NYC seeks footage for Central Park jogger lawsuit

NEW YORK (AP) — Lawyers for the city are seeking access to footage gathered by documentary filmmaker Ken Burns in research for his movie about the five men exonerated in the Central Park jogger rape case.

The city has issued a subpoena for the outtakes and other materials from the film "The Central Park Five," its Law Department confirmed Wednesday.

The request is connected to a $250 million federal lawsuit filed by the men against the city nine years ago, after their sentences were vacated. They were exonerated after a man already jailed for other crimes confessed to the attack, and DNA evidence supported his claim.

In April 1989, a 28-year-old investment banker was found in the park after being beaten and raped while jogging. She was in a coma for 12 days and was left with permanent damage. In 2003, Trisha Meili disclosed her identity and published her memoir.

At the time of their arrest, the five suspects, then teens, were held for more than 24 hours before they confessed. All later recanted, and they claim the confessions were coerced. City lawyer Celeste Koeleveld has said the city stands by the decisions made by the detectives and prosecutors in bringing the case against the five men.

For years, the city has refused requests by Burns and his team to interview officials about the case, said Burns, who has said he hopes the film will help push the city to settle the case.

Attorney John Siegal, who represents Burns and others who worked on the project, argued the city won't be able to prove the film and notes are necessary to its defense and unavailable elsewhere. The city must do so to get access to the material, he said.

Koeleveld says the city should receive access to the recordings.

"The plaintiffs' interviews go to the heart of the case and cannot be obtained elsewhere," Koeleveld said. "If the plaintiffs truly want an open airing of the facts, they should encourage the filmmakers not to hide anything."

View the original article here

Neil Young and Crazy Horse throttle Central Park crowd in free concert also featuring Foo Fighters, Black Keys

NEW YORK –  Neil Young and Crazy Horse did not disappoint, and neither did any of the big-name bands leading up to the rockers' thunderous performance in a packed Central Park.

Young, the Black Keys, the Foo Fighters, Band of Horses and K'Naan wowed the 60,000-plus fans who turned out Saturday night for a free concert in Central Park to call attention to extreme poverty.

Dubbed the Global Citizen Festival, the event was also streamed worldwide.

The Black Keys and Foo Fighters delivered raucous, loud, riff-heavy sets, and John Legend made a surprise appearance, playing "Imagine" at a piano on the Great Lawn stage, a short walk from where the song's author, John Lennon, once lived, and died.

But it was Young, with his on-again off-again band Crazy Horse, that brought the night's trancendent performance, starting with a 14-minute barrage of distortion and harmonies in the song "Love and Only Love" from the album "Ragged Glory," and ending with the Young anthem "Keep on Rockin in the Free World," backed by the night's previous performers, all wide-eyed and smiles as they performed with a true musical legend still at the height of his uncanny powers.

The concert was scheduled around the meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week and organizers used an innovative approach to ticket distribution so that many concert-goers were forced to learn about an array of global problems, such as polio, malaria, child mortality, and polluted drinking water, in order to get a ticket.

Anyone wanting free tickets had to register at globalcitizen.org, which then required users to watch videos or read information about poverty-related issues. Each time material was consumed, users could earn points toward a drawing for tickets. Points were also accumulated by sharing information by way of Twitter or Facebook.

"Our social media campaign has been off the charts," said Hugh Evans, CEO and co-founder of the Global Poverty Project. The approach demonstrates a new model for harnessing digital tools that may be repeated for other big events with political or social messages.

Organizers said more than 71,000 people had signed up online, resulting in more than 3.5 million page views. On average, they spent just over six minutes consuming content or sharing information. Nearly 200,000 pieces of information were shared on Facebook, and just a bit more than that on Twitter. About 170,000 people signed petitions via the site, and there were 98,000 videos viewed to completion.

Evans said the project achieved its goals, set out last year, of getting more than 100,000 people to take action related to extreme poverty while telling a new story about the challenges. To that end, the site conveys information in detailed, documentary-like accounts and uses an array of video, graphics and stories that are friendly for mobile and digital consumption.

Financially, he said, the project also achieved its yearlong goal -- working with an array of organizations like the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, the Earth Institute and Rotary International -- of garnering $500 million in commitments to help fight poverty.

So now what?

Evans said that he's hoping the audience, built online and at the concert, will continue efforts by tweeting President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney to halve extreme poverty by 2015, which is the key U.N. anti-poverty goal. And Evans is working on an announcement in October or November about "a major rock band" getting involved with the anti-poverty efforts.

- The Associated Press contributed to this report.

View the original article here