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A Flimsy Case Dismissed

Posted 9/30/19

The Central Park Jogger case, which transfixed New York 30 years ago after a young woman was savagely beaten and raped, was mishandled by the cops and prosecutors assigned to it. The discovery, more than a dozen years after the incident, that the one person whose semen was found on the jogger and one of her socks was a serial rapist who was not charged in the crime until he voluntarily implicated himself led to the vacating of the convictions of the five teenagers.

Linda Fairstein, the head of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Sex-Crimes Unit who oversaw the prosecution, has remained defensive about the incident, insisting that the youths were somehow involved. The case, which three decades ago made her a media star, became a stain on her reputation. After a dramatization of it, “When They See Us,” was shown on Netflix several months ago, its exaggeratedly harsh portrayal of her  brought an end to her longtime publishing deals.

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