On Tuesday, US District Judge Kevin Castel ruled that Netflix must face a defamation lawsuit filed by former Manhattan prosecutor Linda Fairstein, who claims that the streaming service, along with director Ava DuVernay and writer-producer Attica Locke, acted with malice in their portrayal of her in the 2019 crime drama series “When They See Us.”
The show portrayed the story of five Black and Hispanic youths who were wrongly imprisoned for five to 13 years following their unjust convictions for the April 1989 assault of a white jogger in Central Park. In 2002, another individual confessed to the crime.
In a 67-page ruling, Judge Castel found that there was evidence suggesting that the defendant’s “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 judge stated there was “clear and convincing evidence that defendants were recklessly indifferent to the truth.”
Linda Fairstein, aged 76, was leading the sex crimes unit of the Manhattan District Attorney’s office when the 28-year-old jogger, Trisha Meili, was attacked.
The series includes scenes suggesting Fairstein withheld evidence, coerced confessions, and ordered a mass police roundup of young Black men in Harlem. This portrayal caused backlash, leading to Fairstein losing her publisher, resigning from boards, and becoming a target of social media attacks under #CancelLindaFairstein.
The defendants claimed that Fairstein couldn’t prove their portrayal of her was mostly true and protected by the First Amendment. They also argued that the lawsuit might limit filmmakers in portraying controversial real-life events from “different and often marginalized perspectives.”
In 2014, New York City settled with the five original defendants for $41 million without admitting any wrongdoing.
