How the Central Park 5 Case Looms Over the Tessa Majors Murder

Studies have identified scores of wrongful convictions in New York State — and several thousand across the country — but few have had the lasting cultural purchase of the Central Park Five case. “Central Park Five,” a 2012 documentary by Sarah Burns, David McMahon and Ken Burns, and this year’s Netflix docudrama, “When They See Us,” by Ava DuVernay, made the 1989 case a touchstone. The city and state have paid the five men a total of $45 million to settle a wrongful conviction lawsuit.

Still, many in the police department defend the police work in the Central Park case and do not necessarily see it as miscarriage of justice, according to William J. Bratton, who has twice served as the city’s police commissioner. Even so, he said, the department’s leadership cannot ignore the consequences of the case.

“Certainly, in the investigative steps, the department will be more cautious because of the attention that was paid to the Central Park Five — everything they do is under the microscope,” Mr. Bratton said.

In the three decades since the Central Park case, exonerations through DNA evidence have shown that some people, particularly vulnerable teenagers, confess to crimes they have not committed, and that racial bias is often at the root of wrongful convictions.

That awareness permeates the Majors investigation. “There’s enormous angst about the age of the kids,” said Mark Levine, whose City Council district covers the park.

The 13-year-old boy who was questioned in the Majors case told investigators he and two classmates tried to rob Ms. Majors on a staircase in Morningside Park, the police said. He said one of the boys, who is 14, stabbed Ms. Majors when she put up a fight.

Ms. Majors, a musician and aspiring journalist, had moved to New York in the summer from Charlottesville, Va., to begin her first year of college. A security guard found her at the top of the stairs after the stabbing.