Investigation, conviction and appeal Fairstein's office supervised the prosecution in 1989 and 1990 of the
Central Park Jogger case, which ended in the conviction of five teenagers whose convictions were later
vacated. In a civil rights lawsuit filed in 2003, the five who were convicted claimed that Fairstein, with the assistance of the detectives at the 20th Precinct, coerced false confessions from them following up to thirty straight hours of interrogation and intimidation, of both the youths and their supporting adults. Fairstein said "Nobody under sixteen was talked to until a parent or guardian arrived... Three of the five went home and had a night's sleep before they were ever taken into custody. For most of them, the substance of their admissions came out within about an hour of the time they came in... I think Reyes ran with that pack of kids. He stayed longer when the others moved on. He completed the assault. I don't think there is a question in the minds of anyone present during the interrogation process that these five men were participants, not only in the other attacks that night but in the attack on the jogger. I watched more than thirty detectives—black, white, Hispanic guys who'd never met each other before—conduct a brilliant investigation." Lawyers for the five defendants contested almost every element of Fairstein's statement. In 1990 each of the "Central Park Five" were convicted of various assault and sexual battery charges, based in part on the allegedly
false confessions obtained from them in 1989.
Vacating of convictions All five convictions were vacated in 2002 after convicted rapist Matias Reyes confessed to the crime. Reyes confessed after he "found religion."
Aftermath In 2003, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana Jr., and Antron McCray sued the city of New York for
malicious prosecution,
racial discrimination and
emotional distress. It wasn't until Mayor De Blasio took office 11 years later that a settlement in the case was reached on June 19, 2014, for $41 million. The film,
The Central Park Five, premiered at the
Cannes Film Festival in May 2012 and was released on November 23, 2012. A
Pulitzer Prize winning opera,
The Central Park Five, was also written about the case. In May 2019,
Netflix released a four-part drama series,
When They See Us, about the case, directed by
Ava DuVernay. In it, actress
Felicity Huffman portrays Fairstein. Soon after the release, Fairstein's publisher,
E.P. Dutton, released her as a client. Fairstein also resigned from the Board of Trustees of Vassar College, her alma mater, after considerable pressure from the student body and members of the administration. On June 10, 2019, the
Wall Street Journal published an
op-ed by Fairstein,
Netflix’s False Story of the Central Park Five, in which she says that the five were not "totally innocent" (citing the other crimes they were convicted of, for which, she asserts, there is still substantial evidence) and that DuVernay had
defamed her. In March 2020, Fairstein filed suit in the
U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida against Netflix, DuVernay, and series writer
Attica Locke for
defamation based on her portrayal in the series. As of 2021 following Netflix's request for it to be dismissed, the lawsuit had been partially allowed to go forward while other scenes had been deemed not to be defamatory. On June 4, 2024, the case was settled, with Netflix donating $1 million to
Innocence Project and no payment being made to Fairstein. “[Fairstein] walked away with no payment to her or her lawyers of any kind, rather than face cross examination before a New York jury,” DuVernay said. == Later career ==