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Two more teen-agers to be tried in attack on jogger

 
Published Oct. 22, 1990|Updated Oct. 18, 2005

The second trial in the case of the Central Park jogger opens today with the defense claiming that incriminating statements at the heart of the prosecution's case were coerced from mentally deficient boys. But the prosecution will contend that the two teen-age defendants voluntarily and knowingly made the admissions.

The two defendants on trial this time are Kharey Wise, 18, and Kevin Richardson, 16.

They were among six teens who were charged with attempted murder and gang rape in the highly publicized attack on a female jogger in Central Park on April 19, 1989. They also are charged in attacks on two men that night.

The first trial ended with the August conviction of three teens for rape, first-degree assault, robbery and riot. Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana and Antron McCray, all 16, received 5-to-10-year sentences, the maximum for juvenile offenders.

The victim, now 30, suffered brain damage and testified at the trial of the first three defendants that she has no memory of the attack.

Like the first trial, the second will feature written and videotaped statements made by the youths after their arrests.

In his statements to police, Richardson denied he attacked the female jogger.

Wise made two videotapes. In the first he said only that he was with a marauding gang of about 30 youths. In the second, which he asked to make, he told of his participation in the attack.

Wise's attorney, Colin Moore, was rebuffed Friday when he asked a judge to allow expert testimony that his client is not intelligent enough to have knowingly and meaningfully waived his Miranda rights against self-incrimination.

Richardson's lawyer, Howard Diller, has said similar things about his client. At the teen-ager's arraignment, Diller told the judge that Richardson "is not what you and I would call "all there.' "