Heather Ann Thompson

If the rule of law doesn't matter anymore, and if truth doesn't matter anymore, and if facts don't matter anymore, we are all in danger.

Well, if you were to look at the media at the time and you were just to read the newspaper reports, not just the tabloid media but even the mainstream media, you would see an account of these being dangerous thugs.

And animals and articles that recounted all of the criminal charges that these teens had mounted against them.

And I went back to the beginning and just started to unpack, first of all, who were they?

Where did they come from?

Daryl Kaby, for example, who ends up in public housing in the South Bronx because he is originally as a kid living in a house with his mom and dad and his brothers.

And his dad is hardworking, supporting the family.

And his dad is killed.

Someone steals his truck.

He tries to protect the truck.

He ends up killed.

He ends up, you know, it's a horrible incident of crime and violence that puts him in public housing in the first start.

That's just an example.

These are kids that had a very, very difficult time growing up.

And what they did was they were breaking into the video arcades.

They were jumping the turnstiles because they didn't have any money to ride the subway.

So they had actually accumulated a whole lot of misdemeanor citations.

And what was so incredible was once they get shot, they are in the ICUs.

They are having surgery.

They are in really, really bad shape.