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Linda Fairstein Speaks in her Own Defense After Netflix ‘Central Park Five’ Controversy

posted 5 years ago by Satan2016 (25525)
4 replies | jump to latest

Another fake docudrama by deranged SJWs. Original story is pay-walled at WSJ. More info in the comments.

https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/06/linda-fairstein-speaks-in-her-own-defense-after-netflix-central-park-five-controversy/

As we pointed out recently, Linda Fairstein, the New York City sex crimes prosecutor who handled the famous ‘Central Park Five’ case, has been subjected to a purge after the premiere of a new Netflix program on the subject.

She claims the program has distorted the truth and maligned her unfairly. Now she is speaking out in her own defense. She wrote at the Wall Street Journal:

Netflix’s False Story of the Central Park Five

At about 9 p.m. April 19, 1989, a large group of young men gathered on the corner of 110th Street and Fifth Avenue for the purpose of robbing and beating innocent people in Central Park. There were more than 30 rioters, and the woman known as the “Central Park jogger,” Trisha Meili, was not their only victim. Eight others were attacked, including two men who were beaten so savagely that they required hospitalization for head injuries.

Reporters and filmmakers have explored this story countless times from numerous perspectives, almost always focusing on five attackers and one female jogger. But each has missed the larger picture of that terrible night: a riot in the dark that resulted in the apprehension of more than 15 teenagers who set upon multiple victims.

That a sociopath named Matias Reyes confessed in 2002 to the rape of Ms. Meili, and that the district attorney consequently vacated the charges against the five after they had served their sentences, has led some of these reporters and filmmakers to assume the prosecution had no basis on which to charge the five suspects in 1989. So it is with filmmaker Ava DuVernay in the Netflix miniseries “When They See Us,” a series so full of distortions and falsehoods as to be an outright fabrication.

It shouldn’t have been hard for Ms. DuVernay to discover the truth. The facts of the original case are documented in a 117-page decision by New York State Supreme Court Justice Thomas Galligan, in sworn testimony given in two trials and affirmed by two appellate courts, and in sworn depositions of more than 95 witnesses—including the five themselves. Instead she has written an utterly false narrative involving an evil mastermind (me) and the falsely accused (the five).[/quote]

Fairstein points to specific examples of where the program gets it wrong:

[quote] Consider the film’s most egregious falsehoods. “When They See Us” repeatedly portrays the suspects as being held without food, deprived of their parents’ company and advice, and not even allowed to use the bathroom. If that had been true, surely they would have brought those issues up and prevailed in pretrial hearings on the voluntariness of their statements, as well as in their lawsuit against the city. They didn’t, because it never happened.

[–] Satan2016 (25525) 5 years ago

Google doesn't even find this unless I put the title in quotes!

Central Park Rapists: Trump Was Right https://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2018/07/25/central-park-rapists-trump-was-right-n2503894

Sarah Burns, who co-wrote and co-directed the propaganda film "The Central Park Five" with her father (whose reputation she has now destroyed), waved away the defendants' confessions -- forget all the other evidence -- in a 2016 New York Times op-ed, explaining: "The power imbalance in an interrogation room is extreme, especially when the suspects are young teenagers, afraid of the police and unfamiliar with the justice system or their rights."

Burns has studied the trial transcripts so closely that she called the prosecutor by the wrong name in her op-ed. Far from trembling and afraid, as Burns imagines, the suspects were singing the rap song "Wild Thing" for hours in the precinct house, laughing and joking about raping the jogger. One of the attackers said, "It was fun."

When a cop told Santana that he should have been out with a girlfriend rather than mugging people in Central Park, Santana responded, "I already got mines," and laughed with another boy from the park. One of the youths arrested that night stated on videotape that he heard Santana and another boy laughing about "how they 'made a woman bleed.'"

But none of that matters. Again, the victim was a privileged white woman (BAD!) and the perpetrators were youths of color (GOOD!). So the media lied and claimed the DNA evidence "exonerated" them.

[–] crawfish (57) 5 years ago

You are so full of it. Of course she's not gonna admit that in one of her biggest cases of her career, that she made a big mistakes and got 5 innocent boys locked up, while the real rapist was still running around N.Y. assaulting women.

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

The main gist of that ruling only deals with the age of the defendant and whether his statements could be used because he misrepresented his age at first.

The ruling has little to do with the veracity of the accuracy of the "evidence" gathered or how it came about. It does make reference to other unstated statements and the such, but again, that ruling deals with the trial admission of the defendant's statements.

Also, I went t the legal insurrection site and it is amazing the amount of attention that was given to the emergency room doctor's beliefs. Emergency room doctors are NOT forensic scientists nor qualified to make such claims as evidence. Believe it or not, some of these doctors do not know the difference between a bullet entry wound and exit wound. So the declaration of different hand sizes by an emergency room doctor as fact is bogus.

[–] TexasJack (12516) 5 years ago

Correct. They were far from innocent and having them off the streets for 13 years is the best thing to come out of the whole situation.