A panel commissioned by the New York City Police Department concluded Monday that there was no misconduct in the 1989 investigation of the Central Park jogger case, and said that five Harlem men whose convictions were thrown out by a judge last month had “most likely” participated in the beating and rape of the jogger.
The panel also disputed the claim of Matias Reyes, a convicted killer and serial rapist, that he alone had raped the jogger. It was his confession last year that led to a sweeping re-examination of the infamous case by prosecutors and to a reversal of all the original convictions against the five defendants.
Reyes’ confession may have been motivated by prison threats or by a wish to transfer to a more desirable prison, the panel said. Noting that DNA tests showed that he had raped the jogger, the panel insisted there was “nothing but his uncorroborated word” that he acted alone.
“Our examination of the facts leads us to suggest that there is an alternative theory of the attack upon the jogger, that both the defendants and Reyes assaulted her, perhaps successively,” stated the panel of three lawyers named by Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly last November, writing in a 43-page report addressed to the commissioner.
It was the latest chapter in a vast compendium of claims, criminal charges, convictions, reversals, disputed facts and hotly debated theories of the events of April 19, 1989, when a mob of 40 Harlem teenagers invaded Central Park to assault, rob and harass joggers, bicyclists and others in a night that came to symbolize an era of rampant crime and racial tensions in the city.
Compiled by two prominent New York lawyers, Michael Armstrong and Jules Martin, and by Stephen Hammerman, deputy police commissioner for legal affairs, the report also constituted the Police Department’s counterpoint to a motion last month by the Manhattan district attorney, Robert Morgenthau, that recommended dismissal of the convictions of the five men, whose graphic but unsupported confessions had sent them to prison.
Taken together, the police and prosecutor’s reports consider the same facts but draw different conclusions, with the police defending their actions and the prosecutors theirs, and with neither acknowledging mistakes by investigators in 1989.
Unlike the prosecutor’s motion, however, the police report offered a series of procedural recommendations to improve complicated investigations, including greater sharing and coordination of information, better management of forensic evidence and better rooms for interrogating minors.
Unlike Morgenthau’s motion, the police report will have no effect on the case itself, which was closed Dec. 19 when State Supreme Court Justice Charles Tejada accepted a defense motion and reversed the convictions against Raymond Santana, Kharey Wise, Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray and Yusef Salaam.
Morgenthau had no comment on the police report. Lawyers and supporters for the five defendants called it a biased and belated attempt to clear the reputation of the Police Department. “They’ve got so much egg on their face, they’re never going to be able to wipe it off,” said Myron Beldock, a lawyer for Salaam.
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