There were five of them, not even men yet, accused of a violent rape. They were prosecuted aggressively by district attorneys and vilified by a tabloid press, then sent to prison for as many as 13 years.

In 1989, the case of the Central Park Five, as the attack on a 28-year-old white investment banker in uptown Manhattan has come to be known, roiled the country, touching on race and class and fears about crime.

But the defendants -- all black or Latino, none older than 16 -- didn't commit the attack on the Central Park jogger. They were the victims of coerced confessions and authorities eager for scapegoats.

Then in 2002, after the five had all spent years in jail, a previously unknown man admitted to beating and sexually assaulting the woman. All five of the convictions were vacated.

An explosive new documentary looks at a case once referred to as "the crime of the century": the Central Park Five. Many people have heard about the case, but far too few know that innocent teenagers were imprisoned as a result. The film tells the story of how five black and Latino teenagers were arrested in 1989 for beating and raping a white woman in New York City’s Central Park. Media coverage at the time portrayed the teens as guilty and used racially coded terms like "wolf pack" to refer to the group of boys accused in the attack.

Donald Trump took out full-page ads in four city newspapers calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty so they could be executed. However, the convictions of the five were vacated in 2002 when the real rapist came forward and confessed to the crime, after the five defendants had already served sentences of almost seven to 13 years.

New York City is refusing to settle a decade-long civil lawsuit brought by the men. And now lawyers for the city are seeking access to footage gathered for the new film.

Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! speaks to one of the Central Park Five, Raymond Santana; filmmaker Sarah Burns; and journalist Natalie Byfield.

Full transcript after the jump.

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Well, at least we know how Justice Antonin Scalia will be leaning as new cases arrive at the Supreme Court this year. He offered a glimpse into his decision-making process during an event at the American Enterprise Institute. RightWingWatch has an excellent run-down on AEI here.

Scalia calls himself a “textualist” and, as he related to a few hundred people who came to buy his new book and hear him speak, that means he applies the words in the Constitution as they were understood by the people who wrote and adopted them.

So Scalia parts company with colleagues who have come to believe capital punishment is unconstitutional.

“The death penalty? Give me a break. It’s easy. Abortion? Absolutely easy. Nobody ever thought the Constitution prevented restrictions on abortion. Homosexual sodomy? Come on. For 200 years, it was criminal in every state,” Scalia said at the American Enterprise Institute.

Scalia also took issue with justices who try to be true to the values of the Constitution as he applies them to a changing world. This imaginary justice goes home for dinner and tells his wife what a wonderful day he had, Scalia said.

This imaginary justice, Scalia continued, announces that it turns out “’the Constitution means exactly what I think it ought to mean.’ No kidding.”

According to the Washington Examiner, Scalia was asked by an audience member how he stays hopeful in the face of the Obama administration's "failure to leave lawmaking to Congress."

Scalia first responded, "Who says I'm hopeful?" before saying he soldiers on.

"I feel like I'm Frodo in 'Lord of the Rings,' " he said. "The evil eye will get us sooner or later, but it's worth the fight."

Personally, I think Scalia got into the wine for the wine and cheese reception before his speech. His remarks are bolder than his usual partisan, pompous rhertoric. And my aren't we lucky with this windbag on the bench that we're not still burning witches, or any number of "crimes" and their punishments that been vanquished from the books in our changing world.

Justice Scalia's reference to the Obama administration as "the evil eye" is an exclamation point on his career of allowing his right-wing leanings to influence his rulings, and there have been multiple calls for his impeachment. It's well past time we got it done, then he can go peddle his books and criticize anyone he wants, and leave outdated laws in the past where they belong.

Late addition: As noted by The General, at least Scalia may be more "moderate" than Mitt Romney.

Advocates for child victims of sexual abuse are calling on Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett to grant clemency to Terrance "Terry" Williams, who is scheduled to be executed on October 3. In 1986, Williams was convicted of killing Amos Norwood. What the jury in that case did not know is that Norwood had sexually abused Williams and had allegedly violently raped him the night before. Furthermore, Williams had suffered years of physical and sexual abuse by older males. Most recently, evidence has emerged that prosecutors tried to make robbery seem like the motive for the murder, even though Williams’ co-defendant knew about the sexual abuse. A hearing on this part of the case was set to take place Friday in Philadelphia. Now, as Williams’ execution is set to take place in less than a month, five of the jurors in his case have since come forward to say they believe life without parole would have been the appropriate sentence because they did not know all the facts.

A full transcript is available at DemocracyNow!

[Rap artists singing "Lock it Down for Liberty" and bring the Oakland style to San Quentin.]

As many as 700 occupy protesters gathered outside of San Quentin State Prison on Monday for a national day of action called "Occupy the Prisons."

Via:

The protest began at noon and protesters dispersed peacefully around 4 p.m.. A prison spokesman said San Quentin was on lockdown and that prisoners were being kept in their cells.

Organizer Barbara Becnel said the protesters were calling for a number of reforms, including the elimination of solitary confinement, the death penalty and California's "three strikes" law, and an end to the practice of trying some juveniles as adults.

The crowd included activists Sara Shourd, Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, who served time in an Iranian prison after being arrested by Iranian authorities while hiking along the Iraq border in July 2009.