Korey Wise

On Dec. 19, 2002, Korey Wise — a member of the Exonerated Five — had his conviction overturned in New York after wrongly serving 11.5 years for a rape he did not commit in Central Park in 1989.

Mr. Wise, along with Yusef Salaam, Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, and Raymond Santana, was wrongly convicted in 1990 based on false confessions and the misapplication of forensic science. At the time of their arrest, they were between 14 and 16 years old. In 2002, the actual attacker, who had already been serving a sentence for a series of rapes, murder, and robbery, confessed that he alone had committed the 1989 rape. DNA testing was then conducted on the crime scene evidence and corroborated the attacker’s confession.

Twenty years after Mr. Wise’s exoneration, the entrance to Central Park where he and the other members of the Exonerated Five had entered on the night of the attack was renamed the Gate of the Exonerated in their honor.