saying that this was you guys, that you're in the
park last night, and this is what you all did.
(17:18):
I said, right, no, no, no, no, no no. And
then she said, and they're looking for you, and so
I said, well, I'm gonna go to them and tell
them what I saw. I know, I didn't do anything wrong.
Colory said he didn't do anything wrong. He didn't he
didn't hurt nobody or do anything bad. He left the
park after entering and we get picked up. As a
matter of fact, when we when we finally got a
(17:43):
hold of the officers. That is kind of strange and
ironic that I'm saying it that way, but I was
looking for them. When the officers finally seen in contact
with us, they were in front of my door trying
to convince my thirteen year old brother to put his
clothes on and come down to the printing with them.
He had not been in the park, he didn't know
what was going on, and they were trying to convince
(18:05):
him to put his clothes on to come down to
the precinct to be questioned. In the turkey that would
have ended disastrously, as you can get back. I turned
the corner to approach my door and they're in front
of my door talking about brother, and they asked me
who am I used to long to look at this
documents that they had in their hands and said, this
is one of the guys you were looking for there, Corey.
(18:25):
Who was he? And he said, um, Corey Wise And
they looked at the paper instead of you're you're not
on this this paper, But do you want to come
downtown with your buddy? You'll be right back, and you know,
you know how the story end. Of course, Corey is
sixteen years old at the time. He ends up getting
weilroaded and convicted and spending almost thirteen to fourteen years
(18:48):
of the next part of his life in prison for
a crime that we all not had not committed. Wow,
So he was actually the most random of them all.
He just went down because he was trying to be
a d d U basically right, And that was the
one that was the most worst decision he ever made.
He made it for the right reason. So the process
(19:09):
that happened in the precincts, it was the Central Park
precinct that you were brought to, right, that would the
initial precinct um. And then they then they you know,
because Manhattan Manhattan North Homicide squad steps there and they
start they are the now then they are now the
officers that are interrogating. They are the ones that are saying, Okay,
this is looking like a sun to be a homicide.
(19:31):
We need to figure this out and and solve this
climate top quickly and appease the fears of the public
and let them know that we have the city under control.
We are in control, and we caught the so called perpetrators.
So how did the interrogations go, Like what you were
brought in? What was the whole process. You're brought to
(19:51):
the precinct. You were with Corey. I was with Korey,
and they immediately separated us, you know, and they started
interrogating us and and and while they were asking me
the questions I had, I was very very forthcoming. I said, yeah,
this is what happened first, is what happened next. I'm like,
you know, thinking, hey, I'm just gonna go in there
and tell them what I saw. And like I said,
I'll be back home before my mom gets back. And
(20:15):
when I when I wrapped up the first time, the
guy said, okay, well what about the jock? And I'm like, what, JOCKO,
what are you talking about? And he says, okay, well,
let's start tell me what happened again from the top
to start from the top again, and things began to intensify.
And it began to intensify in such a way that
(20:36):
I started feeling a phrase. And then they, you know,
at some point they would leave the room and come
back in, and I've never seen at one point they
left the room for a very very long time. And
at this point, hours were going by, and I'm feeling tired,
and I'm starting at doze off, and I am immediately
jolted for wait because I hear Corey Wise knelling in
(20:57):
the next room. Cory wised. Just to give you a
little big background of Corey, Corey Wise was the uh
was was, probably was and still is the guy who
you wanted to have as a friend because you knew
that he would have your back. He wasn't gonna let
nothing that happen to you. He was going to make
sure that you know you were okay. And so to
(21:18):
hear Corey, this person who had such a big heart
of fearful person, yelling and screaming okay, I'll tell you,
I'm like, I'm like, oh my goodness, they're beating him up.
I hear I'm smacking him around. I hear them. I
hate he's under the street. He is in a position
(21:40):
that I have never heard him in before. And that
immediately joked to me a word since chills down my spine,
and I'm like, oh my god, that's they're gonna kill her.
And at this point I'm scared. At this point, I'm
still trying to maintain my innocence. I'm still trying to
let them know what happened. And now it's like a
(22:01):
boxing match. At any point, did you have a lawyer
or a guardian, or a parent or anybody else in
there with you know? And this is one of the
most interesting things. I didn't know my mother had came
to the priest, and I didn't know she was there.
It wasn't until after a few more hours passed at
one of the I think it might have been either
(22:23):
Fairstein or Elizabeth Letterer came into the room, I mean
not the nation that comes to a knocked on the
door and summoned the officer out of the room. And
when they summoned the officer out of the room, they
the officers came back in and said to me, how
old are you? Remind you? They they they firsted me
(22:45):
when they took me into custody at my apartment building.
They took my I D which had my I D
from Mount Sinai Hospital, which I had my birthday on it.
Inside my wallet had my mouth swa I D and
my i'm I D. But you know, like the hospital um,
your hospital cards, um I had that, I had a
(23:06):
bus pass um and I had a a pocket knife.
So they knew how old I was. So the guy
comes in and says, how do you? How are you?
How are you? Again? And I'm fifteen? And he curses
and throws his pad across the room and says, why
the act didn't you tell me that? And I'm I'm
(23:28):
not even knowing why is that's even relevant? I don't
even understand what's going on. Then they bring me down
to my mom and she's she's she's telling me, hey,
do not talk to these people. I did not give
them permission to talk to you. You're a minor. They
need my permistion. I am not giving them permission. Don't
(23:50):
talk to them. That's how it went. But then then
what happened, because now you spoke of your mom. That
must have been a very emotional situation. I mean, now
you just heard Corey getting eating up. You know that
you're in real trouble. Um, your mom is there like
like a lifeboat, right, like a life uh you know, uh,
life saver. But um, but you're but but you're still
(24:13):
in the custody of the cops. And then so did
they then pull you away from her and put you
back in the room. And they did, And that's the part,
that's the craziest part. They don't have they don't have
her permission. They they don't have her consent to talk
to me. That meeting was so short. I don't know
how long it lacked it, but it felt like minutes.
(24:33):
It felt like minute. It felt like it was less
than five minutes. And then they brought they almost ripped
me out of her arm beginning, brought me back to
the back and they continue to interrogate, and I remember
one of the officers, the main officers interrogating. He says, uh,
you know, you don't have to tell us anything. That's fine.
(24:54):
You know, we have we have your We pulled your
fingerprints off of her um over for short, Like how
the heck did they put my favorite print off for short?
Like I didn't, I wasn't there. Yeah, and that's something
he said that that you know, I don't understand either.
I mean, the fact that they're allowed to lie in
the interrogation process is so uh, it just I don't know,
(25:14):
it doesn't make sense to me, But go ahead. Yeah,
And I mean at this point, I'm like, oh man,
I'm I'm I'm doing I'm done for But they took
my trust and put it on earth. But they didn't.
The fact is your prints weren't on it. They just
they just lied, I mean because they're trying to pressure static.
So I thinking I'm being framed and I'm like, oh, Sean,
but yeah, me lied And did they did they actually
(25:43):
beat you up like they did the other guys. No, No,
they didn't. That the threat was very real, threat was
extremely real, but they didn't. They didn't touch me. And
ultimately you were there for Do you even know how
many hours you were in there for? No, I don't.
I know. I was brought in that evening and I
remember we didn't have anything to eat a drink, and
you know, being worn down from that, you know, you
(26:05):
think about I have I have ten children, so it's
a interesting dynamic when you think about, you know, how
much a child could eat and so my my, uh,
my fifteen year old uh consumes everything in the house.
You know, you got to basically go to Costcos just
for that one child alone, uh and buying bulks because
you know that they're going to eat everything, you know. Um,
(26:28):
but we didn't get anything to eat, we didn't get
anything to drink. I remember the next morning we were
we were at another prepense and they brought McDonald's. You know,
and I remember eating McDonald's was the first time I
had even eat and and so and you said, I mean,
there's a very powerful video that I saw you do, UM,
that people can watch that you did in conjunction with
the New Yorker magazine and the Marshall Project, in which
(26:50):
you talk about the fact that you thought you were
going to go and as you just said you'd be
home before your mind got back. Uh. And in fact
he didn't get home from seven years. UM. So from
this point you never did confess, right, the other guys
were And which is interesting too because of the fact
and kind of amazing because of the fact that we
(27:12):
know that false confessions are very common. Um. The general
public doesn't understand. Jurors don't understand why anyone would confess
to a crime they didn't commit. But when they're under
that type of pressure and their adolescence and their brain
hasn't even fully formed like yours, Adnam, but what were
you in ninth grade? It's ridiculous. And so the pressure
gets to people and they also think like it must
(27:33):
have occurred to you at some point, because they you
come into that room thinking, well, these are the good guys,
and there's gonna be Even if these guys that in
front of me are good guys, there's gonna be some
other good guys that are gonna understand that are gonna
save me, because I gotta get out of this room,
like I gotta get away from these people who are
tormenting me, who are threatening me, who may kill me. UM.
And that's what the whole you know, interrogation techniques called
(27:56):
the red technique is designed to do. It's designed to
basically make your mind collapse in on itself so that
you see no other option other than to confess. So
that's why false confessions are extremely common in in juveniles
and adolescence. UM. And that's important for people who are
listening who are someday going to serve on a jury
to know if you're if you're seeing especially a case
(28:17):
where there's no other evidence other than a false confession,
other than a confession, you really have to dive into
that and you have to be aware that that confession
very well maybe a false confession, and you may be
dealing with an innocent person. So then it comes to
the to the trial and you know you've got this
sensational trial. UM. It's so much media you guys were
(28:41):
you know, I mean even I was buying into it
back then. I'm ashamed to admit it. But there was
only one narrative. There wasn't like somebody else going, well,
wait a minute, maybe blah blah blah. Because they were
withholding all the evidence that they had, right they knew,
I mean, weeks into your case. They knew that it
was impossible that you or any of the the four
guys could have done this. But they didn't care because
(29:03):
and that's the thing, you know, when I when I
when I look at a lot of these cases and
I understand the law a lot more, I realized that
it's not really about the fact, it's about who can
tell the best stories. And in many ways, we had
an effective council. We had, you know, we were facing
a situation where even the evidence that you see, you know,
you would think that it's a game rate, that there's
(29:25):
definitely going to be some some semens uh, some type
of something. Nobody had blood on them, nobody had anything
on them that even indicated that they were at this place,
you know, but yet they still went and stepped over
the bounds of the law, manufactured evidence, like you said,
and went full stream ahead because now, not only did
(29:47):
they do this in the worst way, but I've always
said that it was more attractive, it was more sexy,
if you will. So they're to be five people brutally
as salting one woman who was white, five five people
of color brutally assaulting a white woman. Then to there
(30:08):
it has been with the evidence shows from the clans
because one person dragging one person into the woods and
trying to murder them after they raised them. Right, it's
a wolf pack situation. It's it's preying on everybody's primal fears,
is playing on the on the race card, everything else,
(30:28):
and you know, and it's so it's so tragic because
they knew that this Mathias Rays guy, they were already
watching him. They knew that he was a suspect and
a prior rape that had many of the similar characteristics.
I mean, there was this case really came with instructions
and as this evidence started coming in and they became
aware in a very short time after you guys were arrested,
and some of the evidence probably was even before you're arrested,
(30:50):
that it was a single perpetrator, be that it wasn't
any of you guys. See that they could have so
easily gone and picked up Matthias, and they would have
they would have had the guy. And we keep coming
back to that, and none of these other people would
have suffered the way they didn't neither would you. Um,
But that that's not what happened because these people were, um,
(31:10):
they were overtaken by ambition and publicity and accolades that
they wanted to get, and they were perfectly happy to
convict inness and people. It was almost like, not even
inconvenient for them. It was just like, let's just get
it done and and take the bows and and do
their whole thing, going on with their lives. And they
have gone on with their lives. I don't know how.
(31:32):
I don't know how they sleep at night, but they do.
You know, Jason, is interesting as you talk about that,
because that's one of the things that people try to
get people to understand as well. This is not a
situation where oh my goodness, we dropped the ball my dad,
Oh my gosh, we've never done this before. This is
this is a situation where it's the convince ability of
our guilt, which was we weren't guilty. But if they
(31:55):
were able to convince the public of this lie and
do it so well. I've always said, well, how many
other cases after? I never forget when the Central prop
five film came out that King Burns did, which was
an amazing film. I never forget when it was released,
people from Columbia Law was watching it. And Elizabeth Letter
(32:18):
is an adjunct professor at Columbia Law. I don't know
if she's still there, but she was there then, and
the students started an online petition to get her fired.
They did not want her to teach them because in
their minds they were they were looking at this case
and saying, what kind of law is she gonna teach?
If she said this to the Central Proas five, what
(32:39):
is she training us to do? And they did not
want her to teach them, And instead of Columbia Law
firing her, they protected her. But the documents paying a
pictures that this wasn't just about we're gonna prosecute this case.
We're just gonna do our jobs and you know, make
sure that justice is served. We like they hated us.
(33:02):
They hated us with every fiber of their body and
wanted us to be guilted. And in that they said
anything and everything by hook or by crook to make
sure that they can get a conviction. I never forget
when they when they leaked out something about the DNA,
they said the DNA evidence, and then they tested us
(33:26):
and no match came back. And what did they do?
They had to come out and say that no, there's
no match. But they quickly swept it under the rug.
Because that tsunami of media reports that was present within
the first few weeks of this trial, or not even
the trial for the case being broadcast. That tsunami of
media reports dwarfs any of these small little things that
(33:48):
came out because it munted the waters and caused people
to just say to themselves, there was something about DNA
in this case. They don't remember that there was no
DNA match. They just remembered there was something about DNA.
And then when he came out in the trial and
said this will there will be no DNA evidence in mistakes.
What we what we will rely on for their confession,
(34:12):
Stay tuned, will be right back. Let's let's move to
the trial itself. How long did the trial last? Man?
So I want to I want to say that the
trial lasted for maybe just under a year. I don't
(34:32):
know specific time frames, but I do know that I was.
I was out on bail. I was only in in
in uh lock up initially for a little while. That
I got out on build and that was nice. Maybe
nine and how about when they convicted us? But okay,
so that's weird too, because you're out on bail. I mean,
(34:54):
you couldn't go to school. You must have had to
stay inside the house. You're one of the most notorious
criminals in New York State history. At that time. It was.
It was one of the worst and scariest times ever because,
as you can imagine, also Donald Trump, early on, we
hadn't even going we haven't even going to trial yet.
Donald Trump takes out a full page ad two weeks
after we were accused, and it runs in the New
(35:16):
York News, the Daily, to the New York Times Daily News,
to post, all of the major newspapers. It runs, and
it's it's an outcry. It's an outcry from someone from
the darker enclaves of society two coming to our home
to drag us from our bay and to hang us
(35:37):
from trees and Central Park, to due to us what
they had done to as a kill and I say
that because what happened as a result of that article
being that ad being brand and placed, people began to
write us hateful mail. People begin to write us threatening letters.
They began to say that they were gonna that we
that they hope that we would be fried and oil,
(35:59):
that we be raped, that we would be castrated, that
thirty years from now, next year is the third year
anniversary of the Central Park jogger case. Twenty to thirty
years from now, some people will never forget. And one
letter specifically says that maybe the one time that you
don't check your back is the one time that someone
(36:21):
must just be there to say hello. And so if
you can imagine the language and and and all of
the stuff that was going on back then, like they
wanted to murder us. They wanted to do to us
what they had done to m Hill. We became the
modern day scotsporal boys, definitely, but they wanted to do
to us what they had done to em Chill. Yeah,
(36:43):
the MTL case haunts me. It's just really one of
the most just really one of the darkest episodes in
American history, that that that poor kid with that little
baby face that he had, but you were almost the
same age as he was at the time, right he was,
you were fifteen, and here you are now you're a
prisoner in your own home. You have this guy who
we know is a racist taking out these ads advocating
(37:05):
a lynch mob. Um. The fact that the papers would
even run these ads is insane and um. And then
then the trial comes. So how did the trial itself?
And you know, obviously you were not adequately represented. I
don't know if a good lawyer could have gotten you
out with all the hysteria at that time, because you've
been trial, you had already been tried in the media.
But the fact that you know, there's that saying that
in America you're better off being guilty and rich than
(37:27):
innocent and poor. So the fact is, so you go
to the trial. The trial itself lasted how many days?
Oh man? So the trial, that's that's another thing that's
very foggy on me. But I know that as the
trial went in, it was like okay, as it was
drawing on and drawing on, and you get the very
at the very end. What I remember most is I
(37:47):
was on the phone with a friend and I never
forget it was the day was the day was ending,
and I'm on the phone and say, hey, this is
what's going on. You know, okay, it looks like a
will will uh you know, they're not gonna have a verdict.
And I'll be at the sea wall shortly. And then
somebody came running down the hallway and says the verticues
in the vertices and I said, man, it VERTICU is
(38:08):
then okay, great, I'll see you soon. And I just
don't know. We were all found guilty. You were trying
were you trying together? Well, they split the trial and
they split the case in half, and so the first
of us myself, Reman's, Antana and Ara mccreers win and
then the next three that was there because it was
(38:30):
initially called a Central Park seven and uh, Michael Briscoe
was able to get out of the case um and
get bread and then it became the Center Park six.
And when that first trial happened, myself Reminsce, myself Remans,
Antanna and Ara mccraize. We got convicted, we lost, and
(38:52):
the next trial was daring up Corey Wise, Kevin Richardson
and Stephen Lopez, Stephn Lopez as Colfee all kind of
rumors were out there about how much time we were facing.
They wanted to try us as adults and convict us
as adults, and they tried us as adults, and then
when the convictions came down a few months later, for
(39:13):
a little while later they gave us juvenile time. But
each of these charges they were saying could have given
us three and a half were was it three? And
the third three and a third to ten years? And
so were the major charges. I think it was two
of them. We could have been facing fiction two thirds
to twenty years if they wanted to give us that
(39:34):
kind of time. And like I said, Stephen Lope has
got cold fee heard about this, these rumors. Oh my goodness,
they got convicted. I can't do that much time. Let
me just cop out to something that I didn't do
so I can get out of this thing. And of
course we know that he copped out to robbery or
something like that and got a year. U he did,
(39:55):
he did one year and came home. I think it
was one year. Um. And I was been fortunate too,
because it shows, like you said, if you're poor and
your innocence, you're not going to get a fair chance.
You're not going to be afforded the same opportunities of
the under the law as a person who maybe more
and so so that you actually believe up until the
(40:18):
moment that the verdict came in that you were going
to be exonerate. It's amazing after everything you've been through
that you still had that type of and well, now
that I know you as I do, the fact that
you're that optimistic attitude is I guess I shouldn't be surprised,
but after everything you had been through at that time, um,
it's amazing that you still maintained hope. But in fact,
(40:39):
the worst possible outcome came to be, which is that
you were found guilty and then you were taking to prison.
Now you're sixteen years old, right and you're going to
some of the worst prisons in America arguably the world.
This is this is the worst of nightmare times twenty
(41:02):
And that was in the juvenile facility as well. I
know that Corey Wise in Burker's Island and Kors Island
is incomparable to sponsor It or any of the other
juvenile facilities. You know, the worst thing that can happen
to you and Jubie is that you might get sliced
or you know, beat up with slife that but in
Barker's Island you could die, you could lose your life.
(41:33):
For us, that went to the juvenile facility. That was
how And then when we got convicted, they sent us
to one of the three maximum Agent Street facilities at
the time that was there. They sent me to Harlem Valley.
They sent Raymonds and Canada goshen Uh and they spent
uh and trying to create a book forward, you know,
(41:53):
and it was the worst, worst kind of situation that
you can bagine. We had to grow up very fast
think about how we were going to survive when just
yesterday we were riding skateboards and you know, being fru
groups or something like that. I'm doing graphic design and
looking forward to just just just just being a normal,
(42:14):
innocent child. And now yet that whole reality is gone,
and it's hard to it's hard to fully describe everything
that went on because my story is a little bit
different because I started to really try to get some
type of understanding about this. I wanted to figure out
why why, Like I knew that I was infant, I
(42:34):
knew that we hadn't done it, but here we were,
we were in prison, and I was trying to figure
out why were we convicted? How did this happen? And
I never forget that guy comes up to me in prison,
one of the officers, and he's been watching me for
a few months that I had been there at this time,
and he asks me this one question, This one question
changed my life. He said, who are you? And I
(42:59):
and I in my in my in my ignorance and confusion.
My answer was probably the same as anyone else, without
understanding the philosophical realm of where he was going. I said,
I'm used to salon one of the guys that they
accused of rape in the Central Park Joga, but I
didn't do it. And he said, no, no, no no, no,
I know that, he said, but I've been watching you.
(43:20):
You're not supposed to be here, You're not a criminal.
Why are you here? Who are you? And it caused
me to really evaluate my life and my circumstances, short
as it may be, at a particular point in time,
to to to understand things in a greater, so to speak, way,
to understand that we all are here on purpose. There's
(43:40):
things that we have to do, and we are the
ones that are chosen to do that, and if they
don't do it, it won't be done. Because we don't
bless the world with our book. That book will never
be rich. They say the Grave daughter is the wealthiest
place in the world because it's stilled with the ideas
and the dreams and the hopes of people that just
did not get over the hump of doing those ideas
(44:02):
and dreams and hopes, you know. And so here I was,
in this place that I was supposed to be. Damned,
I'm getting a sense of purpose that I would have
never really really understood had not gone through this. Did
you did you maintain a relationship with that officer going forward?
Because that's deep. I mean, the first person that said
(44:23):
that those same words to me was deep Ac Chopra.
I'm not comparing this guy to deep oct Chopra, but um,
but yeah, I mean what happened with I mean, did
you did you continue to have dialogue with him? I did?
As a matter of fact, this this guy befriended me.
It was one of it was one of the many
officers that be friended me, you know. And it was
weird because at the same time there was there were
(44:46):
little things that would go on, and one time I
would come back to my cell and I would see uh,
tropic orange juice and instruments cookies, and it would happen
to often enough that have kind of like, oh wow,
this is this is kind of strange. And it happened
to life choplicate kind of orange es and intimate cookies.
But in the back of my mind I had this
voice playing in my head that they were trying to
kill me with the food, and so I would never
eat it. And one day this lady comes up to
(45:08):
be another officer and she says, hey, have you been
getting the goodies I've been leaving to you? And I said,
oh wow, I didn't know you were leaving. I didn't
know it was you. I said why, why, why did
you do that? And she said, you said. I know
you're anything. I know you're not supposed to be here,
but I can't take this key and let you go
for you. So every time I come in here and
(45:31):
you're here, I want to make good time as easy
and as as as comfortable as possible, And this was
her way of doing that. You've found this incredible purpose
in this darkest place that you could possibly be in,
and it has obviously carried you through. You ended up
(45:52):
serving on a five to ten years sentence six years
and eight months. Let's talk about the fact that Matthias
Reyes actually confessed all these years later, Um, when he
met one of the Central Parky he met Korean prison,
and then suddenly his conscience got to him. Imagine that
(46:13):
he actually met the guy who was serving time for
the crime that he committed, and then all of a
sudden he got this attack of conscience. I think he
may have found religion by then or I don't know what,
but anyway, it doesn't matter. He confessed. How did you
find out that you now had this ray of light
and that you you know that that you were you
(46:33):
were now going to be actually had a real chance
of becoming being exonerated. So you know, when we heard
the news, just like everyone else and our our attorneys,
but telling us about how you know what happened, and
you know, one of the worst things that, of course
happens in the case like that is if you've been
ran all about the piplos of justice once you absolutely
(46:54):
do not trust that they are going to do the
right thing this time. And so I've felt like, okay,
you know this, this this the world words that came out.
He he confessed the crime, confessed in a compelling way
that that lets them know that he alone did this.
They DNA and long behold his DNA matches, And like
(47:16):
I said, then they when they tested his DNA and
his DNA matched, they knew beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Oh my goodness, we did the wrong things and convicted
the wrong guys. And we have to fix this. And
so the judge vacaid our conviction. A matter of fact,
as we as we go forward, we see that Robert
(47:38):
Morgan's office as man, had we known then what we
know now, we would have never convicted them. And I'm
appreciative and happy that he said that. But what we
all submit is that they did know that then. What
they knew now, they did know Robert Morgan thought had
people working for him and under him that should have
(48:00):
ever went after us. And it cost the city millions
of dollars. It costs a million, Well, it costs so
much more than just the millions of dollars they had
to pay out, because it also cost, as we said,
the lives of these other innocent people. That cost your
lives it cost your family untold heartache and paying it
(48:20):
cost tax money that we, uh, we had to pay
to keep you guys incarcerated. Right, that's that runs into
the millions of dollars when you're talking about forty years
of prison time collectively or more. When and then we
talked about the lost the lost taxes that you could
have been outside paying. Right if you guys were if
you guys had gone through your normal schooling and come
out and then become gotten your jobs, whatever you're gonna
(48:41):
be doing, and they've been paying taxes, you would have
been contributing to society. So it's a it's a loss
for society in every conceivable way. And it was preventable
and it's despicable what happened. And I think everybody owes
you a tremendous apology. And so I'm going to apologize
to you on behalf of New York City and America
and the human race because none of this, none of
(49:03):
this should have ever gone down the way it did.
Um and and let me I want to get to
the to what you're doing now, but and and talk
about your public speaking and other advocacy worked that you're doing.
But before we get to that. Um. So so you
had this euphoria, it still took all this time to
put your life back together, but you've done it. And
(49:23):
to see you now, um, no one would ever know
that you had been through this stuff. I mean today,
are you better? You know I'm not better. I think
that what it is is that we've been able to
take our circumstance. And when I say we, um, I
know that myself in Raymonds, Antina, we've gone out and
we've spoken a lot more than the other folks of
(49:46):
the gentleman in the central charge of case. Um. But
what the idea is that to be able to take
this this this uh part, just this really horrific part
of life in turn it into something beautiful. And so
I'm reminded of what Nelson Mandela said when he was
talking about how he had to be in in the
(50:09):
world and what he had to leave behind in the prison.
He said he had to leave anger and resentment and
bitterness in the prison because and we all hear him say,
it's liking. It's like drinking poison and expecting your enemy
to die. So use that anger. You write it, you painted,
you dance it, you march it, you voted. You do
(50:33):
everything about it. You talk, it never stopped talking. And
so I say that because I've been trying to utilize
my energy and my platform to articulate what happened to
us in a way that makes sense, so that other
folks can understand how important their role is and how
important they need to be as regards to what happens
(50:55):
in the criminal justice system, you know. And so I've
taken that anger and I redirected it. I transformed it,
and I made it into something that is more beautiful
and more powerful. And and and this is where I
stand now. And let me ask you this. So if
people want to know you're doing a lot of public speaking,
you have a book. Um, but if people want to
have you come and speak, how did they reach out
(51:16):
of you? How do they contact you? What's the name
of the book? Let's give a nice plug for any
of your social media or anything else that you want
to talk about. Yeah. Absolutely, I used my real name
on social media so so folks can connect with me.
Um use salam. Why U S T S S A
L A A M on all social media platforms. My
photo is there so that you'll know it's me. The
(51:37):
name of the book is Words of a Man. It's
on my website. My website is use speaks dot com.
That's why U s E S S P E A
k S dot com. And you know, folcusing book be
by emailing me why U s s that you speaks
dot com. You said that use speaks dot com. And
(51:58):
I worked for myself, so I'm you know, people can
book me, people can bring me UM, and so I
can travel UM. And this is where it's not being
able to bring these real life stories into spaces that
can really affectuate change, whether at the universities, whether it
be forums, UM wide and broad. So the last thing
(52:19):
I would like to do is is usually the last
thing we do here on the show UM. And it's
actually my favorite part of the show, and I think
probably a lot of people's favorite part of the show.
This is the part of the show where I get
quiet and I like to just turn the microphone over
to you for last words. Anything that's on your mind,
(52:40):
anything that you can share that will give people some
new perspective in your own words. So what I want
to do and in this moment is take people back
in time. And I love to do this because it's
something that I do on the role of my sign engagements.
But take them back into the courthouse. I take them
back to the day right after I got convicted, and
(53:02):
here we were standing in front of the judge and
we were about the sentence, and they axed us, do
you have anything to say before we sent Confused and
rather than throwing myself on the most mercy of the
court like everyone has been telling me, I had been
reading Maltha Max. I had been reading about Market Garvey.
I had a reading about countless individuals who were freedom
(53:22):
fighters trying to fight the justice. And what I stood
up and said to the judge was said, I said,
I'm not gonna sit here at your table and watch
you eat and call myself dinner. Sitting here at your
table doesn't make me dinner, just like being here in
America doesn't make me an American. Let us begin stresses
the anger that is built up inside rage is the
(53:45):
anger that is no longer built taking on the sucker
that soon you have killed American free will doesn't mean
you can kill and take another person's life. You live
your life, tripe. I'm a skill builder. Some one skills
I do build. We had to give a knowledge to
this lies black man soon to enhance my words across
the land. I'm a smooth type of fellow, cool, common mellow.
(54:06):
I'm kind of laid back. But now I'm speaking so
that you know. I got used and abused and even
was put on the news without cruise from gay cruise,
selling out like fools. Now checked this, who did what
and who did who? Ends? But the situation that you
don't know what's doing, some brothers go wild and we're
not down with them. Who would have thought I'd have
(54:27):
to lock in? I sent choose checking the scene from
how the situation was. Instead of getting facts, the media
made you blurred how other people don't know. All they
see is the media. They never hear the blame because
they're constantly deceiving us. The d A is dead wrong.
This is her master plan. This case is not a case.
(54:47):
It's just to craft the sham joe instead of trying
to get your name made this reconstructing the crime that
really paid me. It's law la ilaha, evil law being
supreme over Satan, but no man as a law as
I'm a science dropper on the righteous path, So how
the hell could I take a racist path? Think about that,
and then think about this. All my friends it was me.
(55:09):
They just said the smith because I don't really need
any friends like that, like when I really needed you.
Where we get at. I'm not disting them all, but
the ones that I called, they went and just me
like I was an inch small, like a rat, a mouse,
not even the man wrongly accused, like the knives in
my hands. How does it look? Me? Clock now, I'm sure,
but like Matlock soon you accused, it took the hook.
(55:32):
It's real when she remembers and says, damn the cops
that you went. I stand the queues, your people stop
this racial dispersed and you know you've seen that kid, Vincent.
He's in the hurt. And so we take it just
this and hurst Fields white tide bullet proof best. We
had no kind of shields. How does it look they
killed the black man being black? It's time we take
(55:55):
a stand in our situation. You saw our faces clear,
but not mine. Not because of fear. It's because the
black grace was disgraced. And for the Muslims, they must
have felt shamed. But I'm not to blame with the
words of thought. The media took our words of paper,
the ones the cops distorted. I told the cops truth
like this, and then boom, they were smacking my man,
(56:16):
Corey Wise in the next room. Now, I want to
know why the Bosters can't stand the Bobby Lawn. They
never helped. They just babble lawn. I used to think
the people and cops were cool, But who protects us
from you? I stand the queues and as I wrapped
it up, the judge's face was getting angrier and angrier,
and I could tell they were about to throw the
(56:37):
book it. And then I took my seat, and they
gave me the maximum amount of time that they could
give me with this five pretent, and they hoped that
they could have gaven me more. I'm sure that's what
I said. That actually is a is one of the
poems that's in my book Words of a man Um
that's on my website. I also when I come around
(56:58):
and speak, I usually have some with me as well. Well.
All I can say is, um, you know, I wish
you all the best, all the blessings of life. I'm
so happy to see you thriving, building your family, building
your career, and spending the word alongside so many of
(57:19):
us in the movement, UM and uh. I look forward
to working with you and spending time with you in
the future. And I just want to thank you again
for taking your time to be on the show, UM
and I want to thank the audience also for listening.
This has been a very special and moving episode of
Wrongful Conviction, so yusef thank you again. I pleasure thank
(57:42):
you for having don't forget to give us a fantastic review.
Wherever you get your podcasts, it really helps. And I'm
a proud donor to the Innsis Project and I really
hope you'll join me in supporting this very important cause
and helping to event future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence
Project dot org to learn how to donate and get involved.
(58:06):
I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and
Kevin Wardis. The music in the show is by three
time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow
us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at
Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam is a
production Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company
(58:26):
Number one
In two thousand eighteen, I had the privilege of interviewing
use of Salam well now Dr us of Salam and
Dr Salam now Sirs. I love the way that sounds
on the board of the Innocence Project with me. He's
a father of ten children, extraordinary and he is an
accomplished and celebrated motivational speaker, an author, and a tremendous
(00:23):
advocate for criminal justice reform. Most dramatically, the story of
use of Salam and the four other wrongfully convicted boys
because they were just children when they were teenagers young teenagers,
and they were wrongly convicted, then known as the Central
Park Five, now known as the Exonerated Five, were featured
(00:43):
in the hit Netflix show and the hit it Hit
is not a strong enough for the smash Netflix show
when they see us sixteen Emmy Award nominations and it's
become a cultural phenomenon. It also has resulted in actual
consequences for the people who wrongfully prosecuted and persecuted Yusef
(01:04):
and the other kids. Both prosecutors have faced some censure.
I'm not strong enough punishments in my view for what
they did, but it really is a full circle turnaround
that couldn't possibly have been imagined back when this terrible
miscaracter justice was happening. Dr Yusef Salon's episode is one
of my favorites. I'm excited for you to hear it.
(01:32):
I've never been a trouble with my life. I didn't
even have a parking ticket. I didn't, you know what
I mean. I was brought up like cops are the
good guys. I didn't know what was going to happen,
but I do know that everything was stacked against me.
Everything like everything, this isn't supposed to happen this way.
I'm innocent. I know I'm innocent. I know I had
(01:54):
nothing to do with this. How is this possible? I
grew up trusting this is tims. I grew up believing
that every human being should boot the right thing. And
that's why, even though he Neil is dealing with cor
rough people, I wasn't going to brave anyone to get
me out of prison because I wouldn't live with the
funk that I braved my way out of my waystead
(02:14):
I'm not innocent, too proven guilty. I'm guilty until I
proved my innocence, and that's absolutely what happened to me
her system. Since I've been out ten years, it's come
a little ways, but it's still broke in a totally
little trust in humanity after what's happened to it. Welcome
back the Wrong for Conviction with Jason Flam That's me.
And today I'm actually a little bit um star struck
(02:39):
or awe struck because, um, we have as our guest
today Yusef Salam, who is one of the most inspiring
people I've ever had the privilege to be around. And
so Yusef, welcome to the show. Oh thank you for
having me. It is definitely my pleasure. And um, you know,
I always say I'm happy you're here, but I'm sorry
(03:00):
you're here because you never should have gone through this
in the first place. But it's really it's an incredible,
incredible story, both in terms of the you know, the
story itself and and the the total breakdown of the
criminal justice system uh that this case so perfectly um
(03:20):
um highlights, but also because of what you've how you've
managed to turn it into such an amazingly positive thing
and who you've become. So we'll get into that later though,
but let's go back in time. Like in the movies
when it gets all foggy and we go back as this,
because this goes back to the eighties, right, I mean, Um,
(03:44):
and I lived in New York. This is a New
York case. Is one of the most famous cases, the
Central Park Jogre case, or one of the most infamous
cases in the history of New York City. Um, which
is of course the media capital of the world. And
I lived in New York back then, and it was
it was crazy place. You were just a kid, um
years old, fifteen years old, unbelievable. I was. You know,
(04:07):
I'm a little bit older than you, so I was
in my late twenties already. But I remember like it
was yesterday. I mean, this case was blasted everywhere. This
was the crime wave, right, This was a time when
the only thing there was a lot of crime in
New York. But the hysteria around the crime was was
far exceeded the actual problem. Um. And you know you
(04:32):
were a young guy growing up. Um. And had you
prior to this horrible incident, had you had any dealings
with the law, had you ever been in trouble before?
So I think that, you know, when I look at
myself back then, being innocent, being you know, full of
(04:53):
promise and hope and and dreams and aspirations. You know.
My my so to speak, interaction with police officers or
authority figures was that we would see them in the
neighborhoods walking around. And you know, these were back when
the cops actually walked the beat and knew the people's
names that they you know, police and and so I
(05:14):
thought that police officers were very friendly, very very um helpful.
And you know, you you juxtaposed that with the backdrop
of today, and it's like a horror scene when you
look at what happened, you know. But my my interaction
was very I didn't have I didn't have any interactions.
(05:35):
And what I knew about police officers was that they
were they were your friends, and if you needed help,
you could call on them to help you, um and
they would come and they would help you because they
all public servants there to protect and serve. Right. So
you grew up like I did, thinking these are the
these are the good guys. A lot of us when
we were young boys, uh, we all you know, looked
(05:58):
up to every I looked at the most people in uniform,
everyone in uniform. I always thought that's a class of cliche.
You grow up wanting to be a fireman or a
police officer. A lot of young kids, you know, play
play act in those those roles. But this crime. I
want to talk about this crime because you know, interestingly,
the first guest we ever had on this podcast, and
now we're deep into our sixth season, right, so, um,
(06:22):
the first cast we ever had was Raymond Sntana, who
didn't an incredible interview, just an amazing, amazing man he is,
and uh did a great job um telling the story.
So you know, fans of the podcast would be familiar
with the case from that, but you have your own
perspective on it, and you know, and and there's a
very and I say that for a very specific set
(06:42):
of reasons. But going back to the case, this was
a case where a woman who was a Wall Street banker,
a white twenty eight year old woman from the Upper
East Side, was jockey in Central Park and she was
that it was dusk right um when she was attacked
(07:03):
and she was brutally beaten. When she was found. To
give people some perspective, she sev of the blood and
her body was gone, her temperate body temperatures eighty four degrees.
I mean, she was as close to dead as you
can be, and she had been raped and beaten to
within an inch of her life. And this triggered everyone's
worst fears, right because it was, oh my god, this
(07:26):
is the you know, uh, you know, an innocent woman whatever,
white and there was a whole racial aspect to it.
And man, when that happened, the news media went nuts
and there was a lot of pressure to solve this crime. Um,
do you want to add anything to to that description?
You know it was it was definitely a witch hunt,
sent a frenzy of a witch hunt, because when you
(07:48):
think about other people's projections, you know, folks look at
people from so to speak, the darker honies of society
as the worst of the worst. Um. You know, I'm
I'm I'm in the motivational speaking world now, and I'm
told that if you look at a person and address
a person as they should be, you raised the level
(08:09):
of what they could be, as opposed to trying to
be trying to address them as their circumstances are. Not
everybody who may be in those same circumstances maybe of
that particular elements and that's the thing that's unfortant, because
there was this some speak broad stroke rush, you know,
accusation uh these people type of rhetoric and talk. And
(08:34):
the notion was that of course they did it because
they're black and brown, and so you know when they
when they when the woman was found, you know, towards
the northern northern end of Central Park. There was this
just a desire for one to solve this crime, and
(08:54):
to solve this crime as quick as possible. And so
I remember me a cosh BacT and saying something like
people wanted to know how the how the criminal justice
systems in New York City will work, and they're going
to get a great opportunity as regards this case to
see how this system works. We're gonna go after us
(09:16):
with the full full arm of the law, you know,
and true to form despike wheels of justice mold us down.
But in in in their rush to judgment, they dropped
the ball in the worst way and allowed the will
criminals to continue to hurt name and ultimately murder. His
(09:39):
last at them, who was a young pregnant Latina woman.
He brandished his knife, came into her home. She said,
hold on for one moment and I thought, my da
is in the next room. He allowed her to do
so she put her children in the next moment, she
locked the door, and then he raped her and stabbed
for the death, killing her and her unborn child. And
(10:00):
that is I'm glad you brought that up, because it's
just it makes it makes anybody sick to their stomach.
And you know that that scene that you're describing is
right out of a horror movie. And um, and it
never should have happened, and it never needed to happen
because in this case, and it's it's so tragically common,
yourseff when you have uh, this tunnel vision and this um,
(10:25):
you know, this wilful framing of innocent people. And in
this case it's even worse because they really knew who
the guy was. I mean, first of all, they knew
and and so this woman never should have been killed.
The other women that he raped in the months following
the you know, the your your arrest never never should
have been raped. They should have gone on and had
(10:46):
their lives not destroyed the way they were. Um, those
kids would still have a mother. This the consequences of
the actions of the authorities in this case goes so
far beyond having this droid um young lives, five young lives,
and and your families, and how it defect it had
on your families. You know, it's amazing. I've seen the
(11:07):
picture of your mom when you were finally exonerated, and
she's and the joy is so amazing. But but going
back to this, the crazy thing is they knew from
the beginning that it was a single perpetrator because this
this poor woman was dragged into and the ground was wet, right,
and she was dragged into this area. You know, obviously
(11:28):
he wanted to take her to a secluded area. And
for people who are not from the city, who haven't
been to the city, Central Park is about three miles
long and about a mile wide. It's a big place.
And she was jogging up in the northern section of
the park. Um, So they knew that there was only
one set of footprints in the dewey grass. They knew
that there was only one There was only traces of
(11:50):
one person's bodily fluids. And as things progressed, even though
they had you guys, and they restued you guys, and
they we know, they interrogated you, each of you separately. Uh,
I don't want to hear about that, because Raymond's description
of that is truly terrifying when he went through for
you know, for hours on end, almost almost twenty four
(12:12):
hours without in Raymond's case, I know, in your case,
but without food or water or a lawyer or an
adult um and uh, ultimately ultimately everyone confess except you,
which is amazing too. I mean, the fact that you,
as a fifteen year old kid, under the most intense
pressure that anyone could ever face, scared out of your mind,
(12:37):
with your life at stake, still maintained your innocence is
I don't even know where that kind of strength comes from.
But okay, so explain the situation. So you were brought
at some point, you were arrested, You were with your
friends in the park. There was you know, it was
a sort of a chaotic night in the park, you know,
hot night. Whatever. How did this hall come down? How
(12:57):
did you come to be arrested? How did you have
been the police station? How did that after that? So
interestingly enough, if we if we can kind of show
the sneak shift off frame of reference to folks to
TV shows like C side UH to n C I
S two forensics, you know these types of things. What
we get is an understanding that just like you said,
(13:17):
they had information based on their skill set as police
officers and and um and so forth, to let them know, Okay,
this is what happened, they could recreate the crimes being
based on forensics alone. Okay, this happened first, This happened next.
If we saw the blood over here and then here
it is here. We were in Central Parts. We've never
(13:38):
denied being in Central Park, and all of the guys
who became known as the Central Park five were absolute
businesses to all of the mayhem that had gone on
in the park. With the exception of the rape of
the Jaga, no one had no idea a woman was raped,
didn't know anything about it. And so here I am.
(14:00):
At the time, I was about six ft two and
two inches, very slim. Had an outfit on that was
a sky blue jacket with sky blue matching pants. My
sky blue pants had artwork on it. I'm actually a
person who was going to LaGuardia Um Music and Art
for Arts, so I'm a great graphic designer, and I
(14:21):
drew some stuff for my pants that was just you
know how how people did back then, right, if we
can think about the t shows, what we know is
that when they start going into the community to try
to recreate what happened and to ask people what happened,
what they do is they say, okay, well, who who's there,
and folks in there in there thinking okay, damn what.
(14:47):
There was a guy. It was a tall guy. I remember,
it was a tall guy in the park with a
flat I was probably maybe the most stand out ish
looking for fellows because not only was our tall and lanky,
but what I had at on almost looked like I
was wearing white in the in the lights of the
central Park. And so of course no one knew my name.
(15:08):
None of us knew each other. I actually met Raymond
Santana and the other guys in prison. I only knew Corey. Why.
But as things go further, as you can imagine, they
go to the surrounding communities and start interrogating everyone. One
thing leads to another, and my name is mentioned, and
I'm finding out that the police officers are looking for me,
(15:31):
And I said, well, you know what, hey, I didn't
I knew I didn't do anything wrong. I'm with Corey.
Corey said Hey, I left the park almost right after
we went in. We said, well, let's sort of the
cops and to tell them what we saw and we'll
be home before our mom gets back. So when did
you get picked up? Like the crime happened at night
right and the publicity happened immediately after the crime, When
(15:54):
did you become aware of the cops were looking for you?
I became aware of it. I went to school the
next day. I was actually one of the only children.
I had school the next day. Um, I went to
school and next day came home from school and the
blocks were completely empty. It was the weirdest things that
you can imagine if children didn't have school. Everybody be
outside riding skateboard spikes, having fun to hanging out. And
(16:14):
I'm looking around him, like where's everybody at? And not
only that, I see a whole bunch of unmarked police cars,
and so I'm like, yeah, that's is crazy. Go upstairs,
not thinking anything. I've changed my clothes and come back
downstairs with my my playouts at this point, you know,
and Corey's girlfriend at the time comes up to me
(16:35):
and says, hey, when you see Corey, bring him to
my house. I need to show you all something that's
I said, I said, show no problems. So Corey, a
little while later we go up to his top his
girlfriend's house, and she shows us she turned the news
on it. At this point. It's maybe around uh for
a stock or something like that, and of course they
do the things breaking the music exclusives. Um women found
(16:58):
it as far uh supposed to go on. I'm not
understanding why she's showing this us. And then she looks
at us and says, hey, do you have anything to
tell me? And they're looking at her like, what's up,
what's up? What's going on? And she said that they're
saying that this was you guys, that you're in the
park last night, and this is what you all did.
(17:18):
I said, right, no, no, no, no, no no. And
then she said, and they're looking for you, and so
I said, well, I'm gonna go to them and tell
them what I saw. I know, I didn't do anything wrong.
Colory said he didn't do anything wrong. He didn't he
didn't hurt nobody or do anything bad. He left the
park after entering and we get picked up. As a
matter of fact, when we when we finally got a
(17:43):
hold of the officers. That is kind of strange and
ironic that I'm saying it that way, but I was
looking for them. When the officers finally seen in contact
with us, they were in front of my door trying
to convince my thirteen year old brother to put his
clothes on and come down to the printing with them.
He had not been in the park, he didn't know
what was going on, and they were trying to convince
(18:05):
him to put his clothes on to come down to
the precinct to be questioned. In the turkey that would
have ended disastrously, as you can get back. I turned
the corner to approach my door and they're in front
of my door talking about brother, and they asked me
who am I used to long to look at this
documents that they had in their hands and said, this
is one of the guys you were looking for there, Corey.
(18:25):
Who was he? And he said, um, Corey Wise And
they looked at the paper instead of you're you're not
on this this paper, But do you want to come
downtown with your buddy? You'll be right back, and you know,
you know how the story end. Of course, Corey is
sixteen years old at the time. He ends up getting
weilroaded and convicted and spending almost thirteen to fourteen years
(18:48):
of the next part of his life in prison for
a crime that we all not had not committed. Wow,
So he was actually the most random of them all.
He just went down because he was trying to be
a d d U basically right, And that was the
one that was the most worst decision he ever made.
He made it for the right reason. So the process
(19:09):
that happened in the precincts, it was the Central Park
precinct that you were brought to, right, that would the
initial precinct um. And then they then they you know,
because Manhattan Manhattan North Homicide squad steps there and they
start they are the now then they are now the
officers that are interrogating. They are the ones that are saying, Okay,
this is looking like a sun to be a homicide.
(19:31):
We need to figure this out and and solve this
climate top quickly and appease the fears of the public
and let them know that we have the city under control.
We are in control, and we caught the so called perpetrators.
So how did the interrogations go, Like what you were
brought in? What was the whole process. You're brought to
(19:51):
the precinct. You were with Corey. I was with Korey,
and they immediately separated us, you know, and they started
interrogating us and and and while they were asking me
the questions I had, I was very very forthcoming. I said, yeah,
this is what happened first, is what happened next. I'm like,
you know, thinking, hey, I'm just gonna go in there
and tell them what I saw. And like I said,
I'll be back home before my mom gets back. And
(20:15):
when I when I wrapped up the first time, the
guy said, okay, well what about the jock? And I'm like, what, JOCKO,
what are you talking about? And he says, okay, well,
let's start tell me what happened again from the top
to start from the top again, and things began to intensify.
And it began to intensify in such a way that
(20:36):
I started feeling a phrase. And then they, you know,
at some point they would leave the room and come
back in, and I've never seen at one point they
left the room for a very very long time. And
at this point, hours were going by, and I'm feeling tired,
and I'm starting at doze off, and I am immediately
jolted for wait because I hear Corey Wise knelling in
(20:57):
the next room. Cory wised. Just to give you a
little big background of Corey, Corey Wise was the uh
was was, probably was and still is the guy who
you wanted to have as a friend because you knew
that he would have your back. He wasn't gonna let
nothing that happen to you. He was going to make
sure that you know you were okay. And so to
(21:18):
hear Corey, this person who had such a big heart
of fearful person, yelling and screaming okay, I'll tell you,
I'm like, I'm like, oh my goodness, they're beating him up.
I hear I'm smacking him around. I hear them. I
hate he's under the street. He is in a position
(21:40):
that I have never heard him in before. And that
immediately joked to me a word since chills down my spine,
and I'm like, oh my god, that's they're gonna kill her.
And at this point I'm scared. At this point, I'm
still trying to maintain my innocence. I'm still trying to
let them know what happened. And now it's like a
(22:01):
boxing match. At any point, did you have a lawyer
or a guardian, or a parent or anybody else in
there with you know? And this is one of the
most interesting things. I didn't know my mother had came
to the priest, and I didn't know she was there.
It wasn't until after a few more hours passed at
one of the I think it might have been either
(22:23):
Fairstein or Elizabeth Letterer came into the room, I mean
not the nation that comes to a knocked on the
door and summoned the officer out of the room. And
when they summoned the officer out of the room, they
the officers came back in and said to me, how
old are you? Remind you? They they they firsted me
(22:45):
when they took me into custody at my apartment building.
They took my I D which had my I D
from Mount Sinai Hospital, which I had my birthday on it.
Inside my wallet had my mouth swa I D and
my i'm I D. But you know, like the hospital um,
your hospital cards, um I had that, I had a
(23:06):
bus pass um and I had a a pocket knife.
So they knew how old I was. So the guy
comes in and says, how do you? How are you?
How are you? Again? And I'm fifteen? And he curses
and throws his pad across the room and says, why
the act didn't you tell me that? And I'm I'm
(23:28):
not even knowing why is that's even relevant? I don't
even understand what's going on. Then they bring me down
to my mom and she's she's she's telling me, hey,
do not talk to these people. I did not give
them permission to talk to you. You're a minor. They
need my permistion. I am not giving them permission. Don't
(23:50):
talk to them. That's how it went. But then then
what happened, because now you spoke of your mom. That
must have been a very emotional situation. I mean, now
you just heard Corey getting eating up. You know that
you're in real trouble. Um, your mom is there like
like a lifeboat, right, like a life uh you know, uh,
life saver. But um, but you're but but you're still
(24:13):
in the custody of the cops. And then so did
they then pull you away from her and put you
back in the room. And they did, And that's the part,
that's the craziest part. They don't have they don't have
her permission. They they don't have her consent to talk
to me. That meeting was so short. I don't know
how long it lacked it, but it felt like minutes.
(24:33):
It felt like minute. It felt like it was less
than five minutes. And then they brought they almost ripped
me out of her arm beginning, brought me back to
the back and they continue to interrogate, and I remember
one of the officers, the main officers interrogating. He says, uh,
you know, you don't have to tell us anything. That's fine.
(24:54):
You know, we have we have your We pulled your
fingerprints off of her um over for short, Like how
the heck did they put my favorite print off for short?
Like I didn't, I wasn't there. Yeah, and that's something
he said that that you know, I don't understand either.
I mean, the fact that they're allowed to lie in
the interrogation process is so uh, it just I don't know,
(25:14):
it doesn't make sense to me, But go ahead. Yeah,
And I mean at this point, I'm like, oh man,
I'm I'm I'm doing I'm done for But they took
my trust and put it on earth. But they didn't.
The fact is your prints weren't on it. They just
they just lied, I mean because they're trying to pressure static.
So I thinking I'm being framed and I'm like, oh, Sean,
but yeah, me lied And did they did they actually
(25:43):
beat you up like they did the other guys. No, No,
they didn't. That the threat was very real, threat was
extremely real, but they didn't. They didn't touch me. And
ultimately you were there for Do you even know how
many hours you were in there for? No, I don't.
I know. I was brought in that evening and I
remember we didn't have anything to eat a drink, and
you know, being worn down from that, you know, you
(26:05):
think about I have I have ten children, so it's
a interesting dynamic when you think about, you know, how
much a child could eat and so my my, uh,
my fifteen year old uh consumes everything in the house.
You know, you got to basically go to Costcos just
for that one child alone, uh and buying bulks because
you know that they're going to eat everything, you know. Um,
(26:28):
but we didn't get anything to eat, we didn't get
anything to drink. I remember the next morning we were
we were at another prepense and they brought McDonald's. You know,
and I remember eating McDonald's was the first time I
had even eat and and so and you said, I mean,
there's a very powerful video that I saw you do, UM,
that people can watch that you did in conjunction with
the New Yorker magazine and the Marshall Project, in which
(26:50):
you talk about the fact that you thought you were
going to go and as you just said you'd be
home before your mind got back. Uh. And in fact
he didn't get home from seven years. UM. So from
this point you never did confess, right, the other guys
were And which is interesting too because of the fact
and kind of amazing because of the fact that we
(27:12):
know that false confessions are very common. Um. The general
public doesn't understand. Jurors don't understand why anyone would confess
to a crime they didn't commit. But when they're under
that type of pressure and their adolescence and their brain
hasn't even fully formed like yours, Adnam, but what were
you in ninth grade? It's ridiculous. And so the pressure
gets to people and they also think like it must
(27:33):
have occurred to you at some point, because they you
come into that room thinking, well, these are the good guys,
and there's gonna be Even if these guys that in
front of me are good guys, there's gonna be some
other good guys that are gonna understand that are gonna
save me, because I gotta get out of this room,
like I gotta get away from these people who are
tormenting me, who are threatening me, who may kill me. UM.
And that's what the whole you know, interrogation techniques called
(27:56):
the red technique is designed to do. It's designed to
basically make your mind collapse in on itself so that
you see no other option other than to confess. So
that's why false confessions are extremely common in in juveniles
and adolescence. UM. And that's important for people who are
listening who are someday going to serve on a jury
to know if you're if you're seeing especially a case
(28:17):
where there's no other evidence other than a false confession,
other than a confession, you really have to dive into
that and you have to be aware that that confession
very well maybe a false confession, and you may be
dealing with an innocent person. So then it comes to
the to the trial and you know you've got this
sensational trial. UM. It's so much media you guys were
(28:41):
you know, I mean even I was buying into it
back then. I'm ashamed to admit it. But there was
only one narrative. There wasn't like somebody else going, well,
wait a minute, maybe blah blah blah. Because they were
withholding all the evidence that they had, right they knew,
I mean, weeks into your case. They knew that it
was impossible that you or any of the the four
guys could have done this. But they didn't care because
(29:03):
and that's the thing, you know, when I when I
when I look at a lot of these cases and
I understand the law a lot more, I realized that
it's not really about the fact, it's about who can
tell the best stories. And in many ways, we had
an effective council. We had, you know, we were facing
a situation where even the evidence that you see, you know,
you would think that it's a game rate, that there's
(29:25):
definitely going to be some some semens uh, some type
of something. Nobody had blood on them, nobody had anything
on them that even indicated that they were at this place,
you know, but yet they still went and stepped over
the bounds of the law, manufactured evidence, like you said,
and went full stream ahead because now, not only did
(29:47):
they do this in the worst way, but I've always
said that it was more attractive, it was more sexy,
if you will. So they're to be five people brutally
as salting one woman who was white, five five people
of color brutally assaulting a white woman. Then to there
(30:08):
it has been with the evidence shows from the clans
because one person dragging one person into the woods and
trying to murder them after they raised them. Right, it's
a wolf pack situation. It's it's preying on everybody's primal fears,
is playing on the on the race card, everything else,
(30:28):
and you know, and it's so it's so tragic because
they knew that this Mathias Rays guy, they were already
watching him. They knew that he was a suspect and
a prior rape that had many of the similar characteristics.
I mean, there was this case really came with instructions
and as this evidence started coming in and they became
aware in a very short time after you guys were arrested,
and some of the evidence probably was even before you're arrested,
(30:50):
that it was a single perpetrator, be that it wasn't
any of you guys. See that they could have so
easily gone and picked up Matthias, and they would have
they would have had the guy. And we keep coming
back to that, and none of these other people would
have suffered the way they didn't neither would you. Um,
But that that's not what happened because these people were, um,
(31:10):
they were overtaken by ambition and publicity and accolades that
they wanted to get, and they were perfectly happy to
convict inness and people. It was almost like, not even
inconvenient for them. It was just like, let's just get
it done and and take the bows and and do
their whole thing, going on with their lives. And they
have gone on with their lives. I don't know how.
(31:32):
I don't know how they sleep at night, but they do.
You know, Jason, is interesting as you talk about that,
because that's one of the things that people try to
get people to understand as well. This is not a
situation where oh my goodness, we dropped the ball my dad,
Oh my gosh, we've never done this before. This is
this is a situation where it's the convince ability of
our guilt, which was we weren't guilty. But if they
(31:55):
were able to convince the public of this lie and
do it so well. I've always said, well, how many
other cases after? I never forget when the Central prop
five film came out that King Burns did, which was
an amazing film. I never forget when it was released,
people from Columbia Law was watching it. And Elizabeth Letter
(32:18):
is an adjunct professor at Columbia Law. I don't know
if she's still there, but she was there then, and
the students started an online petition to get her fired.
They did not want her to teach them because in
their minds they were they were looking at this case
and saying, what kind of law is she gonna teach?
If she said this to the Central Proas five, what
(32:39):
is she training us to do? And they did not
want her to teach them, And instead of Columbia Law
firing her, they protected her. But the documents paying a
pictures that this wasn't just about we're gonna prosecute this case.
We're just gonna do our jobs and you know, make
sure that justice is served. We like they hated us.
(33:02):
They hated us with every fiber of their body and
wanted us to be guilted. And in that they said
anything and everything by hook or by crook to make
sure that they can get a conviction. I never forget
when they when they leaked out something about the DNA,
they said the DNA evidence, and then they tested us
(33:26):
and no match came back. And what did they do?
They had to come out and say that no, there's
no match. But they quickly swept it under the rug.
Because that tsunami of media reports that was present within
the first few weeks of this trial, or not even
the trial for the case being broadcast. That tsunami of
media reports dwarfs any of these small little things that
(33:48):
came out because it munted the waters and caused people
to just say to themselves, there was something about DNA
in this case. They don't remember that there was no
DNA match. They just remembered there was something about DNA.
And then when he came out in the trial and
said this will there will be no DNA evidence in mistakes.
What we what we will rely on for their confession,
(34:12):
Stay tuned, will be right back. Let's let's move to
the trial itself. How long did the trial last? Man?
So I want to I want to say that the
trial lasted for maybe just under a year. I don't
(34:32):
know specific time frames, but I do know that I was.
I was out on bail. I was only in in
in uh lock up initially for a little while. That
I got out on build and that was nice. Maybe
nine and how about when they convicted us? But okay,
so that's weird too, because you're out on bail. I mean,
(34:54):
you couldn't go to school. You must have had to
stay inside the house. You're one of the most notorious
criminals in New York State history. At that time. It was.
It was one of the worst and scariest times ever because,
as you can imagine, also Donald Trump, early on, we
hadn't even going we haven't even going to trial yet.
Donald Trump takes out a full page ad two weeks
after we were accused, and it runs in the New
(35:16):
York News, the Daily, to the New York Times Daily News,
to post, all of the major newspapers. It runs, and
it's it's an outcry. It's an outcry from someone from
the darker enclaves of society two coming to our home
to drag us from our bay and to hang us
(35:37):
from trees and Central Park, to due to us what
they had done to as a kill and I say
that because what happened as a result of that article
being that ad being brand and placed, people began to
write us hateful mail. People begin to write us threatening letters.
They began to say that they were gonna that we
that they hope that we would be fried and oil,
(35:59):
that we be raped, that we would be castrated, that
thirty years from now, next year is the third year
anniversary of the Central Park jogger case. Twenty to thirty
years from now, some people will never forget. And one
letter specifically says that maybe the one time that you
don't check your back is the one time that someone
(36:21):
must just be there to say hello. And so if
you can imagine the language and and and all of
the stuff that was going on back then, like they
wanted to murder us. They wanted to do to us
what they had done to m Hill. We became the
modern day scotsporal boys, definitely, but they wanted to do
to us what they had done to em Chill. Yeah,
(36:43):
the MTL case haunts me. It's just really one of
the most just really one of the darkest episodes in
American history, that that that poor kid with that little
baby face that he had, but you were almost the
same age as he was at the time, right he was,
you were fifteen, and here you are now you're a
prisoner in your own home. You have this guy who
we know is a racist taking out these ads advocating
(37:05):
a lynch mob. Um. The fact that the papers would
even run these ads is insane and um. And then
then the trial comes. So how did the trial itself?
And you know, obviously you were not adequately represented. I
don't know if a good lawyer could have gotten you
out with all the hysteria at that time, because you've
been trial, you had already been tried in the media.
But the fact that you know, there's that saying that
in America you're better off being guilty and rich than
(37:27):
innocent and poor. So the fact is, so you go
to the trial. The trial itself lasted how many days?
Oh man? So the trial, that's that's another thing that's
very foggy on me. But I know that as the
trial went in, it was like okay, as it was
drawing on and drawing on, and you get the very
at the very end. What I remember most is I
(37:47):
was on the phone with a friend and I never
forget it was the day was the day was ending,
and I'm on the phone and say, hey, this is
what's going on. You know, okay, it looks like a
will will uh you know, they're not gonna have a verdict.
And I'll be at the sea wall shortly. And then
somebody came running down the hallway and says the verticues
in the vertices and I said, man, it VERTICU is
(38:08):
then okay, great, I'll see you soon. And I just
don't know. We were all found guilty. You were trying
were you trying together? Well, they split the trial and
they split the case in half, and so the first
of us myself, Reman's, Antana and Ara mccreers win and
then the next three that was there because it was
(38:30):
initially called a Central Park seven and uh, Michael Briscoe
was able to get out of the case um and
get bread and then it became the Center Park six.
And when that first trial happened, myself Reminsce, myself Remans,
Antanna and Ara mccraize. We got convicted, we lost, and
(38:52):
the next trial was daring up Corey Wise, Kevin Richardson
and Stephen Lopez, Stephn Lopez as Colfee all kind of
rumors were out there about how much time we were facing.
They wanted to try us as adults and convict us
as adults, and they tried us as adults, and then
when the convictions came down a few months later, for
(39:13):
a little while later they gave us juvenile time. But
each of these charges they were saying could have given
us three and a half were was it three? And
the third three and a third to ten years? And
so were the major charges. I think it was two
of them. We could have been facing fiction two thirds
to twenty years if they wanted to give us that
(39:34):
kind of time. And like I said, Stephen Lope has
got cold fee heard about this, these rumors. Oh my goodness,
they got convicted. I can't do that much time. Let
me just cop out to something that I didn't do
so I can get out of this thing. And of
course we know that he copped out to robbery or
something like that and got a year. U he did,
(39:55):
he did one year and came home. I think it
was one year. Um. And I was been fortunate too,
because it shows, like you said, if you're poor and
your innocence, you're not going to get a fair chance.
You're not going to be afforded the same opportunities of
the under the law as a person who maybe more
and so so that you actually believe up until the
(40:18):
moment that the verdict came in that you were going
to be exonerate. It's amazing after everything you've been through
that you still had that type of and well, now
that I know you as I do, the fact that
you're that optimistic attitude is I guess I shouldn't be surprised,
but after everything you had been through at that time, um,
it's amazing that you still maintained hope. But in fact,
(40:39):
the worst possible outcome came to be, which is that
you were found guilty and then you were taking to prison.
Now you're sixteen years old, right and you're going to
some of the worst prisons in America arguably the world.
This is this is the worst of nightmare times twenty
(41:02):
And that was in the juvenile facility as well. I
know that Corey Wise in Burker's Island and Kors Island
is incomparable to sponsor It or any of the other
juvenile facilities. You know, the worst thing that can happen
to you and Jubie is that you might get sliced
or you know, beat up with slife that but in
Barker's Island you could die, you could lose your life.
(41:33):
For us, that went to the juvenile facility. That was
how And then when we got convicted, they sent us
to one of the three maximum Agent Street facilities at
the time that was there. They sent me to Harlem Valley.
They sent Raymonds and Canada goshen Uh and they spent
uh and trying to create a book forward, you know,
(41:53):
and it was the worst, worst kind of situation that
you can bagine. We had to grow up very fast
think about how we were going to survive when just
yesterday we were riding skateboards and you know, being fru
groups or something like that. I'm doing graphic design and
looking forward to just just just just being a normal,
(42:14):
innocent child. And now yet that whole reality is gone,
and it's hard to it's hard to fully describe everything
that went on because my story is a little bit
different because I started to really try to get some
type of understanding about this. I wanted to figure out
why why, Like I knew that I was infant, I
(42:34):
knew that we hadn't done it, but here we were,
we were in prison, and I was trying to figure
out why were we convicted? How did this happen? And
I never forget that guy comes up to me in prison,
one of the officers, and he's been watching me for
a few months that I had been there at this time,
and he asks me this one question, This one question
changed my life. He said, who are you? And I
(42:59):
and I in my in my in my ignorance and confusion.
My answer was probably the same as anyone else, without
understanding the philosophical realm of where he was going. I said,
I'm used to salon one of the guys that they
accused of rape in the Central Park Joga, but I
didn't do it. And he said, no, no, no no, no,
I know that, he said, but I've been watching you.
(43:20):
You're not supposed to be here, You're not a criminal.
Why are you here? Who are you? And it caused
me to really evaluate my life and my circumstances, short
as it may be, at a particular point in time,
to to to understand things in a greater, so to speak, way,
to understand that we all are here on purpose. There's
(43:40):
things that we have to do, and we are the
ones that are chosen to do that, and if they
don't do it, it won't be done. Because we don't
bless the world with our book. That book will never
be rich. They say the Grave daughter is the wealthiest
place in the world because it's stilled with the ideas
and the dreams and the hopes of people that just
did not get over the hump of doing those ideas
(44:02):
and dreams and hopes, you know. And so here I was,
in this place that I was supposed to be. Damned,
I'm getting a sense of purpose that I would have
never really really understood had not gone through this. Did
you did you maintain a relationship with that officer going forward?
Because that's deep. I mean, the first person that said
(44:23):
that those same words to me was deep Ac Chopra.
I'm not comparing this guy to deep oct Chopra, but um,
but yeah, I mean what happened with I mean, did
you did you continue to have dialogue with him? I did?
As a matter of fact, this this guy befriended me.
It was one of it was one of the many
officers that be friended me, you know. And it was
weird because at the same time there was there were
(44:46):
little things that would go on, and one time I
would come back to my cell and I would see uh,
tropic orange juice and instruments cookies, and it would happen
to often enough that have kind of like, oh wow,
this is this is kind of strange. And it happened
to life choplicate kind of orange es and intimate cookies.
But in the back of my mind I had this
voice playing in my head that they were trying to
kill me with the food, and so I would never
eat it. And one day this lady comes up to
(45:08):
be another officer and she says, hey, have you been
getting the goodies I've been leaving to you? And I said,
oh wow, I didn't know you were leaving. I didn't
know it was you. I said why, why, why did
you do that? And she said, you said. I know
you're anything. I know you're not supposed to be here,
but I can't take this key and let you go
for you. So every time I come in here and
(45:31):
you're here, I want to make good time as easy
and as as as comfortable as possible, And this was
her way of doing that. You've found this incredible purpose
in this darkest place that you could possibly be in,
and it has obviously carried you through. You ended up
(45:52):
serving on a five to ten years sentence six years
and eight months. Let's talk about the fact that Matthias
Reyes actually confessed all these years later, Um, when he
met one of the Central Parky he met Korean prison,
and then suddenly his conscience got to him. Imagine that
(46:13):
he actually met the guy who was serving time for
the crime that he committed, and then all of a
sudden he got this attack of conscience. I think he
may have found religion by then or I don't know what,
but anyway, it doesn't matter. He confessed. How did you
find out that you now had this ray of light
and that you you know that that you were you
(46:33):
were now going to be actually had a real chance
of becoming being exonerated. So you know, when we heard
the news, just like everyone else and our our attorneys,
but telling us about how you know what happened, and
you know, one of the worst things that, of course
happens in the case like that is if you've been
ran all about the piplos of justice once you absolutely
(46:54):
do not trust that they are going to do the
right thing this time. And so I've felt like, okay,
you know this, this this the world words that came out.
He he confessed the crime, confessed in a compelling way
that that lets them know that he alone did this.
They DNA and long behold his DNA matches, And like
(47:16):
I said, then they when they tested his DNA and
his DNA matched, they knew beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Oh my goodness, we did the wrong things and convicted
the wrong guys. And we have to fix this. And
so the judge vacaid our conviction. A matter of fact,
as we as we go forward, we see that Robert
(47:38):
Morgan's office as man, had we known then what we
know now, we would have never convicted them. And I'm
appreciative and happy that he said that. But what we
all submit is that they did know that then. What
they knew now, they did know Robert Morgan thought had
people working for him and under him that should have
(48:00):
ever went after us. And it cost the city millions
of dollars. It costs a million, Well, it costs so
much more than just the millions of dollars they had
to pay out, because it also cost, as we said,
the lives of these other innocent people. That cost your
lives it cost your family untold heartache and paying it
(48:20):
cost tax money that we, uh, we had to pay
to keep you guys incarcerated. Right, that's that runs into
the millions of dollars when you're talking about forty years
of prison time collectively or more. When and then we
talked about the lost the lost taxes that you could
have been outside paying. Right if you guys were if
you guys had gone through your normal schooling and come
out and then become gotten your jobs, whatever you're gonna
(48:41):
be doing, and they've been paying taxes, you would have
been contributing to society. So it's a it's a loss
for society in every conceivable way. And it was preventable
and it's despicable what happened. And I think everybody owes
you a tremendous apology. And so I'm going to apologize
to you on behalf of New York City and America
and the human race because none of this, none of
(49:03):
this should have ever gone down the way it did.
Um and and let me I want to get to
the to what you're doing now, but and and talk
about your public speaking and other advocacy worked that you're doing.
But before we get to that. Um. So so you
had this euphoria, it still took all this time to
put your life back together, but you've done it. And
(49:23):
to see you now, um, no one would ever know
that you had been through this stuff. I mean today,
are you better? You know I'm not better. I think
that what it is is that we've been able to
take our circumstance. And when I say we, um, I
know that myself in Raymonds, Antina, we've gone out and
we've spoken a lot more than the other folks of
(49:46):
the gentleman in the central charge of case. Um. But
what the idea is that to be able to take
this this this uh part, just this really horrific part
of life in turn it into something beautiful. And so
I'm reminded of what Nelson Mandela said when he was
talking about how he had to be in in the
(50:09):
world and what he had to leave behind in the prison.
He said he had to leave anger and resentment and
bitterness in the prison because and we all hear him say,
it's liking. It's like drinking poison and expecting your enemy
to die. So use that anger. You write it, you painted,
you dance it, you march it, you voted. You do
(50:33):
everything about it. You talk, it never stopped talking. And
so I say that because I've been trying to utilize
my energy and my platform to articulate what happened to
us in a way that makes sense, so that other
folks can understand how important their role is and how
important they need to be as regards to what happens
(50:55):
in the criminal justice system, you know. And so I've
taken that anger and I redirected it. I transformed it,
and I made it into something that is more beautiful
and more powerful. And and and this is where I
stand now. And let me ask you this. So if
people want to know you're doing a lot of public speaking,
you have a book. Um, but if people want to
have you come and speak, how did they reach out
(51:16):
of you? How do they contact you? What's the name
of the book? Let's give a nice plug for any
of your social media or anything else that you want
to talk about. Yeah. Absolutely, I used my real name
on social media so so folks can connect with me.
Um use salam. Why U S T S S A
L A A M on all social media platforms. My
photo is there so that you'll know it's me. The
(51:37):
name of the book is Words of a Man. It's
on my website. My website is use speaks dot com.
That's why U s E S S P E A
k S dot com. And you know, folcusing book be
by emailing me why U s s that you speaks
dot com. You said that use speaks dot com. And
(51:58):
I worked for myself, so I'm you know, people can
book me, people can bring me UM, and so I
can travel UM. And this is where it's not being
able to bring these real life stories into spaces that
can really affectuate change, whether at the universities, whether it
be forums, UM wide and broad. So the last thing
(52:19):
I would like to do is is usually the last
thing we do here on the show UM. And it's
actually my favorite part of the show, and I think
probably a lot of people's favorite part of the show.
This is the part of the show where I get
quiet and I like to just turn the microphone over
to you for last words. Anything that's on your mind,
(52:40):
anything that you can share that will give people some
new perspective in your own words. So what I want
to do and in this moment is take people back
in time. And I love to do this because it's
something that I do on the role of my sign engagements.
But take them back into the courthouse. I take them
back to the day right after I got convicted, and
(53:02):
here we were standing in front of the judge and
we were about the sentence, and they axed us, do
you have anything to say before we sent Confused and
rather than throwing myself on the most mercy of the
court like everyone has been telling me, I had been
reading Maltha Max. I had been reading about Market Garvey.
I had a reading about countless individuals who were freedom
(53:22):
fighters trying to fight the justice. And what I stood
up and said to the judge was said, I said,
I'm not gonna sit here at your table and watch
you eat and call myself dinner. Sitting here at your
table doesn't make me dinner, just like being here in
America doesn't make me an American. Let us begin stresses
the anger that is built up inside rage is the
(53:45):
anger that is no longer built taking on the sucker
that soon you have killed American free will doesn't mean
you can kill and take another person's life. You live
your life, tripe. I'm a skill builder. Some one skills
I do build. We had to give a knowledge to
this lies black man soon to enhance my words across
the land. I'm a smooth type of fellow, cool, common mellow.
(54:06):
I'm kind of laid back. But now I'm speaking so
that you know. I got used and abused and even
was put on the news without cruise from gay cruise,
selling out like fools. Now checked this, who did what
and who did who? Ends? But the situation that you
don't know what's doing, some brothers go wild and we're
not down with them. Who would have thought I'd have
(54:27):
to lock in? I sent choose checking the scene from
how the situation was. Instead of getting facts, the media
made you blurred how other people don't know. All they
see is the media. They never hear the blame because
they're constantly deceiving us. The d A is dead wrong.
This is her master plan. This case is not a case.
(54:47):
It's just to craft the sham joe instead of trying
to get your name made this reconstructing the crime that
really paid me. It's law la ilaha, evil law being
supreme over Satan, but no man as a law as
I'm a science dropper on the righteous path, So how
the hell could I take a racist path? Think about that,
and then think about this. All my friends it was me.
(55:09):
They just said the smith because I don't really need
any friends like that, like when I really needed you.
Where we get at. I'm not disting them all, but
the ones that I called, they went and just me
like I was an inch small, like a rat, a mouse,
not even the man wrongly accused, like the knives in
my hands. How does it look? Me? Clock now, I'm sure,
but like Matlock soon you accused, it took the hook.
(55:32):
It's real when she remembers and says, damn the cops
that you went. I stand the queues, your people stop
this racial dispersed and you know you've seen that kid, Vincent.
He's in the hurt. And so we take it just
this and hurst Fields white tide bullet proof best. We
had no kind of shields. How does it look they
killed the black man being black? It's time we take
(55:55):
a stand in our situation. You saw our faces clear,
but not mine. Not because of fear. It's because the
black grace was disgraced. And for the Muslims, they must
have felt shamed. But I'm not to blame with the
words of thought. The media took our words of paper,
the ones the cops distorted. I told the cops truth
like this, and then boom, they were smacking my man,
(56:16):
Corey Wise in the next room. Now, I want to
know why the Bosters can't stand the Bobby Lawn. They
never helped. They just babble lawn. I used to think
the people and cops were cool, But who protects us
from you? I stand the queues and as I wrapped
it up, the judge's face was getting angrier and angrier,
and I could tell they were about to throw the
(56:37):
book it. And then I took my seat, and they
gave me the maximum amount of time that they could
give me with this five pretent, and they hoped that
they could have gaven me more. I'm sure that's what
I said. That actually is a is one of the
poems that's in my book Words of a man Um
that's on my website. I also when I come around
(56:58):
and speak, I usually have some with me as well. Well.
All I can say is, um, you know, I wish
you all the best, all the blessings of life. I'm
so happy to see you thriving, building your family, building
your career, and spending the word alongside so many of
(57:19):
us in the movement, UM and uh. I look forward
to working with you and spending time with you in
the future. And I just want to thank you again
for taking your time to be on the show, UM
and I want to thank the audience also for listening.
This has been a very special and moving episode of
Wrongful Conviction, so yusef thank you again. I pleasure thank
(57:42):
you for having don't forget to give us a fantastic review.
Wherever you get your podcasts, it really helps. And I'm
a proud donor to the Innsis Project and I really
hope you'll join me in supporting this very important cause
and helping to event future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence
Project dot org to learn how to donate and get involved.
(58:06):
I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and
Kevin Wardis. The music in the show is by three
time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow
us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at
Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam is a
production Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company
(58:26):
Number one
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
Popular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.