Linda Fairstein

About Linda Fairstein

Lawyer, author, and former Assistant District Attorney now working as the Head of the County of New York's Sex Crimes Unit. She rose to prominence as the prosecutor in charge of the Central Park Five trial in New York in 1989.

Linda Fairstein is an American author, attorney, and former New York City prosecutor focusing on crimes of violence against women and children. She was the head of the sex crimes unit of the Manhattan District Attorney's office from 1976 until 2002. During that time, she oversaw the prosecution of the Central Park Five case, wherein five teenagers, four African-American and one Hispanic, were wrongfully convicted for the 1989 rape and assault in Central Park of a white female jogger. All five convictions were vacated in 2002 after Matias Reyes, a convicted serial rapist and murderer, confessed to having been the sole perpetrator of the crime, and DNA testing showed he was the sole contributor of the DNA of the semen on the victim. After Reyes's confession in 2002, Fairstein still maintained that the wrongfully convicted teenage boys were guilty and she lauded the police investigation as "brilliant". In 2018, she insisted that the teenagers' confessions had not been coerced.

Genre	Crime
Notable awards	Federal Bar Council's Emory Buckner Award for Public Service, UJA Federation's Proskauer Award, Columbia University School of Nursing's Second Century Award for Excellence in Health Care, Glamour Magazines Woman of the Year Award, American Heart Association Women of Courage Award, New York Women's Agenda 2010 Lifetime Achievement Award, Nero Wolfe Award for Excellence in Crime Writing (2008), International Thriller Writers 2010 Silver Bullet Award
Occupation	Novelist, former Assistant District Attorney and Head of Sex Crimes Unit of the County of New York
Alma mater	Vassar College (BA), University of Virginia (JD)
Period	1996–present
Born	May 5, 1947, Mount Vernon, New York
Nationality	American

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Trivia

She was dropped by her publisher Dutton after the release of the Netflix series When They See Us about the Central Park 5. 

Linda Fairstein before fame

She studied English Literature at Vassar College and graduated with a bachelor's degree. She went on to the University of Virginia Law School, where she earned her law degree in 1972. She joined the Manhattan District Attorney's office the next year. In 1976, she was promoted to the director of the Sex Crimes unit.

Achievement of Linda Fairstein

After the premiere of the Netflix series When They See Us about the Central Park 5, her publisher Dutton dropped her.

Salary 2020

Not known

Net Worth 2020

Undisclosed

Linda Fairstein family life

Her hometown is Mount Vernon, New York, where she was born and raised. In 2014, she married Michael Goldberg.

Associations of Linda Fairstein

Felicity Huffman portrayed her in the Netflix original series When They See Us, which premiered in 2019.

Linda Fairstein Height, Weight & Physique Measurements

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