The Central Park Jogger Case: A Letter to the New York Times

A Different Drummer ^ | 12 December 2002 | Nicholas Stix

On December 5, I sent the following letter to the New York Times. You can bet the ranch the newspaper, which stopped printing my letters five years ago, will never publish it.

To the Editor:

In your December 6 editorial ("Injustice in the Jogger Case") supporting Manhattan D.A. Robert Morgenthau's call to exonerate the five men convicted in the 1989 Central Park Jogger case, you write, "Fair-minded people are appalled by the prosecutorial missteps and overreaching that led to the faulty convictions of five teenagers..."

I submit that fair-minded people who have followed the case since its bloody inception, are appalled that a public servant would cave in to racial extremists who demonized the victim, and who never wanted any non-whites to be punished for this heinous crime. The boys were questioned and confessed in front of their parents, implicating themselves and each other. They were guilty as hell, and prosecutors worked heroically, in the face of constant racial harassment and threats. The police always knew that they had not caught all of the attackers.

On April 19, 1989, dozens of young men assumed that they could terrorize people based on the color of their skin. Thirteen years later, Robert Morgenthau and the New York Times have told them that they were right, all along. Injustice, indeed. Shame on both of you.

Signed,

Nicholas Stix