Fairstein has always maintained that the teenagers were involved in the crime. In 2002, when Reyes confessed and the convictions were overturned, Fairstein offered the following as a theory as to what happened that night.

“I think Reyes ran with that pack of kids. He stayed longer when the others moved on. He completed the assault. I don’t think there is a question in the minds of anyone present during the interrogation process that these five men were participants, not only in the other attacks that night but in the attack on the jogger… Remember, I had a lot of cases with comatose victims. They wake up, more often than not. What’s the likelihood that a sophisticated group of cops and prosecutors are going to make up a story that she can refute when she wakes up?”

Fairstein is also a crime novelist and author of some 19 thrillers. In 2015, she was one of a team of lawyers who helped Harvey Weinstein deal with a police complaint filed against him by Italian model Ambra Battilana.

“Linda Fairstein… was willing to facilitate introductions to the current sex crimes prosecutor who was handling the case,” Megan Twohey, one of the New York Times investigative reporters who worked on the Weinstein story, told NPR. “And within weeks that case was dead.”

When They See Us: true story of Ava DuVernay’s Central Park Five drama