When They See Us

Chances are, your blood is boiling watching this four-part series: the harrowing account of Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam and Korey Wise's wrongful convictions and sentences.

The five teens, all Black and Brown, ages 14 to 16 in 1989, spent the next 6 to 13 years of their lives in prison for a crime they did not do -- raping and assaulting Trisha Meili almost to death while she was jogging one night in Central Park. Meili was in coma for 12 days from the injury and had no memory of what happened to her.

The series opens with the last hours before the lives of the boys derailed to a horrifying direction. It starts with a normal evening with their family and friends, then they decide to run around with a crowd of other teenagers in Central Park.

What follows is one night at the police station for some of them while the police are rounding up young men of colour, looking for witnesses and suspects for the attacks on Meili and several other victims that night. Within the next 48 hours, all five find themselves in the interrogation room, mostly with no lawyers or parents present, coerced into confession, which ultimately serves as the primary evidence for prosecution.

The third episode brings us to their struggles during and after prison. And by the time we are nearing its end, with a sinking feeling, we realize that Korey's part will not be told on this one and it cannot be for a good reason. We are saving the worst for last.

True enough, we move to Korey's story in the final episode, and his is the most difficult to watch. To throw salt in the wound, Korey's name was not even originally on the police's list. He was brought in for interrogation after he decided to accompany Yusef to the police station. Being 16 at the time, he was tried as an adult and received the longest sentence of 13 years, which he spent in various adult prisons including Rikers, some in solitary confinement to avoid assault from other inmates.

This is a dramatized account, but do we say the real event was actually fair and thorough? Didn't a simple detail like how the boys, except for Korey and Yusef, didn't even know each other prior to the case bother the prosecution at all? The five boys' lives were cheap in the eyes of the police and the prosecutors. There was a deadline to catch, convictions to nail, and a full-page ad -- paid by a future reality TV host, totally not because the accused were Black and Brown -- calling for the return of death penalty to add fuel to the fire. These five boys from Harlem had to be the perpetrators.

After the confession by Matias Reyes, the actual perpetrator, and a matched DNA test in 2002, the five men were exonerated and paid a sum of compensation by New York City and the state. But how do you forget this real-life nightmares of yours? How do you mend your broken self? What if Matias Reyes had never confessed?

Linda Fairstein, the head of the sex crimes unit of the Manhattan DA's office who oversaw the case, continues to make money writing 20 over crime novels, among other things, after she left the office. And after the series aired, she had the privilege to write an op-ed on WSJ, an attempt to defend herself and shift the attention to a new narrative. What a way to get backfired. I think the op-ed only spells out her fault and selfishness.

Image: nytimes.com