DOCNYC Fest: Stories of false confessions in 'Central Park Five'

If there's anything the DOC NYC Festival drives home, it's how easy--and utterly damning--it can be to make a false confession. This year's selection, Central Park Five, talks about the famous Central Park Jogger case. In 1989, five black and Latino teens, all of whom confessed in some manner, were implicated in the rape and near-murder of a white investment banker. Thirteen years
later, the real rapist, who was imprisoned with one of the convicted, confessed after seeing how much the innocent man was suffering. Last year at the DOC NYC Fest, the documentary Scenes of a Crime followed a similar case. A black man was interrogated for ten hours before confessing that he shook his own baby to death. In reality, the baby probably died of sepsis--while he was being held by the police. As of two days ago, the Adrian Thomas case has hope. The documentary's website reports that New York's Court of Appeals will hear the case, which is extremely rare. "The Court’s eventual decision may affect more than Adrian Thomas: it could make precedent on police interrogation tactics, voluntariness of confessions and the use of courtroom experts on questions of false confession," they note. Years after the Central Park Five case, innocent people are still succumbing to police pressure and making false confessions, something that may change if the Thomas case wins its appeal.

Central Park Five, which was directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon, does not have the usual Ken Burns style--no pans or zooms on still images. However, it does have the patience characteristic of his movies. After opening with the confession of the real rapist, to leave no doubt in the viewers' minds, the directors spend several minutes laying out the atmosphere in New York City at the time: High crime, pockets of extremely impoverished areas, and a decaying, trash-ridden city. The case was a "proxy" for everything else going on in the city. The fact that black teens were being implicated for the rape of a white woman vaulted the case into the headlines, when other brutal rapes without perpetrators of different races were relegated to the back pages.

The Central Park Five were interrogated all night. The men explain they confessed because they were tired, scared, and they were told they could go home if only they could admit they were present at the woman's rape--with the implication being that they were just there, but they didn't do anything. Although parents were often absent at the initial confessions, they were present for their videotaped confessions. How could that be?  Many teens were arrested that night, since over two dozen went "wilding," participating in mischief that included throwing rocks and beating up joggers and homeless people. I wish the filmmakers had interviewed the other teens the police interviewed who were not persuaded to make a false confession. How were they able to see through the police's tactics? Perhaps including those stories would have made the viewers more likely to blame the teens for a mistake that cost them years of their lives, but it would have also illuminated the social psychology aspect of false confessions. Central Park Five is a stomach-knotting look at how false confessions and social prejudices locked up five innocent boys. I hope this movie can be used as instruction for those who are least likely to know their rights when arrested. For the adult fans of Ken Burns docs and indies who are most likely to see this doc, the story may serve as a different warning: that of caution and contemplation in the face of sordid headlines that confirm prejudices.

After the DOC NYC Fest, Central Park Five will open in New York City on November 23.

DOC NYC brings 'Into the Abyss,' 'Scenes of a Crime'

By Sarah Sluis

Now in its second year, DOC NYC combines a curated selection of documentaries, many making the festival rounds, with panels geared toward those in the entertainment industry. Last year's selections included Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Errol Morris' spectacularly funny and bizarre Tabloid.

This year's selections at DOC NYC also promise to showcase movers-and-shakers. In advance of DOC NYC's Nov. 2-10 festival, I took a look at two documentaries focusing on the (in)justice system: Werner Herzog's Into the Abyss and Scenes of a Crime.

After seeing countless documentaries and TV shows about innocent people on death row, I expected Herzog's Into the Abyss to choose an seemingly innocent, death row-bound inmate to profile. No. Herzog believes that Michael James Perry, scheduled to die for a triple homicide, is guilty. He just doesn't believe that execution is an appropriate punishment. In typical Herzog fashion, he opens wide the case and its consequences without pushing too hard in one direction. When it comes to poetic metaphors, however, he occasionally veers too far, as when he lingers on a landfill swarming with flocks of grub-seeking birds. Herzog interviews a woman who lost her brother and mother to the killings, and Perry's accomplice, Jason Burkett, who was also found guilty of homicide but sentenced to life in prison. Herzog also interviews the woman who married Burkett after he was sent to prison and is pregnant with his child.

Herzog, a native of Germany, has an outsider's eye. He picks parts of Texas' decay that American eyes have been trained to ignore. Never has a truck stop or trailer home been imbued with such desolate meaning. The triple homicide itself showed a shocking disregard for life: Three people died so a couple of boys could joyride for 72 hours in a red Camaro. Perry and Burkett seemed to commit the crime for bragging rights, but one of them grew up in such extreme poverty, it made me wonder. For him, was stealing a red Camaro the equivalent of someone else's million-dollar heist, each offering the opportunity of unimaginable wealth?

Scenes of a Crime mines the territory of Morris' classic The Thin Blue Line, laying out a miscarriage of justice, minus the reenactments. The film's primary focus is the twelve-hour, videotaped interrogation of a father of six, who police officers believe harmed his baby and led to his death. After so many hours of interrogation, the man confesses, using the exact scenario suggested by police. His defense attorneys call it a coerced confession, but it is incredibly hard to persuade a jury that someone could falsely confess to a crime. The footage is excruciating to watch, and the filmmakers focus far too much screen time to the repetitive, painful questions. There must have been a more effective way to make the viewers feel as if they were undergoing an interrogation themselves. When they repeat the footage later on in the documentary, it feels more redundant rather than imbued with new meaning.

One bright spot is the filmmakers' choice to intercut the interrogation with a police training video laying out the Reid technique. After watching the step-by-step process, I realized I'd seen this many times on reality cop shows (like "The First 48"). Something about seeing psychological manipulation laid out so plainly had a chilling effect. Let's put it this way: If I were one of those sympathetic drug lords in "The Wire," I would make my underlings watch the video so they could figure out how to beat this technique.

By focusing so much on the footage of the interrogation, the documentary takes awhile to get to the heart of the matter. After reading a lengthy piece about medical professionals misdiagnosing shaken baby syndrome recently, I assumed that this would be the crux of the case. Instead, it becomes clear that the baby died of sepsis--though jurors did not agree and found him guilty. It's a shock to find out that this poor man is serving twenty-five years to life, and I hope the man successfully appeals his case. Though the filmmakers never bring it up, racism and discrimination undoubtedly played a part. Why else would a doctor shout out, "They murdered their baby!" when it was only one of three options on the differential diagnosis? Or a juror state that she was a human resources manager and she just thought the man was lazy, and she didn't like him? Stereotypes about black male fathers may have been the tipping point that led multiple people to assume the man was guilty, not innocent until proven guilty.

DOC NYC has much more in store, so check back for additional coverage of the documentary festival.