Writers rescind award
Author’s role in ‘Central Park Five’ case drew outcry from her industry peers
The Mystery Writers of America withdrew a major honour Thursday from author Linda Fairstein after other writers condemned the former prosecutor’s role in New York’s notorious “Central Park Five” case.
The decision, just two days after the Grand Master Award was announced, marked the first time the group, founded in 1945, has ever rescinded the prize. The award recognizes lifetime achievement and has been given to writers including Sue Grafton and Stephen King.
“MWA cannot move forward with an award that lacks the support of such a large percentage of our members,” the group said, pledging also to re-evaluate its process for selecting honorees.
Fairstein was speaking at a conference Thursday and referred an inquiry to her publisher, Penguin Publishing Group’s Dutton imprint. It had no immediate comment.
When the award was announced Tuesday, Fairstein called it “a thrilling surprise.”
“I’m pinching myself,” she tweeted at the time.
But some prominent mystery writers, including Attica Locke and Nick Kolakowski, expressed outrage over the decision.
Fairstein was the top Manhattan sex crimes prosecutor when five teenagers were charged with the 1989 rape and beating of a woman jogging in Central Park.
The attack became a national symbol of urban mayhem at a time when New York City ’s murder rate was nearing its historical peak. The case also bared the city ’s racial and class divide, painting a portrait of a crew of black and Hispanic youths “wilding ” and preying on a white professional. The teens said they were coerced into confessing their involvement in the attack.
Their convictions were overturned in 2002 after convicted murderer and serial rapist Matias Reyes confessed to committing the crime, and DNA linked him to it.
Prosecutors stopped short of declaring the five not guilty but withdrew all charges. The legal time clock had run out for charging Reyes, who was already serving life in prison on other convictions.
Fairstein observed the boys’ 1989 interrogation, conducted by another prosecutor and police. She didn’t personally try the case but has denied the teens were coerced and has defended authorities’ conduct in the case.
The city reached a roughly $41-million settlement with the five the next year, while not admitting any wrongdoing.
Locke and Fairstein have exchanged caustic tweets since the award was announced. Locke, who is working with Ava DuVernay on a Netflix docudrama about the case, called Fairstein “almost single-handedly responsible for the wrongful incarceration of the Central Park Five” and castigated her for not apologizing.
Fairstein responded by tweeting Locke should “learn your facts.”
Fairstein garnered a reputation as a pioneering prosecutor of sexual offences during her 25 years of leading the Manhattan district attorney ’s sex crimes unit. She retired in 2002 and has written more than a dozen crime novels.