Defense Claims No Proof Links Clients to Jogger : Trial: Lawyers for three in Central Park attack case present closing arguments. They say that statements made by the defendants were coerced.

By JOHN J. GOLDMAN

Aug. 8, 1990 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

NEW YORK — Defense lawyers in closing arguments Tuesday tried to convince jurors in the Central Park jogger trial that no testimony or physical evidence existed directly linking their three teen-age clients to the rape and attempted murder of a 29-year-old investment banker.

One lawyer suggested that the jogger, who suffers from amnesia after the trauma of the attack last year, never was raped at all and could have had a sexual liaison before entering Central Park.

The prosecution is scheduled to present its summation today. After instructions by State Supreme Court Justice Thomas B. Galligan, the jury will begin considering charges against the youths, including rape, attempted murder, rioting and assault. The trio are being tried as minors and face up to 10 years in prison.

All three lawyers argued that statements made by the defendants to detectives were improperly coerced. Two of the defendants confessed on videotape. The third teen-ager on trial made a partial confession which was stopped after police became aware he was 15 years old, and they needed a parent or guardian present to continue the interrogation.

“Not one witness walked into court and testified he was present when she was assaulted,” said Michael Joseph, representing defendant Antron McCray, 16, who sat quietly as arguments were made on his behalf. “There is not one piece of scientific or physical evidence that Antron was there or he raped her.”

“The attack on the female jogger was so vicious it cries out for vengeance,” Robert Burns, the lawyer for Yusef Salaam, 16, told the jury. “But you must agree the evidence . . . is . . . conflicting,” Burns said. “There are racial overtones that are so powerful it is difficult to get at the truth.” The victim is white and the defendants are black.

Burns charged that the jogger may have enjoyed sex at her apartment before running in the park. He noted that a genetic testing expert had testified during the trial that DNA from sperm found in the jogger’s body excluded the three defendants from having intercourse with the runner. The DNA also excluded her boyfriend.

The jogger, whose name has been withheld by news media because of the nature of her trauma, was attacked by a teen-age gang in the park on the night of April 19, 1989. According to testimony at the trial as many as 50 youths entered the park for a night of “wilding”--randomly beating and robbing anyone they could catch.

“Her mind is a blank. This lady does not know and cannot say whether she had sexual relations or not with (her boyfriend) or another person from the time she went blank to the time she was found,” Burns said.

Burns charged that prosecutors had put the woman, who has partially recovered from her injuries, on the witness stand, in an effort to sway emotions.

“I think the district attorney has made an attempt to appeal to your emotions,” the lawyer told the jurors. “Why on earth was the female jogger called? . . . There is no one in his right mind who would dispute the female jogger’s injuries. She was near death. This brave young woman can shed no light on what happened to her the night of April 19.”

Peter Rivera, the lawyer for the third defendant, Raymond Santana, 15, said his client’s confession was coerced.