Miltenberg: “Former Prosecutor Sues Netflix, Ava DuVernay Over Central Park Five Miniseries,” Rolling Stone

Former prosecutor Linda Fairstein took aim at Netflix and Ava DuVernay Wednesday when she filed a lawsuit against the streaming service, director and DuVerney’s co-writer Attica Locke claiming that their miniseries, When They See Us, defamed her. The four-part series, which premiered on Netflix in May of 2019, “portrays Ms. Fairstein in a false and defamatory matter in nearly every scene in the three episodes in which her character appears,” according to a statement from her attorney, Andrew Miltenberg. When They See Us tells the tale of the so-called Central Park Five, a quintet of young men of color who were wrongly accused and imprisoned for a rape they did not commit. Former New York City Assistant District Attorney Fairstein was a prosecutor at the time and her office, the sex crimes unit, oversaw the case. Over the course of the show, Fairstein alleges that she was incorrectly portrayed by actress Felicity Huffman as having a larger role in the five’s fate than was factually accurate. “Most glaringly, the film series falsely portrays Ms. Fairstein as in charge of the investigation and prosecution of the case against The Five, including the development of the prosecution’s theory of the case,” her attorney says. “In truth, and as detailed in the lawsuit, Ms. Fairstein was responsible for neither aspect of the case.”

Click to view article