4 teenagers under 16 years old served 5 1/2 - 7 years. The 5th teenager (age 16) served 12 years.
And your instinctive reaction is that they were “guilty as hell.”
In your world, it doesn’t matter if they we were unjustly convicted of rape. It doesn’t matter if their confessions were bogus.
In your world, “They did sumthin that night” so they are “guilty as hell.”