By: Teddy Grant

A federal judge said Monday that former Manhattan prosecutor Linda Fairstein could sue Netflix over her portrayal in the miniseries about the Exonerated Five in When They See Us.   

District Judge Kevin Castel said that certain scenes from the show could make viewers believe it was “based in fact.”   

“These scenes depict Fairstein as orchestrating acts of misconduct, including the withholding of evidence, the existence of ‘tapes’ showing that she ‘coerced’ confessions from the Five, an instruction not to use ‘kid gloves’ when questioning suspects, and directing a racially discriminatory police roundup of young men in Harlem,” Castel wrote.  

Fairstein accused director Ava Duvernay and producer Attica Locke of portraying her “as a racist, unethical villain who is determined to jail innocent children of color at any cost.”   

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One scene in particular depicted Fairstein, played by Felicity Huffman, instructing the NYPD to round up Black men in Harlem, according to The Daily Press.  

Fairstein oversaw the prosecution of a group of Black and Latino teenagers. Yusef Salaam, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise, then known as the Central Park Five, were arrested for allegedly raping a white woman, Trisha Meili, in New York City’s Central Park in 1989.  

The group was coerced into providing a false confession and wrongfully convicted of the crime. They spent between six to 13 years in prison before someone else confessed to the crime.