‘Central Park Five’ Activists Want Columbia Law Professor Fired for Role in Infamous Case - Higher Education

‘Central Park Five’ Activists Want Columbia Law Professor Fired for Role in Infamous Case - Higher Education: Twenty-four years after five Black and Latino teenagers were wrongfully imprisoned and convicted for raping and beating a White female jogger in Central Park, hundreds of activists converged in the park Saturday to demand that the city settle a lawsuit filed by the men now known as the “Central Park Five.”

Holding signs and chanting, the activists also called attention to an online petition that is currently circulating, calling on Columbia University to fire part-time law professor Elizabeth Lederer who along with Linda Fairstein were the lead prosecutors who handled the botched 1989 case.

“Elizabeth Lederer was among those who destroyed the lives of these young men by moving forward with her case even though there was no credible evidence, except coerced confessions demanded by police officers,” says Charles Johnson, a community activist and an alumnus of the Ivy League school. “It’s scary to think that she is now training the next generation of lawyers. She really needs to go.”