Former Manhattan prosecutor Linda Fairstein has resigned from Vassar College's board of trustees amid a new wave of backlash over her role in the infamous Central Park Five case. Students at Vassar began an online petition to remove Fairstein from the board and gained more than 13,000 signatures in two days, sparking the school to call an executive committee review to discuss the concerns.
Linda ran the district attorney's sex crimes unit at the time of the Central Park Five case — in which Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Korey Wise and Yusef Salaam were wrongful convicted and imprisoned. Linda — played by Felicity Huffman in "When They See Us" — has come under new scrutiny after director Ava DuVernay released a Netflix miniseries about the case, "When They See Us."
The Netflix series also prompted the #CancelLindaFairstein hashtag on social media and calls for her prior cases to be re-examined.