Documentary Catching up With: Central Park Five

Now streaming, the brilliant 2012 documentary Central Park Five which reveals the gross miscarriage of justice in the case of the raped "Central Park Jogger" and the five young teenagers who were coerced, almost tortured, into false confessions. The prosecution's botched handling of the 1989 crime led to hysterical media coverage as well as long prison sentences and derailed lives for the teenagers.



It makes you wonder, should the main prosecutor in the case Linda Fairstein (turned award-winning author) not be tried for criminal conduct?

The five men are now suing the city of New York for $50 million each, while the NYPD tried unsuccessfully to subpoena footage from the filmmakers (Ken Burns, his daughter Sarah Burns and her husband David McMahon), saying they had crossed the line into advocacy? Say what?

While the two-hour film is a little long in the early stages, setting the scene and defining New York as it was, which to me seemed unnecessary, it rises to incredible heights as the testimonies of the now freed men pile on. With this film, we realize a miscarriage of justice is not just some abstract concept but how deeply it affects human beings, their families, and our society at large.