https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3F9n_smGWY
Netflix has dropped a trailer for their highly-anticipated limited series When They See Us, based on the infamous Central Park Five case.
The project comes from Ava DuVernay and follows the assault and rape of Trisha Meili, a white female jogger, and attacks on others in Manhattan’s Central Park on the night of April 19, 1989. The attack on the jogger left her in a coma for 12 days. The series will focus mostly on The Central Park Five, five juvenile males—four African American and one Hispanic—who were apprehended in connection with a number of attacks in Central Park committed by around 30 teenage perpetrators. The defendants were tried variously for assault, robbery, riot, rape, sexual abuse, and attempted murder relating to Meili’s and other attacks in the park, based solely on confessions that they said were coerced and false. Before the trial, the FBI tested the DNA of the rape kit and found it did not match to any of the tested suspects. Despite this, they were convicted in 1990 by juries in two separate trials. Subsequently, known as the Central Park Five, they received sentences ranging from 5 to 15 years. Four of the convictions were appealed and the convictions were affirmed by appellate courts. The defendants spent between 6 and 13 years in prison.
In 2002, Matias Reyes, a convicted murderer and serial rapist in prison, confessed to raping the jogger, and DNA evidence confirmed his guilt. He knew facts about the crime that only the offender could have known, and also said he committed the rape alone. At the time of his confession, Reyes was already serving a life sentence. He was not prosecuted for raping Meili, because the statute of limitations had passed by the time he confessed. Morgenthau suggested to the court that the five men’s convictions related to the assault and rape of Meili and to attacks on others to which they had confessed be vacated (a legal position in which the parties are treated as though no trial has taken place) and withdrew the charges. Their convictions were vacated in 2002. The five convicted men sued New York City in 2003 for malicious prosecution, racial discrimination, and emotional distress. The city refused to settle the suits for a decade under then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg because the city’s lawyers felt they would win. However, after Bill de Blasio became mayor and supported the settlement, the city settled the case for $41 million in 2014. As of December 2014, the five men were pursuing an additional $52 million in damages from New York State.
The limited series stars Freddy Miyares, Caleel Harris, Marquis Rodriguez, Asante Blackk, Jharrel Jerome, Storm Reid, Michael Kenneth Williams, Vera Farmiga, John Leguizamo, Niecy Nash, Blair Underwood, Christopher Jackson, Joshua Jackson, Queen Sugar‘s Omar J. Dorsey, and Famke Janssen.
Also featured in the 4-part limited series is Felicity Huffman, who is involved in her own legal case in real life due to her participation in the college bribery scheme. Maybe her apologetic nature and plea of guilty has helped her case a bit because she’s still featured in the trailer and there are no talks of cutting any of her scenes from the project. Huffman plays Linda Fairstein, the prosecutor who headed the Manhattan district attorney’s sex crimes office during the case that finally ended in 2014.
When They See Us hits Netflix Streaming on May 31
