Hacker Cinema
The Central Park Five
2012 · Film · documentary · 119 min
Directed by Sarah Burns, Ken Burns, David McMahon
In 1989, five black and Latino teenagers from Harlem were arrested and later convicted of raping a white woman in New York City's Central Park. They spent between 6 and 13 years in prison before a serial rapist confessed that he alone had committed the crime, leading to their convictions being overturned. Set against a backdrop of a decaying city beset by violence and racial tension, this is the story of that horrific crime, the rush to judgment by the police, a media clamoring for sensational stories and an outraged public, and the five lives upended by this miscarriage of justice.
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2 comments on Hacker News
I had looked into those claims around the Central Park Five last year that have since been repeated in Netflix documentaries and on news segments, carefully reading the ad itself. Didn't see strong evidence that the ad was racist as claimed or that it demanded that they be sent to death as often claimed, so I think it was another case of people interpreting it in a way they thought would be politically favorable to them.
A quote from the ad states "Many New York families — White, Black, Hispanic and Asian — have had to give up the pleasure of a leisurely stroll in the Park at dusk...", so there's reasonable inclusion there.
It does go onto say "Mayor Koch has stated that hate and rancor should be removed from our hearts. I do not think so. I want to hate these muggers and murderers.", which can be interpreted a few ways. Nobody was murdered, so it could be referring more generally to murders which have degraded a sense of public safety as a trend since the death penalty was abolished. Still, it would have been better phrased to temper the trend of guilty until proven innocent to prevent reactive unjust violence, but at the same time you don't want everyone to be so apathetic about reported crimes that nothing gets done.
It's no secret that Trump was not a fan of the Central Park Five which is something he was free to express, but when the guilty charge for rape was lifted there still existed other significant evidence of wrongdoing that makes it harder to justify them being rebranded primarily as victims themselves.
More controversially it states "They should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes." The Central Park Five did not kill and as a result, bringing back the death penalty would not have caused them to be executed. It seems more geared towards suggesting the reinstatement of the death penalty as a stronger disincentive to those who would commit violent crimes that could result in death.
The better argument against the ad in general is that the justice system is imperfect and while intense anti-crime passions are understandable, there may be enough noise in the system that the ability to formally execute people is probably something it shouldn't be trusted with.
It's one of those cases where I disagree with a central point the ad is making, but also disagree with people's claims about the ad.
S/he was recommending Ken Burns's Central Park Five documentary that also reinvited scrutiny: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2380247/.