Injustice for all

The case of the Central Park Five is powerfully rendered in new miniseries

On April 19, 1989, a 28-year-old white woman was violently beaten and raped in New York City’s Central Park while she was taking a night-time jog. On the same night, a series of attacks and robberies also occurred in the park. Five young African Americans who were on the periphery of these events—ranging in age from 14 to 16—found themselves rounded up by police.

This is the subject of the new four-part, five-hour Netflix miniseries from director Ava DuVernay (Selma), which dramatizes the case that captured the nation’s attention—along with then-businessman Donald Trump, who infamously ran a full-page ad calling for the execution of the five teenagers on May 1, 1989.

After hours of initial interrogations that weren’t taped or documented—taking place without parents or lawyers present, including tactics like sleep deprivation and withholding food and water—the five suspects confessed to crimes they didn’t commit, even as their coerced stories contradicted each other.

After two long-publicized trials, all five were found guilty. The teenagers were convicted of the brutal crime without any corroborating evidence, other than being in the wrong park at the wrong time while black. Such miscarriages of justice are bound to leave an indelible mark of distrust within the hearts of the racial minorities and communities who suffer those injustices.

As director and co-writer of all four episodes, DuVernay takes us through the night, the trials, and the aftermath of those events from the perspective of the five, along with their families, with a visceral immediacy that doesn’t overplay its hand. It’s all sickeningly credible.

The first episode focuses on the arrest and interrogations, showing how an overzealous D.A. steered her subordinate detectives to wear down the teens in a scary, intimidating, and confusing atmosphere, getting them to recite confessions that cops were concocting on the fly while leveraging the teens with false promises and real threats. Each of the young actors cast as the accused make their fear and brokenness tragically palpable, with Asante Blackk as Kevin Richardson (the smallest, who’s given a swollen black eye by a cop) as a heartbreaking standout.

Episode 2 methodically portrays the incredulous turns of the trials, and Episode 3 tracks the challenges of re-assimilating back into society after each of their juvenile sentences were served.

All except for one: Korey Wise, the fifth who was 16-years-old and sentenced as an adult. His story is entirely separate, more traumatic, and depicted in its lonesome, gruesome detail in the 90-minute feature-length Episode 4.

You won’t see a more powerful episode of television all year, and it may garner actor Jharrel Jerome (Moonlight) an Emmy. He’s the only cast member to portray one of the five as both teenager and adult, and his transformation between the two (emotionally and physically) is a staggering achievement.

When They See Us isn’t particularly rigorous about the complexities of how such an injustice can actually occur, limited essentially to “because racism,” but other works like Ken Burns’ The Central Park Five documentary (on Amazon Prime) and DuVernay’s own Netflix documentary 13th both serve as great companion pieces, as does the new Oprah Winfrey special When They See Us Now, where she interviews the cast, director, and survivors. It also streams on Netflix, and it provides the necessary conversation that the series provokes—along with the catharsis it needs.