Raymond Santana spoke at the University in Bey Hall, Thursday, September 12 about the wrongful conviction that he and four others were accused of in 1989.
Santana is one of the “Central Park Five,” a group of young men between the ages of 14 and 16 who were accused of raping and assaulting a female jogger in Central Park, New York City. The case was called the Central Park Jogger case.
Four years later, DNA testing proved the five men had no connection with the Central Park Jogger case, though they were not released until the real perpetrator came forward and confessed. He stated that the men had nothing to do with the incident.
Santana was forced to spend more than a decade in prison. He was later freed by the Innocence Project, a public policy and litigation group dedicated to overturning the convictions of non-guilty persons through DNA evidence.
Susan Douglas, Specialist Professor of the Department of History and Anthropology, opened the event by speaking about Santana, the Innocence Project, and how the University has worked to bring these speakers to campus routinely for several years.
Douglas noted that “their success in getting revision of evidence … has been an uphill battle” and the group needs all the support it can get.
“I can’t tell you where I was going at the time – I was a kid,” Santana said, referring to when he was fourteen just before his arrest. He explained that he’d been hanging out with his friends and some friends of theirs that he didn’t know when someone suggested they go to Central Park. He followed the friends, without questioning why they chose Central Park.
Santana explained that the next day he was walking along a street with his friend when a police car pulled up and two officers jumped out, grabbing the two men.
“When you first go in, you don’t know what to expect,” he said. “All you know is that you’re in a situation and you’re stuck, you can’t get out of it.”
Hours of interrogation and scare tactics eventually led to Santana giving a false confession filled with information that was fed to him by the police officers.
“You have to look at the circumstances, a 14-year-old who doesn’t really understand life, he’s just living in the moment, going against 20-year vets who are putting on enough pressure to bust pipes,” Santana said.
The interrogations lead to 17 months of legal proceedings when he and his four friends were sentenced for attacking a woman.
During this process, Santana explained that the public was biased against the men based on the media, which caused hostility toward them during the trial and long afterward.
All five wound up in prison where they “were considered the bottom of the barrel” because “only a child molester is worse than a rape charge,” Santana said.
Years later he was granted parole, and given a 7 o’clock curfew because he was registered as a sex offender and forced to go to sex offender meetings. Santana said that the sentencing killed his chance at living a normal life, he was forced to “walk on eggshells” because of the way people would treat him. “I couldn’t function after a while,” Santana said. “The pressure was too much for me to bear. I lost all hope.”
After months of unemployment he started dealing drugs to get by. Later he found himself back in jail after his home was raided and the drugs were discovered.
Soon after their indictment was overturned, Santana explained how their 2003 wrongful conviction lawsuit had still not been addressed. The New York City government insists that the men may still have been connected to the case and therefore the suit cannot be settled.
In recent years, the men have had difficulty finding work and functioning because of the reputation created by the incident. It wasn’t until they were approached by a woman named Sarah Burns, who was writing a report on them, that the media began working in their favor.
She was so outraged by the conviction that she decided to write a book about the “Central Park Five,” and her father, Ken Burns, made a movie about them. The film was screened in Toronto and Aruba. Over 500 people were so moved by the movie that they gave the film a standing ovation. “It was the first time I was in a room with people supporting us,” Santana said.
Since then, he and the other members of the “Central Park Five” have toured the world and Santana alone has spoken at over 100 different venues. He says it’s “like therapy” and that with each speech “a little part of this scar heals.”
Santana is not bitter. He said, “I wouldn’t change nothing. It made me who I am today. If it wasn’t for this experience, my daughter wouldn’t be alive, I wouldn’t be in front of you. So I wouldn’t change nothing.”
The presentation was sponsored by the Honor School as well as the Department of History and Anthropology. Irene Menditto, Director of Honors School Student Standards Advising and Services, thinks this event is a great opportunity for the University. “We are very excited, we do this every year,” Irene said. “We’re eager to educate about what’s happening with the Innocence Project.”
Kevin Dooley, Dean of the Honors School, noted that one of the reasons they sponsored this event was because of the educational benefit for students. “It’s a good interdisciplinary event. I don’t think you can peg this particular story or speaker in one academic discipline,” Dooley said.
