There have been several theories on how the law should treat its citizens and what steps can be taken to ensure the law can be effective, while also being fair. Unbalanced and discriminatory laws are not new to the US, who have battled the impact of systemic racism since their beginning. Historical events were primarily presented from the white narrative which were biased and left all incriminating details out. Only in the past ten years have the other perspectives of these past time periods been acknowledged. One historical event that has been neglected from portraying different perspectives is the 1989 case of the Central Park Five. Most articles, opinions, and media from the time are severely whitewashed, and lacks diverse critiques and coverage. The perspective of the accused has long been neglected. This perspective is explored in Ana DuVaney’s film series, “When they see us”, which recreates the events of the infamous case through the perspectives of the innocent five boys accused of attacking a woman jogging in central park, in New York. The reasoning behind the film series is to show the audiences what these five children were going through during this time. It reveals all the stress, anxiety, outrage, disgust, confusion, terror they felt during their arrest, imprisonment, and their release. When viewing the events through their perspective, the audience can experience what the children went through as if it were happening to them or their family. This film was successful at emphasizing the point that these were children on trial, facing horrific charges, and they had no idea why they were there or why they were grouped together. Essentially, the series reveals a damning narrative that challenges the audience’ own perceptions of ‘criminals’, evoking sympathy from the audience as the events unfolded. People who hurt children should be condemned, so then, the film seems to ask, ‘why weren’t these detectives and officers punished’? Why were children allowed to be interrogated without guardians? The series answers these questions by revealing the reality that racial discrimination had and still exists, and it is important to acknowledge past wrongs and work towards new and fair laws and procedures in the justice system. The film series, “When They See Us”, provides a detailed narrative of the events five children experienced that evoked discourse and reevaluation of the justice system’s treatment of its accused, investigative process, and its ‘fair’ trials.
The film series challenges the audience’s perception of who a ‘criminal’ is, their appearance, and their crimes. The public would assume that there must always be one ‘bad person’ who is the primary ‘criminal’. However, as the series revealed, the ‘criminals’ in this case were innocent and were also children. This sparks hesitation. There is no obvious criminal in this case. The procedures, quality and evidence collection from these detectives must be questioned. There was no solid proof or apparent reason these five boys were chosen. The only answer must be that officers and detectives were relying on their own biases and perceptions for what a criminal in the area ‘looks like’. Law enforcement was more motivated by public admiration than to apprehend the truly dangerous individual yet to be found. This is very evident during the interrogation scenes for each boy. The children were brought into the station and interrogated one at a time. The series shows how terrifying this would be to a child, especially one having no idea what has happened, or why they were even there. The series also revealed that these boys did not know each other, besides two who were close friends. Officers use manipulative tactics to coerce the boys to give incriminating statements that would work towards legitimizing their nonsensical gathering of these children. The police, the media, and the court did everything in their power to find justice for Trisha, so much that they were willing to forcefully extract false statements from minors interrogated without parental supervision.
In one of the scenes in “When they see us”, they did not get that same privilege that he got which was people believing they were innocent. They all were against them and wondered who could do such a heinous crime and still be allowed to live. The boys were between the ages of 13 and 16. The US around this time wanted them lynched so much that Trump began advertising “Bring Back the Death Penalty, Bring Back Our Police” these nine words made such an impact on how society was viewing these young 5 African American boys. One thing to analysis in this film is the tone of voice trump the anger in his voice of wanting something to be done to these five young boys to bring justice to the woman that was severely beaten and left to die in the park. He did this advertisement not just only in Flyers all around New York City, but he spoke on national television demanding that these boys should be lynched and that should be no easy punishment, it should be very severe. The directors made the choice to include these harsh media adverts and programs as they are disturbing even to adults, but knowing the context that these would not be appropriate for children to see, and yet the flyer, programs, and adverts, were made to condemn five children.
This flyer was so moving, which is heavily emphasized in the series, because while it did not contain much information about the case or the evidence, it was saying quite a lot. The flyer was enough to spark intense media outcry for the boys to be severely punished, even though no one had any evidence to defend such a punishment. Suggesting the death penalty is a very serious accusation because when people think about the death penalty, they believe it can only be given for a heinous crime, typically murder, sexual assault, or terrorism. The film revealed the nature of the crime fueled public demand for harsher punishments. It is sad how the five young boys were tagged by the media as heinous criminals which lead to wild accusations of the act being an attack on white society. The boys became scapegoats for every discriminatory stereotype, bias, and hate.
Until this day trump says, “I want to hate these murderers and I always will,” Mr. Trump wrote in the May 1989 ad. “I am not looking to psychoanalyze or understand them, I am looking to punish them.” (Ransom, 2019)
During this time there was no social media how it is now, the technology that we have now is more advanced so the main sources they were using were newspapers, television, and radios. The media typically prefers to pick a side on matters despite claiming news coverage to be neutral. They tend to set their own perspective and view on things and anything you hear on social media, television, and the radio is going to be completely different from what happened. One final point of this would be the scene where the court had evidence that made the kids look innocent and it was a shock that the judge had not been told nor was anyone in the court. The only reason it came to light was shown in the scene, one of the kid lawyers was asking questions to the doctor who was examining the evidence and he mentioned the sock that contained evidence of ejaculation and it did not belong to any of the boys. Yet they were sent to prison and one boy out the five was sent to adult prison because he was sixteen. A decade passed and the one who committed the crime confessed. “Eventually, admitted serial rapist Matias Reyes told police he committed the assault, and DNA evidence confirmed the claim.” (Queally, 2014) One final detail revealed by this series was that until this day some believe that they are still guilty even though the one who committed the crime had confessed. The City of New York was sued by all five defendants. The city settled the case by paying $41 million to each defendant.
Discussion Questions:
- Who do you believe was the Criminal? And why?
- Based on this do you think the laws have changed? Or do we still see these issues occurring?
- Do you think they should be okay with taking the $41 Million? and forgetting what happened?
Citations:
Queally, J. (2014, September 5). $41-million settlement in ‘Central Park five’ case gets final approval. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved May 4, 2023, from https://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-central-park-five-settlement-20140905-story.html
Ransom, J. (2019, June 18). Trump will not apologize for calling for death penalty over Central Park Five. The New York Times. Retrieved May 4, 2023, from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/18/nyregion/central-park-five-trump.html
