Linda Fairstein: Last News

EXCLUSIVE: Ava DuVernay had a lot to say in the Emmy-winning When They See Us about the harmed heaped on the so-called Central Park 5 and now she is speaking out about the settlement she and Netflix reached with the former prosecutor in that travesty of justice.

Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer Linda Fairstein, the controversial former prosecutor involved in the Central Park Five jogger case, has settled her defamation lawsuit against Netflix and Ava DuVernay over the 2019 docuseries “When They See Us.” Fairstein sued in 2020, alleging that she was falsely portrayed as a racist villain who orchestrated the convictions of five innocent young men. The case was set to go to trial next week in federal court in Manhattan. In the settlement, Netflix agreed to donate $1 million to the Innocence Project.

(Updated with Linda Fairstein statement) Just days before Netflix and the former prosecutor of the unjustly imprisoned Central Park 5 were set to go to trial in New York over Ava DuVernay’s Emmy winning When They See Us,  the whole four- year long legal battle is over.

defamation lawsuit by best-selling author and former Manhattan prosecutor Linda Fairstein over her portrayal in a 2019 crime drama about the Central Park Five case.US District Judge Kevin Castel on Tuesday said Fairstein plausibly alleged that Netflix, director Ava DuVernay and writer-producer Attica Locke acted with actual malice as to five scenes in “When They See Us.”The series dramatized the story of five black and Hispanic teenagers who spent five to 13 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted in the April 1989 rape of a white jogger in Central Park. Another man confessed in 2002.Castel in a 67-page decision found evidence that in depicting Fairstein as a villain emblematic of broader problems in criminal justice, the defendants “reverse-engineered plot points to attribute actions, responsibilities and viewpoints to Fairstein that were not hers and are unsupported in defendants’ substantial body of research materials.”The Manhattan judge said jurors should decide whether there was “clear and convincing evidence that defendants were recklessly indifferent to the truth.”Netflix, based in Los Gatos, Calif., and the defendants’ lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment.