When They See Us

The Netflix original "When They See Us" is a 4 part series based on a true story of 5 young men being wrongly accused of raping and beating a woman on the night of April 19th, 1989. These young men go by the names of Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam, Korey Wise, Raymond Santana, and Kevin Richardson. This film is so hard to watch, however, is a MUST WATCH for people everywhere across the globe. Blacks, or minorities should not be the only people interested in this film. These young men's story is so sad and disheartening because it truly reveals how the justice system is very selective on who receives justice, and how it was built to sustain some and oppress others.

On the night of April 19th, 1989, these young men (who did not know each other, other than Korey and Yusef) were all in Central Park on the night of the raping, which created room to add them on the suspect list. These 5 young men,at the time, were between the ages of 14-16, just starting to hit puberty. This did not matter, though. Their age didn't matter. DNA samples didn't matter. Missing pieces to the story that led to the rape didn't matter. Even the fact that NONE of their stories aligned with one another in each of their confessions didn't matter. Oh, they were interrogated without parental supervision as minors and coerced into making those confessions, by the way. Very illegal. However, none of that mattered! All that mattered was that they were in the wrong place, wrong skin color, at the wrong time, and it ruined their lives forever.

The "Exonerated 5" being honored at the 2019 BET Awards

Each of these young men were convicted as rapists and sent to prison for between 5-13 years. If you're not already aware, the only thing worse than going to jail for rape, is child molestation. So, you can only imagine the trauma that these boys faced in prison. Especially, Korey Wise, who was sent straight to an adult prison because he was the only one who was 16 at the time of his sentencing. His story is the most heartbreaking because he was only at the police station to look after Yusef, and ended up with the longest sentence of all the boys.

Years later, after the real rapist confessed to his crime and DNA samples were compared and matched the jogger from that night, these now grown men, have been free'd and exonerated of all crimes charged against them, and received a 41 million dollar settlement from the state of New York. Although. the state did attempt to right their wrongs, no amount of money can restore what was stolen from these 5 young men on April 19th, 1989.

Here's a link for further research: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/20/nyregion/5-exonerated-in-central-park-jogger-case-are-to-settle-suit-for-40-million.html