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New York Times Goes Wilding On Central Park Jogger

Again a service for our readers in a hurry, Speed Coulter...

Title: New York Times Goes Wilding On Central Park Jogger
Central Park rapists bad people.
Liberals and the New York Times support rapists.
Islam is bad too.

Now if you still feel the need to read more, here it is:

New York Times Goes Wilding On Central Park Jogger
by Ann Coulter
October 16 , 2002

PROBABLY FEELING "humiliated," in 1989, a mob of feral beasts descended on Central Park to attack joggers and bicyclists. They brutalized a female jogger while incomprehensibly chanting "Wild Thing" in their ghetto patois. The jogger, a 110-pound, white investment banker, was beaten so badly she was declared "dead on arrival" at the hospital. Her skull was crushed and she had lost two-thirds of her blood.

This is a cheap and pointless essay. We all know something terrible happened in the park, and most of us agree that a huge amount of evidence pointed to the men convicted for the crime, however we also are aware that new evidence throws some of this into doubt, and this is very disturbing. No one knows quite what to think. Except for Coulter. Coulter is now laying claim to godlike omniscience: she knows what happened in Central Park on that 1989 night. If you want a real essay on the Central Park case, read Joyce Purnick's New York Times piece from today (10/17). Purnick clearly remains doubtful of the convicted men's innocence while acknowledging that the new evidence is disturbing. In other words, she provides a balanced point of view. I don't know if these men are guilty, and we probably never will know for sure, but I do know that Coulter is using a horrible crime to advance her own varied agendas. Is she trying to prove these men's guilt? This seems unlikely. Twisted as it may seem to my saner readers, I suspect she's actually trying to prove that liberals support rape and attempted murder (while tossing in some racist subtext).

This first paragraph seems to be an exercise in excess. Why "humiliated", in quotation marks? One can only assume this is supposed to suggest that black teenagers get away with their crimes by claiming prior humiliation and preying on liberal guilt. 'Feral beasts'? Why not just call them 'black animals' and have done with it? If their confessions were accurate, they were (and are) thugs, there is no need for a descent into animal kingdom metaphor. "Incomprehensibly chanting...in their ghetto patois"? Those primitive savages and their strange languages. Again, this reeks of racism. You can say the men are guilty without ridiculing their "patois" (which, of course, ridicules all people who supposedly speak in a similar manner, i.e. all blacks who live in the ghetto).

Her attackers spent the night in jail joking about the attack, singing a rap song and whistling at policewomen. In his written confession, Yusef Salaam said, "It was fun."

And if they committed the crime, this is certainly ugly. If not, not.

At the onset of the first Central Park rape trial, the New American, a black newspaper in New York City, ran a front-page headline about the jogger titled: "The Truth about the Whore." (According to the New York Times, the paper referred to her with "a sexual epithet.") The article spun out the "theory" that her boyfriend had attacked her. The editor "acknowledged that the article was not based on any specific evidence. 'That's why it was called a theory,' he said. 'A theory means no evidence.'"

This article was indeed loathsome. Of course, picking on this article takes about as much effort as calling Hitler a bad man. Intellectually speaking it's a bunt.

Recently the media have been spinning out their own theories about the attack, using the same definition of "theory."

The newsflash being billboarded across every New York news outlet right now is that prison inmate Matias Reyes has confessed to being the jogger's sole attacker. Breathless news accounts claim that the police were shocked to discover that new DNA testing has now proved Reyes alone attacked the jogger and that the others did not.

This is a straw man. None of the news reports claim this. Instead, they report that in Reyes' own CONFESSION he claims sole responsibility for the attack, and DNA evidence does confirm he did rape the jogger. Neither police nor newspapers are saying that we should believe Reyes' confession, but they do suggest that it needs to be taken seriously. Which, of course, it does.

This is completely false. Liberals so long to claim that every criminal is innocent, they forget that the Central Park rape case received a lot of media attention when it happened. The facts are easily accessible on Lexis-Nexis. The media can't engage in their usual lies about a phony DNA "exoneration" this time.

Liberals claim every criminal is innocent? Please. I don't even think OJ was innocent. Violent criminals belong behind bars and I don't know a single liberal who thinks otherwise.

In fact, it was well-known at the time that the semen found on the jogger did not match any of the defendants. Headlines proclaimed: "Semen Tested in Jogger Case Was Not That of Defendants" (New York Times); "Semen, Suspects No Match, Says DNA Expert in Jog Case" (Newsday); "DNA Expert: No Semen Links To Defendants" (Associated Press); and "Expert Says Semen on Jogger Is Not Teens'" (The Record).

Whatever evidence convinced two juries to convict the five animals, it was not DNA evidence. As usual, the media simply waited a decade, and then rushed to print with old arguments for the defense claiming it is "new evidence."

Did Coulter really go to law school. Ann, nobody is saying (beyond defense lawyers and family members) that the DNA evidence proves the accused's innocence, it simply corroborates part of Reyes' new confession. It's the confession, not the DNA evidence, which is the crucial new evidence.

Thus, in a stunningly dishonest article, the New York Times claims "results from a battery of new DNA tests, which show that Mr. Reyes raped the jogger, have all been consistent with his version of events." The new DNA tests are consistent with precisely one part of Reyes' story: Matias Reyes raped the Central Park jogger. This is not new information. It was always known that Matias Reyes was out there; the police just didn't know his name.

What was dishonest about the Times' article? They say that physical evidence is in sync with his version of events. This is true. This is not the same as saying that his entire confession has been proven true.

Consequently, the new DNA tests are also consistent with the version of events presented in court, subjected to attack by defense counsel, and believed unanimously by two multiracial juries. In her summation to the jury, prosecutor Elizabeth Lederer told the jurors: "Others who were not caught raped her and got away." The five primitives on trial were described as among those who attacked the jogger. No new evidence contradicts the five guilty verdicts.

Yes, and nobody is denying (not even the Times, Ann) that these men might still be guilty.

As for the use of the word "primitives", again we descend into racism. They men were not primitives, they were members of an advanced technological society (who might also be scum, but that remains unclear at this point). The use of the word primitives is unnecessary except that it seems to suggest that these men, like all blacks, belong to an ignorant tribal people.

What convinced two juries to convict the savages was primarily their videotaped confessions. There was other evidence Ð such as one defendant's undershorts full of semen, dirt, grass and other debris. (According to accounts of their deliberations, one juror held up the undershorts and said: "How do you think they got this way?")

The same comments re 'primitives', above, apply to Coulter's use of the word 'savages.'

The defendants' lawyers rigorously attacked the confessions in court. They leapt in to highlight any inconsistencies or exculpatory facts now being treated like "new evidence" in the media. The jurors observed the demeanor of the defendants, the police and other witnesses. After carefully weighing all the evidence, subjected to the adversary process, the jurors decided the defendants were guilty.

Ten videotaped statements made in the presence of the suspects' parents provided graphic details about the attack, were tested in court, and were believed by unanimous juries. Now these confessions are supposed to be trumped by the untested, unchallenged jailhouse confession of a murderer and serial rapist who claims he acted alone? Providentially, our criminal justice system presupposes that juries are better positioned to evaluate the truth than New York Times reporters looking for the next Scottsboro Boys case.

Confessions have been coerced in the past, but I'll admit that these confessions do shed a great deal of doubt on Reyes' claim of sole responsibility. A point that the New York Times (see Purnick's article) also makes.

In completely believable testimony, the father of defendant Antron McCray told the jury that he instructed his son to lie to the police in the post-rape interview, so the police would let him go. This is often what happens when you tell the police in graphic and gruesome detail how you gang-raped a woman. Anton's "lie" included this: "We charged her. We got her on the ground. Everybody started hitting her and stuff. She was on the ground, everybody stomping and everything. ... I grabbed one arm, some other kid grabbed one arm and we grabbed her legs and stuff. Then we all took turns getting on top of her."

The public got a glimpse of what the jurors saw when Yusef Salaam was interviewed by Mike Wallace on "60 Minutes" in 1992. Salaam said he suspected the jogger Ð the one declared DOA at the hospital Ð was "faking." He also said that even though he lied in his confession, people should believe he was telling the truth about the confession being a lie because he was a Muslim. "That's all a Muslim has," he said, explaining why he lied, "his word."

Ah, I see, another excuse for a dig at Islam.

Two juries already heard all the arguments now being reported as "new evidence" in the media and unanimously rejected them. This isn't the latest Scottsboro Boys case. It's the latest Tawana Brawley case.

This may be so, but Coulter doesn't do anything to prove it. Again, please don't think I'm trying to defend rapists. If these guys are guilty, they deserve far more than they got. Unlike Coulter, however, I don't have the ear of the Almighty, I don't know the truth about their guilt or innocence.

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