A University of Colorado legal advocacy practice has been renamed for one of the men wrongfully convicted in the infamous 1989 Central Park jogger assault in New York after he made a sizable donation to the group. Coloradan Magazine says the former Colorado Innocence Project, based at the Boulder law school, is now known as the Korey Wise Innocence Project after Wise made a $300,000 donation to the group. Jane Fisher-Byrialsen, a Colorado lawyer who represented Wise in a lawsuit against New York, helped broker the donation.
Wise, 16 when arrested, was one of five teens convicted in the savage attack on a 28-year-old female jogger. They were convicted without physical evidence based largely upon what the defendants said were coerced confessions. Wise was freed after 12 years of imprisonment when DNA evidence showed that a convicted murderer and serial rapist had been the jogger’s assailant, not the teens. Last year, the Central Park Five settled a $41 million wrongful conviction suit against New York City. His donation to the innocence group is “a form of leaving my legacy,” he said.