Netflix, Central Park Five prosecutor settle defamation lawsuit
2024.06.04 15:37
By Luc Cohen
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Netflix (NASDAQ:) has settled a defamation lawsuit brought by best-selling author and former Manhattan prosecutor Linda Fairstein over her portrayal in a 2019 crime drama about the Central Park Five case, its lawyers said on Tuesday.
A trial over Fairstein’s portrayal in the series, “When They See Us,” had been set to begin next week in Manhattan federal court.
Netflix said as part of the settlement, it would donate $1 million to the Innocence Project, a nonprofit that works to free wrongfully convicted people. It said Fairstein would not receive money as part of the settlement.
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.
Fairstein, 77, had been running the Manhattan District Attorney’s office sex crimes unit when the 28-year-old jogger, later identified as Trisha Meili, was attacked.
She alleged defamatory scenes in the series included suggestions she withheld evidence, coerced confessions, and ordered a mass police roundup of young Black men.
