Netflix series When They See Us on Central Park Five prompts new backlash against prosecutors
- Miniseries from director Ava DuVernay has spawned discussions about racial bias in law enforcement within the US criminal justice system
- Linda Fairstein, one of the prosecutors who led the investigation who is also an author, has come under particular fire from viewers
In the mid-1990s, when Linda Fairstein began writing thrillers about a dogged New York prosecutor, she had decades of high-profile cases and convictions to draw from as the head of the sex crimes unit at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
One of those cases was the 1989 assault and rape of a woman who had been jogging through New York’s Central Park. Though Fairstein was not the lead prosecutor, she supervised the investigation – and the controversial interrogations – that led to the convictions of five black and Latino teenagers who said their confessions had been coerced.
As depicted in Ava DuVernay’s Netflix miniseries When They See Us, the teens were exonerated by DNA evidence in 2002 after spending between six and 13 years in prisons and detention centres.
The series has spawned discussions about racial bias in law enforcement and other ongoing issues within the US criminal justice system. It has also led some viewers to call for a boycott of Fairstein’s bestselling novels and to urge various organisations to sever their ties to the former prosecutor.
Fairstein’s books make a prominent appearance in one scene in the final episode of When They See Us.