Thread by @davidhth

The interview Michael Smerconish did Saturday of a police officer involved in the Central Park jogger case was irresponsible. The officer made unsubstantiated claims to make it appear that the men exonerated in the #CentralParkFive case are guilty. 1/

@smerconish interviewed Eric Reynolds, a former police officer who at age 29 arrested two of the defendants in 1989. Smerconish asked Reynolds about depictions in #WhenTheySeeUs of police coercing the teenage boys to confess. Reynolds said: “That’s ridiculous.” 2/

Reynolds said they "knew" the boys were involved in the rape after police asked Kevin Richardson how he got scratched. "He then admitted that the female jogger scratched his face. That’s the first we realized that they were involved in the attack” of the jogger. 3/

Smerconish treated this as evidence that police couldn't have fed Richardson answers. He asked if police had earlier brought up the jogger to Richardson. Reynolds said no. 4/

The problem is Reynolds had no way of knowing what police told Richardson and vice versa. He testified at a pretrial hearing that he wasn’t present at any of the interviews of the five boys. He didn’t even know who interviewed Richardson. /5

Smerconish knew that Reynolds was not at the interviews but waited until the end to raise that point. Smerconish asked Reynolds how he could know what happened if he wasn’t there. 6/

“First of all, you can hear everything that’s going on," Reynolds said. "It’s not as though the rooms are soundproof.” Smerconish did not challenge this. 7/

However, Reynolds testified at a pretrial hearing that he actually couldn't hear sounds from the room where Richardson was interviewed. 8/
bit.ly/2ILYQVg

Reynolds argued the boys’ videotaped statements proved there was no coercion. He noted that none of their mug shots showed any bruises. Smerconish flashed up those mug shots. None of the boys said their coercion happened on video and only one said he’d been slapped. 9/

The Manhattan’s district attorney’s office said the boys may have lied about having minor roles in the rape so they might be treated as witnesses rather than suspects. This is discussed at length in an earlier thread. 10/

https://twitter.com/davidhth/status/1138441111339446278

The men were exonerated in 2002 when serial rapist Matias Reyes confessed to attacking the Central Park jogger alone. His DNA alone was found on the victim. The district attorney who prosecuted the five boys dismissed charges against them. 11/

But Reynolds still believes they're guilty. He flatly asserted that Reyes confessed to acting alone because he was threatened. He said while they were in prison together, Korey Wise “had people threatening Reyes and telling him that he better say that he did it by himself.” 12/

In truth, neither Wise nor anyone else placed Reyes at the crime scene. The DA said an exhaustive investigation never found any evidence that the five boys knew Reyes. 13/

The theory that Reyes was threatened into confessing being the lone rapist was tossed around in a New York Police Commissioner’s investigation in 2003. It was the police investigating the police. But as the panel’s report admits, there was no proof. 14/
big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/Armstrong.pdf

The panel acknowledged, “Such scraps of information, some of them of highly dubious reliability, certainly do not add up to proof that Reyes was motivated in coming forward by fear of threats. However, the possibility cannot be discounted…” 15/

After being hammered on Twitter, Smerconish said he’s been doing his own research into the case since @ava DuVernay’s series came out. “I don’t have it figured out. But I’m eager to learn more.” 16/

A modest amount of research would have exposed serious problems in Eric Reynolds's account on @CNN. 17/