You remember The Central Park Five.
Young female jogger brutally assaulted. Five Harlem youths out “wilding.” Public outcry. Media frenzy. Confession. Conviction.
Mistake.
And now visionary filmmaker Ken Burns is here to tell you all about it – in the flesh – at “TimesTalks – Justice and the Central Park Five,” now selling tickets.
The talk coincides with the PBS debut of Burns’ award-winning doc about the case (watch the trailer).
He’ll be joined at The TimesCenter by co-director Sarah Burns, Pulitzer Prize-winning NY Times columnist Jim Dwyer (who covered the case) and the five exonerated themselves for a discussion of the film and the historic miscarriage of justice it depicts.
So expect the straight dope on strained race relations in the late 1980s, sensationalistic news reporting and public pressure on the NYPD, all of which led to the coerced confessions and wrongful imprisonment of five innocent boys.
They were in prison for nearly a decade before DNA evidence proved another man guilty. And they’re still waiting for restitution from the city of New York.
It’s like history class, only with better teachers.
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