I expect Trump to buy another ad
From the Guardian, since at least they have a different set of biases from the US media:
Guardian Unlimited | World Latest | Lawyer Seeks Conviction OverturnNEW YORK (AP) - A lawyer for three young men convicted in the notorious rape of a Central Park jogger more than a decade ago said he will seek to overturn their guilty verdicts.
The lawyer, Michael Warren, is expected to argue at a hearing on Monday that new DNA evidence and a confession by another man could exonerate the three, who have served their sentences in the 1989 attack that left a young investment banker near death.
Warren said in a motion filed in state court last week that no physical evidence linked his clients to the crime.
In the motion, first reported in Wednesday in the Daily News, Warren said [Matias Reyes,] a 31-year-old convicted murderer and rapist confessed to stalking and raping the woman as she ran across Central Park.
Reyes' name, not mentioned in the Guardian, appears in the CBS News/AP story on this. Both maintain the polite fiction about not knowing who Patricia Meili is, but whatever.
The CBS story also notes:
The New York Daily News reported that lab tests have shown that genetic material in the rape matches Reyes' DNA.In a jailhouse confession, Reyes claimed that he alone stalked and raped the jogger, raising questions about the guilt of five Harlem teens who were convicted of assaulting her.
[. . . Attorney Michael] Warren said in a motion filed in Manhattan State Supreme Court last week that no physical evidence linked his clients to the crime and that confessions they made to police were obtained through "the most abhorrent form of physical duress."
[. . .] The News also reported Thursday that the victim, who has remained anonymous all these years, will identify herself in a memoir to be published next spring by Charles Scribner's Sons.
You can see the Daily News story itself too, if you're interested. It tosses out this little fact, which I hadn't noticed in the previous two articles:
Reyes cannot be prosecuted for the attack because the statute of limitations has expired.
Which is fine. The others can't get back the years they spent in prison for a crime they, apparently, did not commit. Everybody wins.
Comments
you do this on purpose.
LA Weekly is doing a special issue this week on COPS and I was just going to ignore it and think more about the outlines of my happy little sit-com I'm pretending to write with a friend.
Now, I gotta go out and get dirty and do research and shit.
bastard.
Posted by: Jason | September 5, 2002 2:56 PM
I'm sorry. I should be kind. You send me Margaret Cho, causing me to do the "It is a good day, for there is Margaret Cho" dance.
And this is a bad time to be questioning the police, especially the NYPD. It's the week leading into the anniversary of The Day Everything Changed.
Best of all, that Trump ad called for reinstating the death penalty. Which means they'd be calling a seance to apologize to the supposed attackers, if it turns out they were innocent.
Perhaps this will give the death penalty advocates pause.
Perhaps monkeys will fly out of my butt.
Posted by: Aaron | September 5, 2002 3:30 PM
ugh, wasn't that case part of that whole ugly "wilding" media lynch mob that the nypd and mayor's office was using to make white voters scared of young black males so they would vote for more law enforcement and crap like that?
was just chatting a few minutes ago w/ the lady from the union who comes by about once a month, who reminded me i should read angela davis' book on the prison-industrial complex.
Posted by: fertile_jim | September 5, 2002 5:27 PM
Angela was on Democracy Now back in March, 2001, along with Assata Shakur and some other undesirables, speaking on that issue.
Yep, that was the wilding thing. That, along with the Bernard Goetz thing, convinced me that NYC was not somewhere I'd want to live.
Posted by: Aaron | September 5, 2002 6:01 PM
while researching some anti-death penalty rants a while back, i found dr. edmund higgins' site, it's a database of wrongful convictions and some of the horrifying stories behind them. it also analyzes the factors that contribute to wrongful convictions. it's just good reading.
Posted by: kd | September 6, 2002 12:46 AM
Ah, and just in time for me to be heading to the City next week. Makes a girl feel all warm and fuzzy.
Posted by: hanne | September 6, 2002 6:50 AM
kd, thanks for the link. Unfortunately, a dedicated idiot could no doubt rationalize every single example there.
Hanne, hope the visit goes well. Please tell me you're only arriving the 12th; I get the feeling the 11th will be, ah, let's say hectic.
Posted by: Aaron | September 8, 2002 7:03 AM
No, I'll be there from the 10th through the 13th.
Wish me luck, kids.
Posted by: hanne | September 8, 2002 8:23 AM
What do you hope to gain by publishing the Central Park Jogger's name? What has she ever done to you? You black people are a million times more racist than any other ethnic group (except Hispanics). Get over this slavery shit and forget about reparations, you won't be getting them. If you hate white people so much, why don't you just go back to Africa?
Posted by: an American | September 9, 2002 2:58 PM
Ok, you had me going for a minute there, but signing it "an American" is just going over the top. Who is this? Chris? Dan? Trevor?
Here's a blog entry about Richard Roeper's Sun-Times op-ed on media policy on identifying rape victims. Can't find the piece itself, but I didn't look terribly hard.
And from the note at the end of Elombe Brath's piece in The Black World Today:
I assure you black people are much more racist than Hispanics, and I resent the implication that we're not.
Posted by: Aaron | September 9, 2002 3:46 PM