Is Netflix Miniseries About "Central Park Five" Case Accurate?
SMERCONISH: One of the most talked about television shows right now is the "Netflix" four-part series "When They See Us." It tells the story of the so called "Central Park Five," the five New York City youths ages 14 to 16 who were convicted of rape after an April 19, 1989 attack in Central Park. Their convictions were all vacated after a serial rapist named Matias Reyes confessed in 2002 to the rape of the Central Park jogger and said he acted alone. The five are all black or Hispanic. The 29 year old victim was white. The crime was a national sensation, further dramatized when Donald Trump, then a well-known real estate developer in New York, paid for a full-page ad in multiple newspapers including "The New York Times" advocating the return of the death penalty. In 2014, the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio settled a lawsuit brought by the five for $41 million, but the city admitted no wrongdoing on the part of the investigators. In the sympathetic "Netflix" telling directed by Ava Duvernay, each of the five is shown confessing only after being coerced by overzealous cops and prosecutors. Singled out for particular scorn is Linda Fairstein, then a supervisor of the prosecution team. Fairstein wrote in "The Wall Street Journal" this week that the "Netflix" series is, quote, "so full of distortions and falsehoods as to be an outright fabrication. Last week, Fairstein, who has a second career as a best-selling author of crime fiction, resigned her position as a board member at Vassar College, her alma mater. And this week Elizabeth Lederer, the trial prosecutor of the five, resigned from a teaching role at the Columbia Law School amid protests from the Black Law Students Association. In an interview that aired Wednesday night with both the five and the actors who play them in TV -- in the TV series, Oprah implored everybody to now refer to them as The Exonerated Five, not the Central Park Five, but is it that simple? Joining me now is Eric Reynolds, a former New York City police officer who, on the night of the attack, arrested two of the five. Eric, thanks for being here. You watched the "Netflix" series and you thought what?</s>ERIC REYNOLDS, FORMER NYPD OFFICER/ MADE ARRESTS IN CENTRAL PARK FIVE CASE: Well, thank you for having me, Michael. I watched the "Netflix" series and I was shocked, OK? I actually laughed out loud when I saw Felicity Huffman playing Linda Fairstein implore the police to go out and round up allblack men in Harlem I thought that was absolutely preposterous. It never happened. Linda Fairstein was never even in the precinct that day when the investigation was started, first of all. Second of all, the district attorney does not give orders to the police department. They do not direct our investigation. Our investigation was well under way once Linda Fairstein arrived at the Central Park precinct.</s>SMERCONISH: Someone who knows only of this case what they watched in that four-part series would come away thinking that the admissions, the videotaped admissions were all coerced. That this was all the result of cops who were acting in a nefarious way to railroad those five individuals. As one of the police officers who made critical arrests in this case, you would respond how?</s>REYNOLDS: That's ridiculous. All you need to do is look at the videos. Watch the videos. Look at each one of the defendants. See if they're being coerced. See if they're sleep deprived. You'll see their parents are in every single video. You'll see in every single video their rights are being read to them. It's a blatant lie. It's unfortunate. This is the first time that police misconduct has been recorded on videotape and the people who alleged to have been, you know, their rights violated by the police didn't want it seen. They fought for the longest time to keep those videos under wraps. I would implore everybody, look at the videos. Watch them from beginning to end, and then make a judgment.</s>SMERCONISH: I know -- I know from doing a lengthy interview with you on my radio program that you were in the park that night. That you participated in apprehending a number of the guys who it was their word, correct me if I'm wrong, were wilding.</s>REYNOLDS: Yes.</s>SMERCONISH: But you initially didn't associate them with the violent attack on the jogger. What was the moment that caused you to say, I think there is a connection?</s>REYNOLDS: Well, it wasn't that I think that there's a connection, we knew there was a connection. We had arrested five. Two of which were part of the Central Park Five. Raymond Santana and Kevin Richardson. We were going to release them -- we were releasing them to their parents. We did not believe that they had anything to do with the attack on the jogger, OK? But we were interviewing them, before we released them so that, in just in the event that they saw what happened, we might be able to get that information. I released two of them. We got to Kevin Richardson. Kevin Richardson had a scratch on his face. When we asked him how he got the scratch, he first lied and said that my partner did it. When confronted with the fact that we were going to ask my partner. He then admitted that the female jogger scratched his face. That's the first we realized that they were involved on the attack on Patricia (ph) Meili. That's when --</s>SMERCONISH: Had you had any conversation with him up -- had you had any conversation with him up until that moment where there was any reference to the jogger?</s>REYNOLDS: No. No -- well, there was --</s>SMERCONISH: Go ahead, finish.</s>REYNOLDS: There was one reference by Raymond Santana. My partner had asked them, you know, why were you out in the park -- why would you be out in the park beating people up? You should be with your girlfriends. Raymond Santana looked to Steven Lopez and laughingly said, well, I already got mine. I didn't realize what it meant at the time because the jogger had not been found at that point.</s>SMERCONISH: Why would Matias Reyes have confessed to doing it and doing it alone if that were not the case?</s>REYNOLDS: Because Matias Reyes was in a segregated part of the prison. He was with rapists and child molesters. He had gotten kicked out because of his, you know, because he had committed several violations in there. Now he was out in general population and vulnerable to attack. And Korey Wise knew this. He had people threatening Reyes and telling him that he had better say that he did it by himself. And it really didn't matter at that point because the statutes of limitations were up. He had no -- there was no legal jeopardy for him to say that he had done it. In fact, what happened was, as a psychopath, and I got this from his psychologist, this worked in his favor. He was able to get attention as a result of coming forward to say that he did it by himself. He was looked at as a hero almost in a perverse way.</s>SMERCONISH: Well, why was his -- why, Eric, was only his DNA found in the jogger?</s>REYNOLDS: His DNA only was found in the jogger because -- well, first of all, if you look at the videos, every one of the kids said the same thing. They were not able to perform sexually on the jogger, and they pretended to have sex with them because they did not want to look like a punk in front of the rest. And if you think about it, you have a bunch of 13 and 14 year olds in the middle of Central Park in the middle of the night, beating the life out of this woman that they don't know. And under those circumstances would they be able to perform sexually? No. Who could perform sexually? The guy who raped his mother. The guy who was a serial rapist. The guy who raped, tortured and killed a pregnant woman in front of her two children. That's the guy who is able to have sex and to complete the act in the middle of Central Park in front of everybody.</s>SMERCONISH: Let me return to a final question. The subject of whether those admissions captured on videotape were coerced. You weren't in those rooms, correct? So how could you know?</s>REYNOLDS: How can I know they weren't coerced?</s>SMERCONISH: Yes.</s>REYNOLDS: Well, first of all, you can hear everything that's going on, OK? It's not as though the rooms are soundproof, number one. Number two, if you look at the pictures, if you watch the Netflix series, you'll see how each kid is getting slapped around. They're getting beaten up. At one point, the cop hits a kid in the face with a helmet several times. Now, every news organization in the nation was at the precincts when they were being brought out. If you look at those pictures, not one of them has a scratch on them. None of them. You can see all five of them there --</s>SMERCONISH: Well, I'm showing them the mug shots -- I'm showing the five mug shots right now to make the point that I think you're offering.</s>REYNOLDS: Yes.</s>SMERCONISH: Eric Reynolds, thank you for being here. It's a complicated case and certainly not as clear as the television adaptation. That's what I would say.</s>REYNOLDS: You're correct. You're 100 percent correct.</s>SMERCONISH: Let's check in on your tweets and your Facebook comments. What do we have, Katherine (ph)? From Twitter. Smerconish when it comes to white cops and black suspects from the era of the Central Park Five. I don't trust anything from the cops. It hasn't changed much either. Madelyn, I have an observation for you. Did you see my guest? He was a black kid from the Bronx and a police officer. So I think the way in which this has been presented along racial lines is not accurate. Still to come in Iowa last week, presidential hopeful Tim Ryan hit the stage to modern song "Old Town Road" by Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus. Was that hip or pandering? How candidates are trying to find just the right tune.