The Central Park jogger case (sometimes termed as the Central Park Five case) was a criminal case concerning the assault and rape of Trisha Meili, a woman who was running in Central Park in Manhattan, New York, on April 19, 1989. Crime in New York City was peaking in the late 1980s and early 1990s as the crack epidemic surged. On the night Meili was attacked, dozens of teenagers had entered the park, and there were reports of muggings and physical assaults.

While a large contingent of the NYPD exercised abject tunnel vision in their focus on the five youths, the real perpetrator continued his violent rapes, including the rape and murder of a young mother while her three children were locked in an adjoining room, before he was caught and incarcerated. His DNA was confirmed in the rapes and murder, but was not tested against the Meili assault because the Central Park Five had already been erroneously charged for that assault; in 2002, serial rapist Matias Reyes confessed to the Meili assault and said he was the only actor, with DNA evidence confirming his confession. The convictions, including those related to the other assaults, to 32 teenagers who lived in East Harlem entered Manhattan's Central Park at an entrance in Harlem, near Central Park North. Some of the group committed several attacks, assaults, and robberies against people who were either walking, biking, or jogging in the northernmost part of the park near the reservoir, and victims began to report the incidents to police.

Within the North Woods, between 102nd and 105th Street, assailants were reported attacking several cyclists, hurling rocks at a cab, and attacking a pedestrian, whom they robbed of his food and beer and left unconscious.

Rape of Trisha Meili

Patricia "Trisha" Ellen Meili, a 28-year-old, While jogging, she was knocked down, dragged nearly off the roadway, About four hours later at 1:30 am, she was found naked, gagged, tied, and covered in mud and blood in a shallow ravine about 300 feet north of the 102nd Street Crossing, a wooded area of the park. Meili was so badly injured that she was in a coma for 12 days, not awakening until May 1, according to a May 3 interview with her doctor.

She had severe hypothermia, severe brain damage, severe hemorrhagic shock, loss of 75–80 percent of her blood, and internal bleeding. Her skull had been fractured so badly that her left eye was dislodged from its socket, which in turn was fractured in 21 places.

Arrests and investigation

Arrests of Lopez, McCray, Richardson, Salaam, Santana and Wise

Police took custody of Raymond Santana and Kevin Richardson, both 14 years of age, at approximately 10:15p.m. on Central Park West and 102nd Street. He was also interrogated.

Four of the six suspects, Salaam, Wise, Richardson, and Lopez, lived at the Schomburg Plaza, a mixed-income housing complex at the northeast corner of Central Park; two lived further north of there.

Analysis indicated that none of the suspects' DNA matched either of the two DNA samples collected from the crime scene (from the jogger's cervix and running sock), but results were reported as "inconclusive" by the police. None of the six had defense attorneys during the interrogations or videotape process. McCray, Richardson, Salaam, Santana and Wise told police they had been part of a makeshift group of about 30 people, some of whom had committed various crimes, some of whom had merely observed those crimes. According to a later statement by District Attorney Nancy Ryan, "[a]ll five implicated themselves in a number of the crimes which had occurred in the park."

When taken into custody, Salaam told the police he was 16 years old and showed them identification to that effect. If a suspect had reached 16 years of age, his parents or guardians no longer had a right to accompany him during police questioning, or to refuse to permit him to answer any questions. After Salaam's mother arrived at the station, she insisted that she wanted a lawyer for her son, and the police stopped the questioning. He neither made a videotape nor signed the earlier written statement, but the court ruled to accept it as evidence before his trial. Years later, Salaam said, "I would hear them beating up Korey Wise in the next room", and "they would come and look at me and say: 'You realize you're next.' The fear made me feel really like I was not going to be able to make it out."

Two weeks after their confessions, each of the suspects recanted. They argued that their statements were coerced by police and that their rights to counsel and Miranda warnings had been violated.

Media coverage

At a time of concern about crime in general in the city, which was suffering high rates of assaults, rapes, and homicides, these attacks provoked great outrage, particularly the brutal rape of the female jogger. It took place in the public park that is "mythologized as the city's verdant, democratic refuge".

Normal police procedures stipulated that the names of criminal suspects under the age of 16 were to be withheld from the media and the public. But this policy was ignored when the names of the arrested juveniles were released to the press before any of them had been formally arraigned or indicted. Reverend Calvin O. Butts of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, who came to support the five suspects, said to The New York Times, "The first thing you do in the United States of America when a white woman is raped is round up a bunch of black youths, and I think that's what happened here." The Open Line hosts on WRKS were credited with helping continue to cover the case until the convicted youths were cleared in 2002 of the crime.

Donald Trump advertisement

thumb|The full-page advertisement was taken out by Donald Trump in the May 1, 1989, issue of the [[New York Daily News|Daily News.]]

About ten days after the boys started to confess, real estate magnate Donald Trump called on May 1, 1989, for the return of the death penalty for murder in full-page advertisements published in all four of the city's major newspapers. Trump said he wanted the "criminals of every age to be afraid". The advertisement, which cost an estimated ,

The New York Times has pointed out that, "The ad does not name any defendant, instead referring collectively to ‘roving bands of wild criminals. As to the particular defendants in this case, Trump said in 2002 that he greatly respected District Attorney Morgenthau, and was "sure the right answer will come out." However, in 2016, Trump said, "They admitted they were guilty….The fact that that case was settled with so much evidence against them is outrageous." CNN assesses that, "Trump obviously still believes that the Central Park 5 are guilty, so it cannot be said he is lying or even misleading", though his opinion is contrary to the financial settlement in 2014.

According to a contemporaneous article in the New York Amsterdam News, the ad was "widely condemned", including by then-Mayor Koch. Colin Moore, one of the attorneys defending one of the Central Park defendants, said that the ad "proved that anything is possible in America", and that "even a fool can become a multi-millionaire." According to defendant Yusef Salaam, quoted in a February 2016 article in The Guardian, Trump "was the fire starter" in 1989, as "common citizens were being manipulated and swayed into believing that we were guilty."