SOC 3740 Chapter Notes - Chapter online article: Central Park Jogger Case, Response Bias, Observational Error
2 Feb 2017
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(cid:498)i"d know a false confession if i saw one(cid:499) In recent years, numerous high-profile dna exonerations have surfaced, leading social science researchers, legal scholars, policy makers, and the news media to revisit the evidence upon which innocent people had been prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned. The shocking exonerations in new york"s central park jogger case illustrate the point. In 1989, a female jogger was raped, brutally beaten, and left for dead in central park. 14 16 years old, confessed to the assault in lurid detail. The boys immediately retracted their statements, claiming that they were coerced and false. Yet solely on the basis of these statements, they were convicted by juries and sentenced to prison. Thirteen years later, matias reyes an imprisoned serial rapist and murderer confessed that he alone had attacked the jogger. The reyes confession, unlike those of the boys, was corroborated by dna tests of semen found at the crime scene.
