When they see us is a Netflix mini-series released in 2019 which reverses the wrongful conviction of five teenagers. It traces one of the biggest miscarriage of justice in the United States.
This Series has known a lot of success but also a lot of dissatisfaction.

At the end of the 80’s, on April 19th 1989, in the heart of Central Park, a young woman was found half-conscious after being raped and beaten. Trisha Meili, 28, an employee of an investment bank was jogging when she is assaulted. Ed Koch, the mayor of New York at the time, even called it the “crime of the century”.That same night, the police received calls alerting them that a group of thirty to forty teenagers terrorized passers in Central Park. Two young boys were arrested, Kevin Richardson and Raymond Santana, who said they had only witnessed the violence. Then, when Trisha Meilli’s body was discovered, the police arrested three other teenagers in Harlem: Yusef Salaam, Korey Wise and Antron McCray. Subjected to almost 30 hours of interrogations, the boys with the exception of Yusef Salaam, ended up confessing their guilt in recordings. However, the police could not find any piece of evidence to support these statements, and the suspects, aged 14 to 16, had a clean criminal record. In 2002, when some of the teenagers had already served their sentence, the real guilty, Matias Reyes, revealed that he was the only one guilty of the crime. The “Central Park Five” were cleared and took the city of New York to court, for malicious prosecution and racial discrimination, they eventually received a compansation of 40 million dollars.

This mini series is very interseting because it is based on true events. It shows how terrible this miscarriage of justice was and how it ruined lives of young people, and how it’s hard to get up after that even if their were innocent all along. This story also reminds us that racism in the USA was very strong in the 80’s and how Black People were treated by the authorities.