#10: The Central Park Five Convictions — 1990
Five Black and Latino teenagers, not seven, were wrongfully convicted in 1990 of attacking a jogger in Central Park. Police interrogations produced false confessions that conflicted with one another and with physical evidence. The teens served years in prison while newspapers and politicians treated guilt as settled. In 2002, Matias Reyes confessed, and DNA evidence confirmed his account. The vacated convictions exposed the dangers of coercive questioning, racial panic, and media certainty disguised as fact.
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