In the wake of the 30th anniversary of the Central Park 5, Governor Larry Hogan has announced that he is instructing attorneys to make plans to compensate 5 men, Hubert James Williams, Lamar Johnson, Clarence Shipley Jr., Jerome Johnson, Walter Lomax, who were wrongly convicted of crimes ranging from armed robbery to murder, spending 120 years in total at state prisons.
Similar circumstances surround the 5 exonerated men from Baltimore, Maryland and the 5 young teens from New York known as the Central Park 5. On April 19th, 1989 a large group of teenagers were hanging out in Central Park, New York and some of them were wrongfully accused for assaulting a woman.
That same night, a woman who was out jogging was found beaten and raped in the park. The assault put her in a coma for 12 days and in the headlines, it took the name as the Central Park jogger case. Five black and hispanic teenagers between the ages of 14 and 16 who did not know each other prior to being arrested, were wrongfully found guilty and imprisoned. Their sentences ranged from 5 to 15 years.
The American prison population numbers about 2.4 million and according to the Innocence Project’s estimates, between 2.3% and 5% of those prisoners are innocent. Larry Hogan is pushing the five exonerated prisoners to get financial compensation for the trauma they suffered, like Jerome Johnson who was nearly stabbed to death by fellow inmates on two different occasions.
According to Hogan, Maryland's Board of Public Works, which is authorized to award money to the exonerees, does not have the expertise to decide the size and details of payments. The men are seeking about $12 million dollars for the years they served while the Central Park 5 were awarded $41 million in compensation. Millions of dollars seems like a tremendous amount but no amount of money could ever make up for the years of trauma they suffered and their struggle to get back into society after prison.
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