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Judge gives prosecutors more time in jogger case
From Ronni Berke
NEW YORK (CNN) -- A New York judge Monday gave prosecutors another six weeks to review evidence before he rules on a defense motion to set aside the convictions of five men in the 1989 Central Park jogger rape case. State Supreme Court Judge Charles Tejada told prosecutors they had until December 5 to complete their reinvestigation of the case -- spurred by the confession last January of another man who said he acted alone in the crime. Assistant Manhattan District Attorney Peter Casolaro asked for a postponement to give prosecutors time to investigate the claims of Matias Reyes, now serving 33 years to life in a state prison for raping and murdering another woman in 1989. Casolaro said the office of Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morganthau was investigating "everything we know about Mr. Reyes," even traveling out of state to interview potential witnesses in other crimes that Reyes said he had committed. Reyes told prosecutors that he acted alone in the jogger rape. Morganthau has acknowledged that a DNA analysis linked Reyes to that rape. Casolaro said prosecutors were checking Reyes' claim that he raped another woman in Central Park just two days before the jogger incident. The district attorney's office has not finished reviewing the more than 15,000 pages of documents in the case, Casolaro told the judge.
Defense attorney Michael Warren, attorney for three of the five youths convicted in the case, called on Tejada to set aside their convictions. He criticized prosecutors' claims that they needed more time to review files, which he said "they had for months and months." As for the prosecutors, "what they're engaged in is damage control," Warren said. The new evidence in the case has raised questions about how New York City police and prosecutors handled a case that shocked the city, and seemed resolved with videotaped confessions from four of the teenagers convicted. The defense claimed at the time their confessions were coerced. During the night of April 19, 1989, the jogger, a then-28-year-old investment banker, was found nearly dead in a muddy ravine in the park. Days later, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana and Kharey Wise confessed on videotape to the beating and rape. A fifth teen, Yusef Salaam, also made admissions, detectives said. Outside the courthouse, about 100 people held a peaceful but loud demonstration demanding justice in the case. "My son is suffering," said Saronne Salaam, mother of Yusef Salaam, one of the five youths convicted. She said her son longs for a normal life without the shadow of his past as a reported sex offender. Now 41, the victim is a mother of two who is writing a book about her life, which is scheduled to be published next January.
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