THE FILM

In 1989, five black and Latino teenagers from Harlem were arrested and later convicted of raping a white woman in New York City’s Central Park. The Central Park Five tells the story of that horrific crime, the rush to judgment by the police, a media clamoring for sensational stories and an outraged public, and the five lives upended by this miscarriage of justice.

In this spellbinding account of the real facts of the Central Park jogger case, Sarah Burns powerfully examines one of New York City’s most notorious crimes and its aftermath.
On April 20, 1989, the body of the “Central Park jogger” is discovered crumpled in a ravine in Central Park. She’s been raped and repeatedly beaten, her skull is so badly injured she’s lost fifteen pints of blood before two passersby happen upon her bleeding body. Seemingly the case is solved quickly. Within days five black and Latino teenagers are apprehended by the Central Park precinct, and all five confess to the crime.