When I saw this news story, I felt just like the Ghostbusters in the scene above from”Ghostbusters II.” Few ethics train wrecks have been as controversial and as ugly as that set in motion by the rape and nearly fatal beating of the Central Park jogger, Trisha Meili, in New York City on April 19, 1989. You can refresh you memory (if you were around then) here. To briefly summarize, six young black and Hispanic men were identified in part by statements from the white victim, who had suffered brain damage and lost most of her blood. All were indicted, though one, Steven Lopez, pleaded guilty to a different assault to have the rape charges dropped. The others came known as The Central Park Five—Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise —-were convicted of rape and battery charges and served sentences ranging from seven to thirteen years. The way the case had been handled by police and prosecutors had long been criticized, as well as mood of public opinion and the news media, which demanded retribution with little concern for facts, fairness or due process. (Does this sound like any other recent sensational case of more recent vintage?)

Nobody doubted the Five’s guilt: they had all confessed under tough (as in illegal) police questioning, but later recanted. Donald Trump, then only a celebrity real estate mogul, paid for a full page newspaper ad demanding they they be convicted and executed. It read in part, “Mayor Koch has stated that hate and rancor should be removed from our hearts. I do not think so. I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer … Yes, Mayor Koch, I want to hate these murderers and I always will. … How can our great society tolerate the continued brutalization of its citizens by crazed misfits? Criminals must be told that their Civil Liberties End When an Attack On Our Safety Begins!”

After the Five were convicted by two juries, Joan Didion wrote, “So fixed were the emotions provoked by this case that the idea that there could have been, for even one juror, even a moment’s doubt in the state’s case … seemed, to many in the city, bewildering, almost unthinkable: the attack on the jogger had by then passed into narrative, and the narrative was … about what was wrong with the city and about its solution” Then more than a decade after the crime, a serial rapist named Matias Reyes, already locked up for attacking five other women in 1989, confessed to Meili’s rape and beating. He also said he acted alone. DNA evidence confirmed that he had indeed raped the jogger. No DNA was found at the scene that matched any of the six teens.

The Cemtral Park Five had served their sentences by the time Reyes confessed; the statute of limitations on rape and criminal assault had also run, so he faced no penalty for the crimes he confessed to committing. All of the convictions were vacated, and the Five’s records were expunged. The night when the jogger was attacked also saw many other attacks in Central Park; teens and gangs were “wilding,” running amuck and beating and robbing innocent citizens for fun. Police believed that if the Five were not guilty of raping Meili, they were almost certainly guilty of participating, watching, or otherwise facilitating that or other attacks that night. However, they were not convicted for those crimes, if indeed they committed them. The Five also were awarded substantial damages for their imprisonment, as they should have been. Whatever it was, the amount wasn’t enough: it never is.

Fast forward, please, to Election Day, November, 2023. Yusef Salaam, who was one of the Five, was elected to represent Harlem on the New York City Council. Following his release from prison and Reyes’s confession, the Muslim married, had ten children (!), became an inspirational speaker and a social justice activist, and served on the board of the Innocence Project. President Obama awarded him a controversial Lifetime Achievement Award, though to be fair, Salaam deserved it more than Obama deserved his Nobel Peace Prize. In Trump Deranged New York City, Salaam’s recalling in his campaign speeches how the Once and Future President had called for his execution was a sure winner: the other candidates didn’t have a chance.

I almost posted this as an Ethics Quiz: Is it responsible to vote for a convicted rapist for the City Counsel? I decided the quiz was too easy. First, Salaam was 16 when the alleged crime took place; it was an unethical and illegal prosecution and an unfair trial, and in the eyes of the law, he was innocent. In the intervening years, he has been a productive, law abiding member of society. There is no ethical calculation that would disqualify Salaam from elected office, unlike, as he gleefully pointed out on the stump, Donald Trump.

But the far right media is flipping out over Salaam’s election even more hysterically than the mainstream media reacted to the poll showing Biden losing to Trump in 2024. Here are two examples from two conservative websites I will be sure never to trust in the future (I have not trusted them in the past, either):

Moonbattery: “…Among those convicted of the horrific crime was a thug named Yusef Salaam. Alarmingly, the conviction was vacated on dubious grounds. Despite having confessed along with the rest of the Central Park 5, the evidently guilty Salaam was not only unleashed on the public but handed a massive settlement… of the wealth people like Trisha Meili work to create. Because Meili is white and her attackers sacred BIPOCs, liberals deified the wolf pack…”

Nice. And really, really stupid. Any conviction would be vacated on the grounds the Five’s were. and “evidently” guilty isn’t the standard of guilt in our justice system. As I already mentioned, a “massive settlement” is the least society can do when it sends someone for someone else’s crime because juries and prosecutors join the media and the public in a virtual lynch mob.

Naturally, all the commenters who read this garbage nodded their heads like those plastics dogs in the rear windows of cars in the Seventies.

Now here’s Zero Hedge (under the indefensible headline, “Central Park Jogger Attacker Elected New York City Councilman”: “If you told a New Yorker 30 years ago that one of the five convicted rapists of the Central Park Jogger would be elected to the New York City Council, he would have thought you were insane. Today, the New York Times and other media claim that Yusef Salaam was “exonerated”, but this is false. His conviction, and those of his four other co-defendants, were “vacated” for political reasons, but all five were guilty as sin…”

Once again, that “proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt” concept escapes a writer who should know better, and if he doesn’t know better, he shouldn’t be writing about criminal cases. The Five were in fact exonerated, which means “to absolve someone from blame for a fault or wrongdoing, especially after due consideration of the case.” Salaam cannot be blamed, ethically or legally, for a crime that he cannot be proved to have committed, and that another individual is guilty of committing based on his own account and DNA evidence.

This is the political right’s version of “Facts Don’t Matter.”