Linda Fairstein (born May 5, 1947)[1] is an American author, attorney, and former New York City prosecutor focusing on crimes of violence against women and children.

After Reyes' confession in 2002, Fairstein still maintained that the wrongfully convicted teenage boys were guilty and she lauded the police investigation as "brilliant".

[3] After she left the DA's office in 2002, Fairstein began to publish mystery novels featuring Manhattan prosecutor Alexandra Cooper.

It was not until June 2019, in response to the attention associated with the release of the Netflix series When They See Us about the Central Park Five, that Fairstein's publisher, Dutton, dropped her.

In a civil rights lawsuit filed in 2003, the five who were convicted claimed that Fairstein, with the assistance of the detectives at the 20th Precinct, coerced false confessions from them following up to thirty straight hours of interrogation and intimidation, of both the youths and their supporting adults.

[11] In 1990 each of the "Central Park Five" were convicted of various assault and sexual battery charges, based in part on the allegedly false confessions obtained from them in 1989.

Appellate court judge Vito Titone specifically named Fairstein in his dissenting opinion on the Salaam appeal.

He said in an interview, "I was concerned about a criminal justice system that would tolerate the conduct of the prosecutor, Linda Fairstein, who deliberately engineered the 15-year-old's confession.

The semen found on the victim contained DNA matching that of Reyes, confirming that he was the sole contributor, to a certainty of six billion to one.

[15] In 2003, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana Jr., and Antron McCray sued the city of New York for malicious prosecution, racial discrimination and emotional distress.

[19] Fairstein also resigned from the Board of Trustees of Vassar College, her alma mater, after considerable pressure from the student body and members of the administration.

[20] On June 10, 2019, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Fairstein, Netflix’s False Story of the Central Park Five, in which she says that five were not "totally innocent" (citing the other crimes they were convicted for, for which, she asserts, there is still substantial evidence) and that DuVernay had defamed her.

[6][28] Fairstein left the District Attorney's office in 2002, and has continued to consult, write, lecture and serve as a sex crimes expert for a wide variety of print and television media outlets, including CNN, MSNBC and Larry King, among others.

"If she [Fairstein] couldn't tell this was a false report, well, I am just shocked," said former New York City sex crimes detective John Baeza, who worked in defense of Jovanovic after leaving the force.

[8] The $10 million lawsuit against Fairstein and two co-defendants, former Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Gail Heatherly, who now teaches at the Columbia Law School, and New York City Police Detective Milton Bonilla, was dismissed on summary judgment in September 2010.

[51][52] In September 2014 she married lawyer Michael Goldberg, a long-time friend and classmate at the University of Virginia School of Law, at their home in Martha's Vineyard.