In her vile October 17 column on the Central Park jogger case, Ann Coulter suggested that New York Times reporters who accurately noted a DNA match between semen found in the victim and a convicted rapist who was never charged in the attack were "looking for the next Scottsboro Boys case" -- were looking, in other words, for an "exoneration" of the five young men convicted of the attack.

What the Times is actually looking for is what everyone in New York City would like to find -- the truth, which remains elusive. A lengthy but incomplete effort at reconstructing the night in question was published in Sunday’s Times, with a follow-up today.

Coulter says liberals (among whom she includes all Times reporters) "long to claim that every criminal is innocent" -- but what the Times gives us is hardly a portrait of innocence. From Sunday’s story:

"One of the most intriguing new views of the case rises from the reconstruction of the sequence of events. By establishing that the teenagers were part of a crowd that was bothering or beating other people during the critical time of the rape, the reconstruction provides them with an alibi that is plausible, if not airtight, and certainly unsavory.

" ‘That was the issue,’ said Peter Rivera, Mr. Santana’s lawyer in 1990. ‘But we didn't say, "No, when the jogger was raped, my client was on 96th Street, mugging someone else." That would have been self-defeating.’ "

From today’s story:

"But though investigators no longer can be sure whether the youths raped the jogger, few of those reviewing the case question whether the teenagers were involved in the other crimes.

"For one thing, many of the police and prosecutors reinvestigating the crimes say, the teenagers were undoubtedly part of the pack of about 35 youths who rampaged through the park that night."

Today’s story includes several paragraphs of testimony from attack victims other than the jogger. It’s not hard to draw the conclusion that the Times reporters believe the five men convicted of the rape were indeed guilty of other violent attacks.

Ann Coulter readers who don’t read the Times know nothing of this. Keeping them ignorant is a huge part of Coulter’s job.