NEW YORK -- At the time, their confessions seemed cut and dry and a victory for the New York City Police Department.

After just a few hours of interrogation, five black and Hispanic youths told police of their roles in the brutal rape and beating of the Central Park Jogger, the white investment banker ambushed and left for dead nearly 13 years ago while on an evening run through the park in the heart of Manhattan.

The five teenagers were convicted by two juries and put in prison, given sentences ranging from five to 15 years. The denizens of New York's Upper West and Upper East sides, who see Central Park as their backyard, began returning to the park for sunset strolls. Developer Donald Trump took out ads calling for the state to "bring back the death penalty," capturing the mood of a city that saw the near death of the jogger as proof that the NYPD needed to get tougher on criminals.

But today, New Yorkers are expected to be told that in its zeal to solve the crime, New York's finest actually rounded up the wrong people. That will be an embarrassing revelation likely to strain the delicate détente between the city's white, black and Hispanic communities. It will also re-ignite a debate over just how the NYPD, already tarnished by past abuses in dealing with black and Hispanic people in custody, extracted those remarkable confessions.

Manhattan's District Attorney, 83-year-old Robert Morgenthau, is expected to ask today that the five men -- now all out of prison -- be exonerated for the crimes of rape and assault. The remarkable about-face is due to the prison confession of Matias Reyes, a serial rapist and murderer who earlier this year said he carried out the rape and beating alone.

His confession is being taken seriously because DNA tests show his semen at the crime scene. And the prosecution's case has deteriorated with time: more sophisticated testing has shown hair found on some of the teenagers did not match the jogger's; their confessions also have glaring inconsistencies in descriptions of the crime and cast doubt as to whether the five boys could have been at the crime scene at the time the rape was committed.

"We know the verdicts must be set aside by virtue of law," Michael Warren, the five men's lawyer, said this week. "Our clients are innocent. There has not been anything demonstrated to the contrary."

While the police have not commented publicly on the case, they say privately those convicted were no angels. The NYPD has argued the five teens may have either stumbled onto the unconscious victim after her rape and assaulted her further, or may have been responsible earlier on in an ambush that led to the rape. The teenagers, along with dozens of others, had been in the park on April 19 for what they called "wilding," beating up and robbing passersby who were in the park after dark.

Still, there are already demands for changes in how the police operate when it comes to confessions.

"The NYPD must start videotaping interrogations of suspects in serious crimes" to avoid allegations of coercion, said Christopher Dunn and Donna Lieberman of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

They noted NYPD officers accused of wrongdoing have their interrogations tape-recorded and that this should apply to citizens.

The Manhattan Supreme Court will make the final decision on whether to overturn the rape and assault convictions in February. But it won't be the end.

The Central Park Jogger herself is about to hit the headlines, with the story of her own comeback from one of New York's most famous crime victims. In April, she will reveal her picture and identity in her biography, I am the Central Park Jogger: A Story of Hope and Possibility.