Terrible. Reminds me of that hideous attack in Central Park years ago. But you’ll be happy to know that the now adult “kids” - all of whom were stone cold guilty - were not only released under DeBlasio but got huge settlements. Ah, Dem justice.
“Wilding”.
In his blatantly biased documentary “Central Park Five,” Burns acts as an apologist and promoter for those convicted of the gang rape and beating in the head with a brick of a woman jogger in Central Park, presenting them as “civil rights” heroes. The attack on Trisha Meili left her in a coma for 12 days with loss of 80 per cent of her blood from deep stab wounds. Her skull had been fractured so badly that her left eye hung out of its socket. She was given last rites.
When she didn’t die, the five were sentenced, imprisoned and then eventually released. When Matias Reyes, a serial rapist and killer already serving a life term (Reyes had absolutely nothing to lose by confessing to the rape), suddenly “confessed” to being the jogger’s lone assailant, two doctors who helped save the jogger’s life said her wounds were not consistent with his account of the attack, while one state investigator commented, “The word of a serial rapist killer is not something to be heavily relied upon.”
But Democrat District Attorney Robert Morgenthau quickly went into action, blocking police from questioning Reyes or giving him a polygraph and ordering other inmates not to talk to any police investigators about their conversations with Reyes.
Despite strong objections from the original prosecutor, based on the doubtful new confession, Morgenthau had the New York Supreme Court vacate the convictions of “the Central Park Five,” even though in a legal oddity they never recanted their original confessions, nor did they present additional evidence contradicting the evidence that had gotten them convicted. The New York Times states that the five were “exonerated,” a false statement since they would have to stand trial and be declared not guilty in order to be exonerated. Instead their sentences were simply vacated.
In his heavily slanted “documentary,” Burns never used hours of interviews he filmed with state investigators and others who pointed to extensive evidence that the group was guilty. Burns said his purpose in making the video was to get the five men a financial settlement. According to New York writer Nicholas Stix, Burns “simply airbrushed every fact that incriminates the defendants out of the movie.”
Later, working in tandem with Burns’ campaign for the five, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio handed “the Central Park Five” over $40 million for “wrongful imprisonment.” At the time, businessman Donald Trump bought newspaper ads calling the settlement a “disgrace.” Today Burns’ heavily biased documentary is shown extensively in U.S. public schools, promoting “white guilt” in impressionable students, with PBS promoting it as “a revealing portrait of one of our nation’s most egregious miscarriages of justice.”
Ignoring the legal oddity that the assailants were never proved innocent, Ken Burns tweeted: “Apparently Mr. Trump is unfamiliar with the concept of wrongful conviction.”
“They should be very thankful I wasn’t mayor because they wouldn’t have gotten a dime,” Trump said.
Meanwhile Trisha Meili lives today, making occasional speeches on coping with head trauma.
Ken Burns: Student of History—or Left-Wing Gasbag?
https://www.aim.org/special-report/ken-burns-student-of-history-or-left-wing-gasbag/