Looking back at the Central Park 5

>> that you hadn't seen?

>> just to save my own life.

>> when he wrote the trial he could have been talking about black men and the american criminal justice system . the sense we enter a bizarre system where we are guilty until proven innocent pulses through central park five about the central park jogger case that riveted new york and most of america in 1989 and 1990 by ken burns who we will have on this show on wednesday. a 29-year-old white woman from wall street was found raped and beaten savagely. it appeared unlikely she would survive. a group of 30 black and brown boys had been moving through the park that night beating up a homeless man and a male jogger but they never saw the female jogger. police picked up five. them, taen ateenagers all. held them for 30 hours and demanded they tell them about the crime they did not witness. the boys implicated each other because they were scared, stressed, and coerced by the police. the d.a.'s office later says the boy's discrepancies. dna couldn't place them at the bloody scene. the boys were said by police and media to have been in a wolf pack and to have been wilding reducing them to animals and violent beasts. they never had a chance. they were convicted and served their full sentences before another man came forward to confess, producing accurate details and dna that was at the scene. mayor koch called it the crime of the century , but now that it's not just about rape on hallowed new york city ground but about five lives shattered, the crime of the century takes on different meaning. it calls into mind the nine scotsboro boys convicted of raping a woman. it's why george zimmerman er followed trayvon martin. that presumption of guilt may be why jordan davis was shot and killed. michael dunn fired eight or nine rounds from his car at another that davis was in because after trading angry words, dunn said he saw four black then and a shotgun. police do not find said shotgun. some don't understand how a central park jogger case can happen in a city that would happen in a city that would elect david dinkens . being black in america is