![]() During the interrogations the boys kept telling the investigators that they didn’t do it and they just wanted to go home. The five boys were scared to death, and they did not understand why they were being held when they didn’t do anything. All they cared about was solving a case so they could be heroes. They knew it, but they ignored the facts and wanted to make sure these boys ended up behind bars. A lot of things did not match up, and they even knew that evidence proved that there was no way that these teens committed the crime. They investigated the scene and interrogated the boys. When Linda and her team found out that four black teen boys and a Latino boy- Korey Wise, Yusef Salaam, Antron McCray, Raymond Santana, and Kevin Richardson-were arrested the same night, they knew then that they had easy targets to accuse for this violent crime. She was determined to solve this case at all costs. Linda Fairstein led the investigation, and she was hungry for justice to be served. She became known as The Central Park Jogger, who had been brutally beaten, raped, and left for dead. The same night, a 28-year-old female jogger was discovered in a ravine in Central Park. Police showed up to the park and arrested several teens. A large group of African-American and Latino teens were “wilding out”-term used in a way to say “having fun.” On this night, some locals called the police stating that these teens were out harassing and beating people up. It all started on the night of April 19, 1989. When They See Us is a four-episode miniseries on Netflix that tells the story five teens from Harlem that became trapped in a nightmare when they were falsely accused of the brutal rape of a white woman in Central Park. If you are looking for something to watch that will take you on a wild emotional ride, then you should watch When They See Us.įor those who haven’t seen the show: WARNING: spoilers ahead Watching this show sure had me on an emotional roller coaster. I spent the last two days screaming at my laptop, getting angry, crying and cursing like a damn sailor while watching When They See Us on Netflix. It feels like a great privilege to see them.I am not your average Netflix or TV type person, but I have always been intrigued by documentaries or series based on true stories. They capture the innocence, in all senses, of children, and the permanence of its loss. The performances, from the young actors and the veterans alike, are uniformly astonishing – especially from the central five, Asante Blackk, Caleel Harris, Ethan Herisse, Marquis Rodriguez and Jharrel Jerome, most of whom are just a few years older than the teens they are playing. The powerlessness in the face of an authority that doesn’t look like you or care about you. ![]() The lifetime of fear and vulnerability that causes one parent to encourage his son to sign the confession so they can leave the station and sort things out later. ![]() The lack of money that leads to inadequate lawyers and mothers unable to visit their sons incarcerated in distant places. It is a dense, fast-moving series that examines not just the effects of systemic racism but the effects of all sorts of disenfranchisement (though you could argue they all have that same root cause) on people with the boys’ background. What could easily become agitprop resists the temptation. It ends with the confession from the real rapist – unprompted, unsought, a matter of pure chance – and the men’s exoneration in 2002. As Yusef’s barber puts it: “Once they got you, they keep you.” The final episode focuses on the particular suffering of Korey in various adult prisons, most of them hundreds of miles from his home. Raymond can’t get a job and eventually turns to drug dealing. ![]() Yusef wants to be a teacher but is forbidden by his record. The penultimate episode concentrates on the four men who emerge from their juvenile sentences and the obstacles to restarting life as a known felon and registered sex offender. They are all convicted and serve between six and 13 years in prison, with Korey tried and sentenced as an adult. But they will not admit to something they didn’t do. When DNA evidence from the crime scene fails to place the boys there, she offers them a plea bargain. Prosecuting attorney Elizabeth Lederer is shown to have her doubts. (Yusef’s mother manages to reach and remove him before he signs anything, but the damage is done.) The second episode focuses on the trial, where an absence of physical evidence and witnesses, and the claims of coercive action by the police, are not enough to move a judge and jury who breathe the same certainties as Fairstein. The disorientation of the boys during their hours of unattended, unrecorded questioning – without food, without toilet breaks, Kevin’s face swollen from the blow he received from a police officer in the park – results in false confessions from them all.
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