Central Park Jogger Rape Trials: 1990

Without any physical evidence, the unsigned confession represented all of the prosecution's case against Salaam until his lawyer made a series of strategic blunders. When attorney Robert Burns asked McKenna why he believed the confession was true, the detective replied that he knew none of the particulars of the attack until Salaam revealed details which later turned out to be true. Burns also allowed the detective to mention that an unindicted witness placed Salaam in the park on the night of the attack.

McCray's and Santana's lawyers objected vehemently when Burns decided to put his client on the stand. Salaam denied taking part in the attack and testified that he told police he was only 15 when they questioned him. Under cross-examination, however, his confused explanation for being in the park dissolved into bickering with the prosecutor.

The defense claimed that the entire prosecution case rested on confessions coerced with lies and threats. The prosecution was accused of playing to the jury's emotions by unnecessarily putting the victim on the stand. Burns also suggested that the jogger had freely engaged in sex with an unnamed person before embarking on her run and that no rape had occurred. After 10 days of turbulent deliberations, however, the jury found the defendants guilty.

Details of the confessions had been leaked almost from the moment they were given, producing considerable press commentary that presumed the youths guilty. This bias and the absence of forensic evidence in the trial prompted some black New Yorkers to be suspicious of the verdict. A few activists, including the Reverend Al Sharpton, observed and criticized the trial, ignoring the multiracial jury's insistence that the youths were convicted by their own admissions.

When Kharey Wise and Kevin Richardson came to trial two months later, their supporters rained racial insults on prosecutors arriving at the courthouse. Richardson's attorney, Howard Diller, threatened to ask for a mistrial when Wise's lawyer announced publicly that he would cross-examine the jogger, a move the defense in the first trial had avoided for fear of alienating the jury. Richardson's family responded by trying to fire Diller for not being aggressive enough.

The tense courtroom erupted almost immediately. "That woman, she's lying!" Wise sobbed during prosecutor Lederer's opening argument. "I can't take it anymore!"

Wise's lawyer, Colin Moore, kept his promise to cross-examine the jogger vigorously. He inferred that she had been seeing more than one man and that her boyfriend had attacked her in a jealous fury. Moore's suggestive questions were buried in a hail of sustained objections.