At the premiere of Ava DuVernay’s devastating and necessary series When They See Us, the groundbreaking director talked about wanting to shift the narrative about the Central Park Five. As the men—Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise—took the stage, she called them the Exonerated Five. The crowd erupted in cheers and tears.
DuVernay’s film draws us so deeply into the pain inflicted on these boys. Watching the premiere, I started shaking. I felt convulsive. When I went home, I wanted to tweet-bomb Linda Fairstein for her role in sending five innocent black boys to jail, but others beat me to it. I watched the power of every voice begin the ripple effect of change.
Fairstein has shut down her social media accounts, even as calls for #CancelLindaFairstein continue, but she remains defiant, describing DuVernay’s portrayal of the case as “a basket of lies” to the Daily Beast. And in 2018 she wrote in the New York Law Journal, “The confessions were not coerced. The questioning was respectful, dignified, carried out according to the letter of the law and with sensitivity to the young age of the men.” (Fairstein did not respond to my request for comment.)
Working alongside Fairstein at the time was Elizabeth Lederer, the prosecutor who argued in court that the boys were part of a pack of kids contributing to violence in Central Park that night even though no eyewitnesses or DNA evidence connected the boys to the crime. Lederer still works at the Manhattan DA's office to this day. I called her office to ask if she was planning to make an apology to the Exonerated Five. I was hung up on, twice.
And aiding and abetting Fairstein and Lederer? Donald J. Trump, who took out full-page ads calling for the death penalty in the face of violence in the city. (Rather than have an actor play Trump, DuVernay used archival footage of the future president to chilling effect—it served as a reminder that racism helped get him elected.)
Eventually, in 2002, a convicted serial rapist named Matias Reyes confessed to the crime, and DNA evidence confirmed his guilt. After the boys—now men—were cleared and released from prison, the city, under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, dragged its heels, refusing to settle. (Mr. Bloomberg declined to comment.) Under the de Blasio administration, the city ultimately agreed to a $41 million settlement but didn’t admit wrongdoing, saying in a statement, “This agreement should not be construed as an acknowledgment that the convictions of these five plaintiffs were the result of law enforcement misconduct.”
There is at least one example of how officials can handle such wrongdoing, such gross violations of justice. In 2015, Marty Stroud, formerly a prosecutor in Louisiana, apologized for sending Glenn Ford to death row for murder; Ford served 30 years before being completely exonerated. After his release, Stroud said, “As far as total peace, I don’t think that will ever occur. I think the stain is too great to ever completely erase.” If only Fairstein and Lederer could have an ounce of Stroud’s enlightenment. But too often, people have to be forced to do the right thing, especially if they’re in positions of power.
What could justice look like today? I believe Simon & Schuster should drop Fairstein from its roster and bookstores should stop selling her books; it's appropriate that she's resigned from board positions and lost awards. (Glamour editor-in-chief Samantha Barry issued a letter that with regard to Fairstein’s 1993 Women of the Year Award “the lens of history has shown us that we got it wrong.”)
But a trial against Fairstein in the court of public opinion is not enough. Calling out Fairstein, Lederer, Trump, and the law enforcement officials who imprisoned these boys may soothe our anger for a moment, but it does not protect black and brown men and boys across this nation. The broken system is still here. When the men of the Exonerated Five were asked on a panel moderated by Bill Keller of the Marshall Project if what happened to them in 1989 could happen today, they all answered immediately: Yes. They are right. According to the NAACP, between 1980 and 2015, the number of people incarcerated in America exploded from roughly 500,000 to over 2.2 million, with African Americans incarcerated at more than five times the rate of whites.
How do we ensure that more men and boys of color are not wrongly convicted? How do we make sure law enforcement is not driven by greed, corruption, and racism? We can demand that our institutions change. Yusef Salaam himself posted on Instagram encouraging people “DO SOMETHING” by lobbying the DA and Columbia University to fire Lederer, but so far officials have taken no action. (The DA’s office declined my request for comment. Columbia Law School did not respond to repeated requests for comment.)
And when officials, whose job it is to protect and serve us, don’t answer, we can take a cue from art collector and philanthropist Agnes Gund. After watching Ava DuVernay’s 2016 documentary 13th, Gund called Darren Walker of the Ford Foundation, and together they hatched the Art for Justice Fund, of which DuVernay is now a board member. Gund sold a beloved painting, “Masterpiece” by Roy Lichtenstein, and gave $100 million to fund organizations, including Equal Justice Initiative, Color of Change, Alliance for Safety and Justice, and Civil Rights Corps, that fight mass incarceration.
Those of us who don’t have millions of dollars or high-powered connections can help by taking a cue from the five men themselves. They have become advocates for the wrongly convicted, and some of them work with the Innocence Project, which helps exonerate those wrongly accused. We can all educate ourselves about the district attorney wherever we live—this role is one of the most important in the chain of command when it comes to criminal justice—and support officials like Larry Krasner in Pennsylvania and Rachael Rollins in Massachusetts who have the courage to stand on the right side of history by addressing mass incarceration.
We can support voting rights, like the historic initiative in Florida last November that gave more than 1.4 million formerly incarcerated persons the right to vote. And we can fight when our officials limit access to our elections, as with the Florida bill Republicans passed that would require ex-felons to pay all fines and restitution before they can step into the ballot box, almost undoing the initiative that was widely approved on the ballot just months earlier. We can help make sure re-enfranchised people know that they can vote by spreading information and supporting organizations like the Marshall Project.
We can call our representatives at the state and federal level and ask where they stand on curbing private prisons, requiring bodycams for police officers, and the videotaping of interrogations. These are all steps that can help end the wrongful imprisonment and killing of black people.
People can turn a blind eye until they are forced to see. Ava DuVernay’s work is proof that films can change perception and result in change. Thank you for opening our eyes. And to Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise, we owe you for everything.
Editor's note: After this piece was published, it was announced that Elizabeth Lederer would not be returning to Columbia Law School. Deadline reported that Linda Fairstein had been dropped by ICM, the Hollywood literary agency. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Fairstein maintained that DuVernay's film "includes so many falsehoods" and that it "defames me."
Tanya Selvaratnam is the author of The Big Lie and the forthcoming Assume Nothing. Since 2017, she has also been executive video producer/director for Glamour Women of the Year.
