The Central Park Five - Essay Example

The Central Park Five Our law system is doubtful and it is showed by the fact that “there are a many documented cases of innocent people confessing to serious crimes (like rapes, murders, etc.) when interrogated by police (“Worcester police use coercion to get confession”). Unfortunately, we can trace that our law system is not perfect: sometimes it may seem noble and positive, but very often it can simply shock us by its fairness and real propaganda of racial, gender and class inequality.

Many cases can prove that and many innocent people suffer instead of real criminals.The Innocence Project reports “that about one quarter of people who have been exonerated by DNA evidence made false incriminating statements or gave false confessions that helped convict them” (“Worcester police use coercion to get confession”). The question is how this could happen and what can lead a person to do something as seemingly crazy as confessing to a crime they didn’t commit.The Central Park Five documentary is a sad real unjust story, which shows how corrupted and unethical the law system can be with no circumstantial evidence and use of coercion.

Five young boys were sent to prison, and lost their childhood because the prosecutor and the detectives wanted to glorify their career by means of other people’s lives and took advantage of the situation without a doubt.It goes without saying that this crime has been tailored in racial stereotyping with emphasis on the timeline introspectively to fit the crimes to the particular decade. While watching this documentary, first thing that I paid attention to was the fact that original investigators denied to come into the light.

Certainly if we try to find out this we would here such phrases as “no comments”, “it is unknown at this time” or “we can’t comment on the situation due to sensitivity of the case”. Ok that is fine and totally understandable, but in this particular case it is obvious that the interrogations were orchestrated with coercion. From the ethical stand point in my opinion there was no, and this applies especially to the prosecutor Elizabeth Lederer. As Burns shows, the DNA evidence showed that Matias Reyes, the "East Side Slasher" was an offender who committed crime.

The facts showed that he was an offender. However, the police did not pay any attention to that and preferred to accuse the group of African American and Latino boys of the crime commitment. They did not even pay any attention to the undeniable DNA evidence. Personally I can’t believe that the investigators were incompetent, I am sure that they committed the crime themselves. This fact testifies that our law system is unfortunately far from perfect and I can’t imagine what consequences it may have.

References:Kamenetz, Anya. "A Journey Through the Tangled Case of the Central Park Jogger - Page 1 - News - New York - Village Voice." New York News and Events | Village Voice. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Jan. 2011 available at .Burns, Ken. The Central Park Five Perf. Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Korey Wise and Yusef Salaam. IFC, 1012. Film.“Worcester police use coercion to get confession”, 2011, available athttp://www.copblock.org/11053/worcester-police-use-coercion-to-get-confession/