Central Park Five, the PBS-made TV-film about the wrongful conviction of five boys accused of raping a jogger in Central Park, will be aired on the network tonight (April 16) some 24 years since the event took place. Tonight's premiere comes three days before the actual anniversary of the grave event, an event that the film's co-creators Sarah and Ken Burns believe still hold relevance today following the miscarriage of justice that happened at the ensuing court case.


The trailer for Central Park Five.

The 1989 conviction, that was overturned due to lack of evidence in 2003 after each of the boys had already served prison terms, has been dramatised by Sarah and Ken Burns and David McMahon as a means to argue that we now need to readily acknowledge that the five men convicted of the heinous crime are all innocent. Sarah actually penned a thesis on the case a decade ago when she was studying at Yale, eventually expanding her work into a book that became the basis for The Central Park Five. Speaking before the premiere of the PBS special tonight, Sarah described the TV-movie by saying, “The film is about how this miscarriage of justice could have occurred.”

All five defendants from the 1989 case appear in the film, with Burns, Burns and McMahon having to earn the trust of Antron McCray, Raymond Santana Jr., Kharey Wise, Yusef Salaam and Kevin Richardson before filming began, given the almost constant torrent of abuse they have been subjected to by the media since 1989. When the crime was first reported about the defendants were routinely labeled a 'wolf pack,'or worse, and Donald Trump even took out newspaper ads across New York calling for restoration of the death penalty to handle with the case. With the airing of this programme tonight, the five will hope that some of the stigma that has followed them for so long will start to wash away. Central Park Five airs tonight on PBS at 9 pm ET.

Central Park Five 
Raymond Santana, Ken Burns, Yusek Salam, Korey Wise, Sarah Burns and David McMahon at a special screening of the docu-movie last year