Transforming the Central Park jogger into the Central Park Five: Shifting narratives of innocence and changing media discourse in the attack on the Central Park jogger,1989–2014

Stage one: Initial crime reporting

The New York Times reporting on the attack began on 21 April 1989, some two days after the incident in Central Park (Wolff, 1989). The article opened with:

A young woman, jogging on her usual nighttime path in Central Park, was raped, severely beaten and left unconscious in an attack by as many as 12 youths, who roamed the park in a vicious rampage Wednesday night, the police said.

From this point forth the significance of the crime was framed through the powerlessness of an innocent female victim and the power and violence (‘vicious rampage’) of a group of men. The reporting of the victim fits many elements of a signal crime in that a young, female, single, investment banker participating in everyday life (‘jogging on her usual nighttime path’) had been victim to a ‘savage’ attack to which she was unable to defend herself. Further emphasizing this element of defenselessness was a reference to other crimes that the attackers were accused of committing, including one assault where ‘the police were unsure how the man, who was walking and carrying a shopping bag, was able to fend them off’. An article printed the following day continued the announcement of the crime to the public by detailing the activity of ‘a loosely organized gang of 32 schoolboys’ who engaged in ‘random, motiveless assaults’ (Pitt, 1989).

The event was labeled as a broader societal issue; in this case, the article is the first to coin the term ‘wilding’. As Welch et al. (2002) note, the events of the night became a signifier for the term that became ‘a stylized term describing sexual violence committed by a group of urban teenagers’. The term was used by the media from this point forth to describe attacks identified as dangerous, sinister youth crime in New York (Welch et al., 2002: 8). Much of this shift of the media towards the attackers and the construction of ‘wilding’ also fit the phenomenon of moral panic.

Goode and Ben-Yehuda (1994) identify five elements that merge to inform a moral panic. The first is concern or anxiety towards an event or form of conduct. By labeling the conduct as ‘wilding’, the events of the night are readily identifiable to the public but also contain a sense of the unknown, mystery, and concern towards the behavior. For example, Pitt (1989) reported on the anxiety of a police chief quoted as commenting ‘It’s not a term that we in the police had heard before…They just said, “We were going wilding.” In my mind at this point, it implies that they were going to go raise hell.’ Hostility towards the perpetrators and consensus of reaction are two other elements in establishing a moral panic. Both are present in the article’s description of the crime and its relation to other ‘wilding’ cases during the night of the attack. This element links to the disproportionality in response that is also common to moral panics. While proportionality is often a subjective determination (Garland, 2008), the disproportional response can be found in the naming of suspects despite the accepted practice of withholding the names of minors. In this case officials ‘made public the names of the youths charged in the attack on the woman because of the seriousness of the incident’ (Sullivan, 1989a). Finally, most moral panics have a volatile or immediate response by the media in relation to the events, one demonstrated by the response of the New York media to the ‘wilding’ issue. It is in this manner that the Central Park jogger case became the expression of an immediate threat that ‘captured the public’s imagination about crime, producing an amplified fear of sexual violence’ (Welch et al., 2002: 5).

In the reporting of the Central Park jogger case, the first stage in the narrative of wrongful conviction was completed within 10 days by the time of the men being charged with the crime. This was the result of a media that readily accepted a version of events, a public informed of the identity of the attackers, and a justice system that had responded swiftly and promptly to a crime. For some crimes, this first segment of crime reporting can last much longer. Media reporting of signal crimes can have a lasting impact based on a number of factors that assist the development of a consistent narrative of wrongful conviction. These can include the number or sequence of events, the disclosure of the suspects’ identity, the knowledge of events, or the introduction of elements of mystery (Stratton, 2012).

Stage two: First contact with the justice system

In contrast to the first stage of reporting, the next period prioritized the victim emphasizing the impact of the crime encouraging the process of mediated witness. Mediated witness elements of shock and vulnerability were first displayed in the article ‘Runners reassess their vulnerability’ (Stockton, 1989). The article stated that after an attack ‘feelings of invulnerability vanish’ for local runners and ‘feelings of invincibility imparted by fitness gave way to a more lasting feeling of vulnerability’. Such statements place the audience in the shock and ‘strangeness’ of being a victim without ‘being’ a victim and were later reflected in similar articles (Rimer, 1989; Sullivan, 1989c). The use of the shock of violence represented a technique reinforcing the signal crime. The recall of this crime was demonstrated in a letter to the editor (Editorial, 1989), explaining the impact of the story on the author’s life:

On the morning that the Central Park jogger was found, my boyfriend called my apartment at 6 A.M. He had heard reports on the news that a woman in her mid-20’s, 5 feet 6 inches tall, with light brown hair and wearing a gold ring, had been raped, beaten and left to die in the park. For a few horrible moments, he thought, from the description, that it might be me. It could have been me. We are all scared. It is all we can be.

The letter reflects an individual influenced by the stylistic tool of mediated witness. The author demonstrates empathy with the victim by reflecting on her direct experiences with events and entwines her experiences with that of the victim, even though we do not, at this point, know how the victim feels.

In addition to engaging in mediated witness the issue of moral panic continued with this second stage of reporting. The continuation of the moral panic focused on discrepancies in age, gender, race, and power between the victims and offenders. For example, the age of the offenders was an element of the moral panic surrounding the reporting of the crime in that some articles questioned whether the New York juvenile justice system could provide an adequate response to the attack (Raab, 1989). Other reporting led to a discussion of the faults within the justice system, rising crime rates and the need for greater attention on the issue, highlighting the Central Park jogger case as a result of such failures. Welch et al. (2004) have recognized the centrality of moral panic in the reporting of the case. They highlighted Donald Trump’s advertisements attempting to have the accused face the death penalty as reflective of the public sentiment at the time.

Where much of the reporting in the first stage was vague in identifying racial differences amongst the victims and accused, they emerged during this period of reporting. While race and ethnic differences were exploited in media reporting, this selectivity and authorial technique was not unnoticed by the media itself. Roberts (1989) argued that whilst the Central Park jogger case was important, there were other cases of violence in the same week that also warranted attention from the media. It was argued that the distinguishing features of the case with the media profile were the race and background of the victim. Furthering such a critique was a letter to the editor articulating the issue of moral panic arguing that the case was a ‘misreading of the facts’ and only ‘fit to print’ based on ‘its interracial character, the degree of its viciousness, the number and ages of the rapists, and the randomness of the attack’ (Mayer, 1989).

Reflecting on the reporting of the time, Dwyer (cited in Hancock, 2003) argued that ‘the story was like a centrifuge… Everyone was pinned into a position — the press, the police, the prosecution — and no one could press the stop button’. The centrifuge-like nature of the issues may provide some explanation to the absence of alternative or competing versions of events. This is particularly important in the context of wrongful convictions as the opportunity to publish alternative views allows for the contestation of the narrative forwarded by the criminal justice system. While in this stage of reporting an alternative was presented (see Sullivan, 1989b), it was overwhelmed by the ‘centrifuge’ that focused the majority of media attention on the established narrative rather than the, at the time, unsubstantiated alternatives.

Stage three: Finalizing criminality

For a wrongful conviction the drama of the courtroom marks the mid-point between the false accusation and the recognition of the error. Central to the reporting in this stage were techniques promoting the heroic police. By this point the media completed the common cycle that reminds ‘audiences that the villains, members of the dangerous class, were brought to justice, convicted, and incapacitated’ by dedicated criminal justice personnel (Welch et al., 2002). Reflective of this process were three editorial pieces each written by a former police commissioner (Bratton, 2000), the Borough President of Manhattan (Stein, 1990), and the mayor of New York City (Dinkins, 1990). These articles identify the need for law and order to achieve justice and the honorable work of those pursuing it.

The support also elevated detectives, police chiefs and prosecutors to a pseudo-celebrity based on their success in securing justice. Detective Mike Sheehan had his celebrity shift profiled in an article that portrayed him as an ‘old school’ cop who shot ‘from the hip’ (Leduff, 1998). The article portrays Sheehan as a beacon of justice who helped crack the Central Park jogger case. His success in a new role was linked to his experience as he claimed he was more informed than the ‘“pinheads and pencil-necked geeks” – journalists with college credentials but little street knowledge’ (Leduff, 1998). In a similar manner, Detective Thomas McKenna was the focus of an article that painted him as a ‘Hollywood role model’ and mentor to actors seeking to deliver realistic portrayals of police work based on his experience with the Manhattan North Homicide Squad (Gabriel, 1996). The celebration of McKenna’s role in the investigation highlights his sacrifice in pursuit of the attackers claiming that as ‘he extracted a confession from a defendant in the Central Park jogger case…the hours on the case nearly cost him his marriage – his second’ (Gabriel, 1996). The use of former police officials in this manner is reflective of Harper and Treadwell’s (2013: 217) account of the ways the press use carefully selected (often ‘celebrity’) commentators in order to acquire public support for ‘propaganda-laden messages on crime and punishment’. In this case, the use of celebrity helps cement the public narrative by developing additional trust amongst the public.

These examples highlight the confidence in the conviction at the time. By allowing for the rise of such celebrity, there is an implicit assumption in the delivery of justice and that society should be allowed to recognize those that protect the community. In normal crime narratives, this step is important in completing the news cycle and refocusing media attention on current events. With this identified, most public narratives find their conclusion and remain absent from media discourse. However, in the case of the wrongful conviction, it marks the turning point of the narrative.

Stage four: Questioning the system

Despite the adamant contestation from the convicted over the version of events accepted by the court, the public narrative presented by The New York Times and other media sources contained little mention of their potential innocence. However, this began to change in June 2002 with an article that indicated an investigation was to re-examine the Central Park jogger case (Rashbaum, 2002a). The article publicly identified a new suspect, Matias Reyes, and the development of an alternative hypothesis surrounding Reyes’ propensity for similar behavior, his confession, and DNA evidence. Despite the new evidence, the report remained skeptical toward the innocence of the men convicted of the crime claiming it was unclear whether the new account would have any impact on the convictions (Rashbaum, 2002a). In doing so, the article struck a balance between presenting an alternative narrative whilst also retaining the accepted version of events.

A September report confirmed that DNA evidence ‘conclusively linked’ Reyes to the crime but again ‘did not necessarily have a bearing on the convictions of five young black and Hispanic men’ (McFadden and Saulny, 2002b). Despite this assertion, the reporters present the men’s lawyers’ insistence that an error based on ‘confessions [that] had been coerced’ and the absence of ‘DNA or other conclusive forensic evidence’ had occurred (McFadden and Saulny, 2002b). The article is also the first to acknowledge the possibility of false confessions, with a lawyer claiming the men were ‘manipulated through psychological coercion’ that should have been ‘“red flags” to prosecutors’. It is from this moment that a shift from crime narrative to a narrative of wrongful conviction begins to take shape. Continuing this shift were articles that extended beyond Reyes’ guilt and confirm the possibility of an unreliable conviction, the results of which had ‘shaken veteran law enforcement officials’ confidence in the original convictions (Dwyer, 2002b, 2002c).

Much like other innocence narratives, this stage of reporting relied heavily on mystery as a technique that ensured the audience remained engaged to the topic (Stratton, 2012). The doubt surrounding false confessions, the potential of a fallible justice system, and other ‘ambiguities’ in Reyes’ version of events allowed for the existing public narrative to remain, albeit threatened. In the same manner, the potential for a narrative of wrongful conviction was raised but was threatened by similar doubts. For example, a report written by Dwyer raised the possibility of a wrongful conviction but included elements that retained the accepted public narrative rather than one promoting innocence. The statement ‘the district attorney said that the verdict might be set aside for legal reasons that had nothing to do with the guilt or innocence of the five convicted people’ suggests a belief that the justice system was infallible. However, by 16 October 2002, Dwyer had concluded ‘the hysteria that surrounded the case may have contributed to a grave injustice’.

Stage five: Contesting the system

The next stage in the development of the narrative of wrongful conviction establishes the ‘new’ version of events. The establishment of the narrative of wrongful conviction represents a tool allowing for the presumption of innocence to enter the public sphere by contesting the justice system’s boundaries rather than reinforcing them (Stratton, 2012). The narrative of wrongful conviction stands as a reflexive admonishment of the system, reframing the convicted as victims. In doing so, these narratives continue the techniques of mediated witness by focusing on the side of the innocent (Peelo, 2006: 168). Moreover, overturning the convictions forced the media to query how a case many considered ‘rock-solid’ could be contested (Duru, 2003: 1320).

The new narrative begins in the reporting of the official recommendation finding that Reyes’ had committed the attack alone and the convictions be vacated (Dwyer and Flynn, 2002). This signals the narrative of wrongful conviction that would emerge in subsequent reporting focused on particular elements of the case. These centered on ‘the confessions that convinced two juries of their guilt, and the sequence of events that night’ (Dwyer and Flynn, 2002). For example, Dwyer and Flynn (2002) noted issues in the reconstruction of the events:

… bared a significant conflict, one that was hinted at but not explored in depth at the trials: at the time the jogger was believed to have been attacked, the teenagers were said to be involved – either as spectators or participants – in muggings elsewhere in the park.

The conflict between criminality and innocence is important in reconstructing a narrative of wrongful conviction. A report on the official re-investigation highlighted this contending that in ‘an avalanche of facts…and given the new evidence, the verdicts probably would tip in the defendants’ favor if new trials were to be held’ (McFadden and Saulny, 2002a). The acknowledgement of the wrongful conviction in this manner demonstrates the preparedness of the media to accept the concept when the evidence is presented by official sources.

Many reports focused on the issue of false confession to convey the extent of the injustice. For example, Saulny (2002) interviewed academic experts to question the likelihood of false confession. By acknowledging the potential for error, the men’s factual innocence could be accepted as a narrative of wrongful conviction. At the same time, the error became the center of a moral panic surrounding false confession and the legitimacy of police interrogations and interviews. In a sense, a further signal crime was attached to the narrative when the men’s false confessions became a focus for other reports of false confession or the overturning of circumstantial evidence (for example, Lambert, 2004, 2006a, 2006b; Nathan and Horowitz, 2007). Further highlighting the element of signal crime related to the false confession was reporting that helped elicit fear and anxiety of the potential reoccurrence of events (Dwyer, 2002a; Editorial, 2003). This technique is similar to those identified in signal crime reporting. However, rather than identifying with the anxiety of being victim to a wrongful conviction, the report elicits the fear of the original attack and the potential that errors within the justice system could lead to violent crime. Similarly, Dwyer (2002a) employed a similar technique in emphasizing that a wrongful conviction is not simply an injustice towards the five men but one on society arguing that after the attack:

Reyes raped and killed one woman, then raped and seriously injured three others, all on the Upper East Side. Like many serial killers and rapists across the country, Mr. Reyes was able to escape scrutiny, in part because a crime he committed appeared to have been solved by the arrest of other people.

The contrast of a society as a victim again recalls the audience as involved in the crime, hastening their attachment to the crime and the outcome of justice.

The inclusive nature of reporting during this stage in the narrative was demonstrated through the newspaper’s framing of race. Where the early stages framed race as central to the public narrative, discussions of race were absent during this stage. In order to develop the competing narrative of wrongful conviction, the media turned its focus on Reyes. Reyes’ complicity in the crime was promoted in preference to the issues of racial inequality and how a system could incorrectly accuse, trial, and convict five men for a crime in which they had no involvement. The absence of discussions as to whether race was a factor in leading to a wrongful conviction could be an indicator the hierarchy of victimization or the framing of the men as ‘more’ ideal victims. By focusing on the error rather than factors of race, age, and class, The New York Times implicitly promote the five men across a hierarchy of victimization that could otherwise identify them as belonging to social groups that would otherwise leave the public to expect them to be exposed to the effects of crime (Carrabine et al., 2004). Instead, the framing of the men as co-victims of Reyes’ attack and police incompetence allows the audience to identify with the randomness of the error. Thus, rather than ‘expected’ victims of crime based on racial characteristics and public prejudice, the five are framed as ‘ideal victims’ that extend their vulnerability and innocence (Christie, 1986; Smolej, 2010).

In response to the finding, the narrative of wrongful conviction was thrust in conflict with the established public narrative. This is most apparent in reports on police resistance to the new findings and retention of the ‘old’ version of events (Rashbaum, 2002b). This represents the first contestation of the narrative between a justice institution and the media in this case. Dwyer and Saulny (2002) reported on police resistance to the new findings based on a perceived need ‘to protect the integrity of this investigation, and the credibility of these detectives, and to make sure the court is not rendering a decision based upon omissions and errors of fact’. Importantly, the media coverage reporting on the police resistance continued with the development of the narrative of wrongful conviction in preference to that proposed by the police (Dwyer, 2003; Santora, 2003). This indicated a shift away from the institutional tunnel vision that shaped the original public narrative, instead allowing for the narrative of wrongful conviction to emerge as the hegemonic view of the attack the media were now compelled to present. Dwyer (2003) critiques the ‘old’ narrative explaining that the question of who was involved in the attack:

may never be answered to universal satisfaction, given the fiercely contrary positions of the police and prosecutors. By now, many people who are worn out or bewildered by the dispute are taking shelter in the all-purpose conversation-ending declaration that no one will ever know what really happened.

By referring to the mystery of events, Dwyer uses the unknown as a technique to elicit reader engagement with the issue. By focusing on the narrative of wrongful conviction rather than the contentions of the police, the original public narrative was recognized as incorrect.

The final element of the establishment of this narrative of wrongful conviction was a shift in recognizing the ‘new’ victims. After the narrative of wrongful conviction was established, the Central Park jogger case was often discussed with the alternative title – the Central Park Five. This first emerged in 2007 when documentary-maker Ken Burns was interviewed in relation to one of his films. The interviewer quotes Burns as finding parallels between ‘the Central Park Five…and the so-called Scottsboro Boys’ (Jensen, 2009). The term does not become common in media discourse until a book authored by Sarah Burns and the release of the documentary in 2012. Furthermore, it is not until October 2012 that the term ‘Central Park Five’ is used to describe the wrongfully convicted in a non-Burns related New York Times article (Buettner, 2012).

The impact of both the documentary and book seems to extend further than simply the naming of the Central Park Five. In the reviews of their work and subsequent articles focusing on the men, there is little to no critique or resistance to the narrative of wrongful conviction. This indicates a greater acceptance of this version of events as the ‘true’ public narrative. In addition to the news media, the consumable narrative of the documentary and book now stand as source material for the attack and the trial. It is a narrative that those who did not experience the attack as a signal crime or as mediated witnesses can now turn, free of the initial biases but now imbued with its own perspective.

Stage six: Narrative of innocence

The final stage in the narrative of wrongful conviction surrounds the discussion of compensation and redemption of the exonerated. For the Central Park Five, discussions of compensation were raised in early 2002 but were often quickly dismissed by the media (McFadden and Saulny, 2002a). This is potentially a sign that the media were yet to accept the narrative of wrongful conviction and were reluctant to support the claims of the men. However, the potential for compensation was readily discussed only a few weeks later by Saulny (2002) as the reversal of the findings and the lawyers for three of the men ‘spoke of justice denied for so long’. In the article, the lawyers are quoted as saying ‘civil suits would come’.

Despite the established narrative and support from the media, it was not until 2014 that New York City agreed to a US$41m settlement with the Central Park Five to resolve the civil rights lawsuit (Weiser, 2014). Dwyer (2014) points to further injustices in the delay in the agreement stating that the costs ‘would certainly run to about $10 million. Add that to the estimated settlement, and the public is likely to have paid $50 million in this suit’. Such a statement again engages the audience in participating in the crimes, this time as taxpaying funders of the state’s inability to see justice served. Similarly, Dwyer suggests that the case remains ‘shrouded in mystery’ particularly in reference to Reyes’ ‘wrongful liberty’ despite his crimes. Finally, Dwyer responds to the inadequacies of the response to wrongful conviction concluding that compensation was ‘a check to make the mistake go away — a kind of public penance, an attempt to buy civic grace’. Instead, he argues that there should be ‘a searching public inquiry into what went wrong, exploring how people and systems failed in every respect’ (Dwyer, 2014).

This final stage of reporting demonstrates significant shifts in how the media frame the protagonists and antagonists in the public narrative. For instance, the five youths are clearly framed as the antagonists in the initial stage; however, the youths (now men) end the narrative as central protagonists as victims, with the criminal justice system recognized as the antagonist causing harm. The shift from offender to victim demonstrates how the media can adequately respond to new evidence. However, wrongful conviction narratives are difficult to overturn and have the potential to impact the lives of those punished for crimes they did not commit (Stratton, 2013). In the case of the Central Park Five, it was not until 2002 and the confessions of Reyes that the sentiment in The New York Times – a notably liberal publication – shifted in favor of the men to where in the final stage the possible guilt of the men is never questioned. In building a typology one can acknowledge the influence of signal crime and mediated witness in influencing the public’s response to the issue and, in turn, influencing the way journalists constructed their stories.

Initial crime reporting (Stage one)

The first stage represents a period of initial crime reporting that demonstrates the hallmarks of a signal crime. It contains the possibility of an ensuing moral panic due to elements of violence, randomness, victim identity and other factors that elicit public attention.

First contact with the justice system (Stage two)

Following the initial reports, a period of court reporting continued the moral panic but began to engage the public in the techniques of mediated witness that played on elements ensuring public engagement with the issue.

Finalizing criminality (Stage three)

The third stage led to the final conceptualization of public narrative. Issues surrounding the crime are resolved through the findings of the trial and are sustained as the accepted version of events by the media from that point forward.

Questioning the system (Stage four)

After a period of public acceptance of what would be a traditional public narrative, there is recognition of alternate or contested versions of events. It is during this period where the signal crime and wrongful conviction intersect and vie for legitimacy.

Contesting the system (Stage five)

A stage of reporting focused on the injustice against the potentially innocent person(s), the victim of crime, and the inability of the justice system to prevent an error. Due to the recognition of the error, from this point onwards any reporting on the case fits the wrongful conviction narrative rather than the former elements of the typology.

Narrative of innocence (Stage six)

The final stage continues the narrative of innocence that cements the wrongful conviction as a public narrative. As a counter to the errors that preceded the wrongful conviction, the media focus on the evolution of the injustice based on the incompetence of the justice system.

In each stage of the narrative, the techniques of mediated witness and signal crime allow the audience to respond with shock or dismay to the actions of the men or empathize with and seek justice on their behalf. It is in the shift to the latter that narratives of wrongful conviction, unlike traditional public narrative, break established norms of reporting that focus on criminal activity by continuing beyond the punishment of the offender. The shifting focus provides some concept of how the potential for wrongful conviction is perceived by reporters and the public. This potential is conveyed through the framing of stories, the selectivity of the media, and other techniques employed to elicit an emotional connection from the readership.

It is for this reason that understanding the broader context of reporting on wrongful convictions is a helpful and fruitful endeavor in understanding how public sentiment towards the wrongfully convicted are constructed, the challenges faced by the innocent in publicly contesting their charge, and how justice systems respond to both. While hindsight is a benefit in such analysis, the typology offers a chance to identify the areas where public narratives are strengthened, allowing for opportunities for them to be contested by the innocent. In the six distinct stages of the narrative of wrongful conviction presented in this case, it could be viewed that stages two, three and four offer the greatest opportunity to contest the narrative. In these stages, the techniques of mediated witness are employed in preference to the shock of signal crime. Where signal crime offers an understanding of why an event elicits media attention, it is in grasping an understanding of the techniques of mediated witness that the impact of a narrative of wrongful conviction is investigated.

Although mainstream media sources like The New York Times might have traditionally been the primary authority in developing public narratives of crime, in the digital era it is increasingly clear that this does not still hold. A diversified media landscape and the emergence of social media have the potential to develop competing and parallel narratives. Social media, like the digitization of the newspapers, offer further opportunities to explore the development of narratives and the public response towards the wrongfully convicted. The typology proposed in this study offers a framework through which wrongful conviction narratives can be analyzed across all media, both as consensus public narratives and contested concepts in the public sphere.