Yusef Salaam: How to reform the US criminal justice system
The Interview
BBC
4.3 • 537 Ratings
🗓️ 28 September 2020
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Yusef Salaam was just 16 when he and four other black and Latino teenagers were wrongly convicted of the rape and assault of a woman jogging in New York’s Central Park. Even before their trial the then property tycoon Donald Trump took out newspaper ads calling for the death penalty. The five served out their sentences before being exonerated when another man admitted to the crime. Yusef Salaam says their case is the story of the criminal system of injustice in America. But as anti-racism protests continue, and fears of worse unrest to come, is the chance of real change even more remote than in the America of his youth?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service. I'm Sarah Montague. In 1989, five African-American |
| 0:07.0 | and Latino teenagers were accused of attacking and raping a woman jogging in New York's Central Park. |
| 0:13.2 | The case became notorious, with the then-property-ticoon Donald Trump taking out ads in four |
| 0:18.9 | newspapers saying, bring back the death penalty, even before their trial was held. |
| 0:24.5 | All five were convicted and served years in prison before being exonerated when another man admitted to the crime. |
| 0:32.3 | One of the five was Yusuf Salam. When he was in jail, he resolved to emerge better, not bitter, and he's now a poet and |
| 0:39.9 | activist for reforming the prison and justice systems. But as anti-racism protests continue over the |
| 0:47.0 | police shootings of African Americans and fears of more unrest to come, is meaningful change |
| 0:53.0 | even more distant now than in the America of his |
| 0:56.1 | youth. Yusuf Salam joins me now. Welcome to Hard Talk. Take us back and tell us what happened on the |
| 1:03.4 | night of the 19th of April in 1989. What happened was young people hanging out in the park, a park that they looked at as their backyard. |
| 1:14.0 | And all of a sudden, we fast forward to the evening, further in the evening, and then the next day, and we were accused of raping a white woman in Central Park, a rape that had not been seen by any one of us. |
| 1:26.9 | And we were vilified from the beginning because we were looked at as criminals because |
| 1:31.7 | of the color of our skin and not the content of our character. |
| 1:34.7 | It quickly made a case against us and said that we were the ones who did this. |
| 1:39.4 | And as you can imagine, we were horrified as we began to be run over by the spike rules of justice. And then as we |
| 1:45.9 | look into the future, 13 years go by. And then the truth comes out. And the truth shatters everything that |
| 1:51.5 | the system had made the people believe. Okay. Well, let's talk through that night, though, because, I mean, |
| 1:57.5 | it was an extraordinary night with the number of attacks in Central Park. |
| 2:02.5 | And you were what, I think, with a group of your friends in the park that night. |
| 2:07.4 | Actually, the only person that I knew in the group was Corey Wise. |
| 2:12.6 | And we all went into the park thinking that we were just going to be hanging out, |
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