Activists Demand NYC DA Investigate Central Park 5 Prosecutors

NEW YORK, NY — Activists and elected officials rallied in Lower Manhattan on Wednesday to call on Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. to reopen past cases tried by prosecutors who wrongfully sent the so-called Central Park 5 to prison.

The calls are being made 17 years following the exoneration of the five men — Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam and Korey Wise — due to the recent release of Netflix's "When They See Us," a film by Ava DuVernay that focuses on the prosecution of the men when they were teenagers for the 1989 attack of Central Park Jogger Trisha Melli. The men were exonerated in 2002, after serving more than a decade behind bars, when the real attacker admitted responsibility and DNA evidence matched him to the crime.

"No one who can watch that movie can say that something criminal did not happen," Public Advocate Jumaane Williams said Wednesday.

Williams said Wednesday that Cyrus Vance must reopen all cases tried by Linda Fairstein and Elizabeth Lederer to ensure that the prosecutors did not send other innocent men to prison. The public advocate said that Fairstein and Lederer may have acted appropriately in other cases, but were inherently "bad prosecutors."

"What they did was frankly criminal and I believe it was intentional," Williams said.

In addition to reopening the cases, Vance should also fire Lederer from the DA's office. Activists at the rally also called on the Columbia University Law School to fire Lederer from an adjunct professorship at the school, saying that someone who engaged in prosecutorial misconduct should not be in charge of educating future lawyers.

Many activists who spoke during Wednesday's rally view Fairstein and Lederer as representative of a criminal justice system that is designed to disproportionately punish black and brown people.

"We may not be able to re litigate the Central Park 5 case, but what we can do is look into the cases of all the men and women who are locked across this state who may have had the same fate,
Tamika Mallory, an organizer of the Women's March movement, said Wednesday. "Cy Vance we're asking you what do you believe about the Central Park 5 case?"

Williams said that his office will send a formal letter to the Manhattan District Attorney in the coming days to express the demands. The public advocate is also conducting its own investigation into Fairstein and Lederer's past cases to determine whether to file a request that the prosecutors be disbarred.

A spokesman from the DA's office said in a statement that the letter will be reviewed, but added that former DA Robert Morgenthau's investigation into the case in 2002 found no evidence of misconduct. Morgenthau was the Manhattan District Attorney at the time of the prosecution.

Here's the full statement from District Attorney Cyrus Vance's office:

We will review the letter. We believe DA Morgenthau made the right call in 2002 when he reinvestigated the case and dismissed the indictments against Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Jr., and Korey Wise. His exhaustive reinvestigation – which culminated in a 58-page memorandum supporting the dismissal filed by this Office at that time – found no evidence of misconduct by the prosecutors who originally litigated the case, and in 2014, New York City Corporation Counsel Zach Carter conducted an independent review which concluded that ‘both the investigating detectives and the Assistant District Attorneys involved in the case acted reasonably, given the circumstances with which they were confronted on April 19, 1989 and thereafter.

The release of "When They See Us" has resulted in mounting public pressure against prosecutors involved in the 1989 case. Fairstein resigned from Vassar College's board of trustees Tuesday following intense pressure from students at the school. The former prosecutor also resigned from a position with nonprofit Safe Horizon, which aids survivors of domestic abuse, according to reports.