When They See Us is a four-part miniseries based on the wrongful convictions of Antron McCray, 15; Kevin Richardson, 14; Yusef Salaam, 15; Raymond Santana, 14; and Korey Wise, 16. In 1989, they were arrested as teenagers and terrorized by police before being wrongfully convicted of brutally assaulting and raping a white woman who was jogging in New York City’s Central Park.

The media and the general public—both in New York City and beyond—instantly believed these five black and Latino youth were guilty of the crime without giving them a fair chance of proving their innocence. Following a media frenzy in which they were described as a gang “wilding,” assaulting people in the park, they were convicted despite inconsistent confessions, DNA evidence exclusion and a lack of other evidence connecting them to the crime scene.