The Central Park jogger case is the 1989 New York City prosecution in which five Black and Latino teenagers from Harlem were convicted of raping and beating a woman jogging in Central Park, served between six and nearly thirteen years in prison, and were exonerated in 2002 after DNA evidence and a separate confession identified a serial rapist named Matias Reyes as the sole attacker. No physical evidence had ever tied the five to the crime. Their convictions rested entirely on videotaped statements taken from teenagers after long overnight interrogations, most of them questioned without a parent or lawyer present.
The Attack on Trisha Meili
On the evening of April 19, 1989, Trisha Meili was attacked while jogging in Central Park. She was beaten, raped, and left for dead. Her injuries were catastrophic: multiple skull fractures, a crushed left eye socket, severe brain swelling, and the loss of roughly 80 percent of her blood. She remained in a coma for nearly two weeks and spent seven weeks in intensive care. The brain injury permanently damaged her balance, vision, and sense of smell. Meili did not publicly identify herself as the victim until 2003, when she published a memoir.
That same night, police had responded to reports of a group of young people involved in disturbances elsewhere in the park. A horrific crime and a nearby group of teenagers set the direction of the investigation within hours.
How Five Teenagers Came to Confess
Police focused on five suspects: Antron McCray (15), Kevin Richardson (14), Raymond Santana (14), Yusef Salaam (15), and Korey Wise (16). Detectives questioned each of them for hours. Four were interrogated without a parent or guardian in the room, and none had an attorney present. In some cases a parent was brought in only after the questioning had already produced statements and the video cameras were switched on.
The recorded statements that resulted became the backbone of the prosecution. They also carried problems that went largely unexamined at trial. The four recorded confessions contradicted each other on basic facts: the sequence of events, who did what, and where the attack happened. None of them matched the physical evidence from the scene. Investigators recovered no hair, blood, semen, or other forensic evidence connecting any of the five to Meili.
Prosecutors framed the statements as interlocking accounts of a group “wilding” incident, treating them as a collective narrative that corroborated itself. That approach smoothed over the contradictions instead of testing each confession against the physical evidence. Defense attorneys argued the statements had been coerced from frightened minors after exhausting overnight sessions, but the trial court admitted them. That ruling largely decided the case before any testimony began.
Charges, Trials, and Sentences
Prosecutors brought charges including attempted murder in the second degree, rape in the first degree, sodomy in the first degree, and robbery.1New York State Senate. New York Penal Code 125.25 – Murder in the Second Degree2New York State Senate. New York Penal Law 130.35 – Rape in the First Degree Every count depended on the confessions. Without forensic links, the jury had to trust the teenagers’ own recorded words.
Two trials were held in 1990. In the first, Yusef Salaam, Antron McCray, and Raymond Santana were convicted of rape, assault, and robbery. Because they were juveniles, New York’s sentencing rules capped their punishment: the maximum term for a Class B felony committed by a juvenile offender was ten years, and consecutive sentences could not exceed that ceiling.3New York State Senate. New York Penal Code 70.05 – Sentence of Imprisonment for Juvenile Offender4New York State Senate. New York Penal Code 70.30 – Calculation of Terms of Imprisonment Each received five to ten years.
The second trial covered Kevin Richardson and Korey Wise. Richardson, a juvenile, was convicted and sentenced to five to ten years. Wise was sixteen, the oldest of the group, and was tried as an adult. Convicted of assault, sexual abuse, and riot, he received five to fifteen years in state prison.5Innocence Project. Korey Wise He would serve nearly thirteen years, far longer than the others, partly because his adult conviction made parole harder to obtain.
Matias Reyes and the DNA Match
The case stayed closed for more than a decade. In 2002, Matias Reyes, a convicted serial rapist and murderer already serving a life sentence, told authorities that he alone had attacked Meili. Reyes said his decision to come forward followed a chance encounter with Korey Wise at Auburn Correctional Facility.
Reyes gave a detailed account that matched the physical evidence in ways the original confessions never had. The Manhattan District Attorney’s office ordered new forensic testing. The FBI and a private laboratory analyzed semen from the rape kit and hairs found on the victim. The DNA profile from both samples matched Reyes and excluded all five convicted men. For the first time, the biological evidence pointed to an identifiable attacker, and it was one person, not five.
Vacating the Convictions
Assistant District Attorney Nancy Ryan led a reinvestigation for the Manhattan DA’s office, examining the original interrogations, the inconsistencies among the confessions, and the significance of the DNA results. Her filing, known as the Ryan Affirmation, was submitted on December 5, 2002, and concluded that the new evidence would likely have changed the outcome at trial.
The prosecution then joined the defense in a motion to vacate all five convictions. The motion was brought under New York Criminal Procedure Law Section 440.10, which allows a court to set aside a guilty verdict when newly discovered evidence creates a probability that the trial outcome would have been different, provided the evidence could not have been produced earlier with reasonable effort.6New York State Senate. New York Criminal Procedure Law 440.10 – Motion to Vacate Judgment
On December 19, 2002, Justice Charles J. Tejada of the New York State Supreme Court granted the motion, vacating all thirteen convictions across the two trials. By then, all five men had already served their full sentences.
The Settlements
The five filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the City of New York under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983, which allows suits against government officials who violate constitutional rights while acting in an official capacity.7Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 1983 – Civil Action for Deprivation of Rights The complaint alleged malicious prosecution, racial discrimination, and emotional distress.
The city fought the claims for years. In 2014, under Mayor Bill de Blasio, it agreed to a $41 million settlement, distributed among the five and working out to roughly $1 million per year of incarceration. McCray, Richardson, Santana, and Salaam each received about $7.125 million; Wise received approximately $12.25 million for his nearly thirteen years. The settlement included no admission of wrongdoing.
The five also pursued claims against the State of New York through the Court of Claims under the state’s Unjust Conviction and Imprisonment Act, which requires clear and convincing evidence of wrongful conviction and imprisonment.8New York State Senate. New York Court of Claims Act 8-B – Claims for Unjust Conviction and Imprisonment The state settled those claims in 2016 for a combined $3.9 million, bringing total compensation to roughly $44.9 million.
What Changed in New York Interrogation Law
Jurors at the 1990 trials saw only the videotaped statements, not the hours of questioning that preceded them. New York addressed that gap in 2018, when a state law took effect requiring law enforcement to video record custodial interrogations of individuals accused of serious non-drug felonies, including homicides and violent sex offenses. The requirement applies to interrogations conducted at police stations, correctional facilities, and similar holding areas. If investigators fail to record an applicable interrogation, a court may find any resulting confession inadmissible.9New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services. Changes Will Improve New York State’s Criminal Justice System
The Exonerated Five Today
Long known publicly as the “Central Park Five,” the men are now more commonly called the “Exonerated Five.” Yusef Salaam was elected to the New York City Council in 2023, representing a Harlem district. Korey Wise donated a portion of his settlement to the Innocence Project, which established the Korey Wise Innocence Project at the University of Colorado Law School in his honor.