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Created: December 2, 2002
Latest Update: December 2, 2002
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu
The Trouble with Linear Interpretation of Evidence
Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, November 2002.
"Fair use" encouraged.
New Light on Jogger's Rape Calls Evidence Into Question By JIM DWYER and KEVIN FLYNN. New York Times. December 2, 2002. Backup for article on rape case in Central Park Jogger crumbles in face of new understandings Taken from page 2 of 6: " Advances in DNA testing have also contributed to a broader understanding that not all confessions can be believed, and that few, if any, false confessions are the products of police conspiracies; a more likely formula, academic research shows, is some combination of vulnerable suspects and the investigative zeal inspired by dreadful crimes. AdvertisementOne of the most intriguing new views of the case rises from the reconstruction of the sequence of events. By establishing that the teenagers were part of a crowd that was bothering or beating other people during the critical time of the rape, the reconstruction provides them with an alibi that is plausible, if not airtight, and certainly unsavory.
"That was the issue," said Peter Rivera, Mr. Santana's lawyer in 1990. "But we didn't say, `No, when the jogger was raped, my client was on 96th Street, mugging someone else.' That would have been self-defeating."
Be sure to c lick on the multimedia supplements on the first page of the article. They provide the timeline of the attacks and the contradictions in the testimony. Depending on the time we are able to get to this during the semester (this is the last week of the current semester - so we won't get to discuss this much), these pieces of evidence will play a major role in our discussions.