“For although the act condemns the doer, the end may justify him…”
~Niccolo Machiavelli; Discourses: I, 9
Writing has always been something that came naturally to me. My friends in law school often joked when we found ourselves having to split a bill, that we didn’t come to law school to have to do math (thank goodness for Venmo, right?). So when my cousin came to me asking for help on a paper for her ethics and philosophy class on whether the “ends justified the means,” I thought why not?
I provided examples, research, and slapped down a self-important single page essay that basically summed up a theory I believed would be acceptable–that the ends could justify the means on a case-by-case basis. No one could definitely say whether there is a right or wrong answer to that question. Right? Wrong.
Though it did not affect her grade, the similar responses in the essays by her peers infuriated my cousins’ professor because as he explained, “the end could never justify the means since you don’t know what the outcome will be until after using the means to get there,” good intentions be damned. I couldn’t really argue with his logic. So why then, did I feel more drawn to the Machiavellian philosophy?
I quickly learned in law school that there really is no justice in the justice system. Trials are essentially a two-player game, with each player trying to win their case for their client before leveling up. Having had to take the MPRE twice before passing, I know that ethics do play an important role in our profession, but where do we draw the line between winning and showing mercy? Is being a good lawyer and a good person mutually exclusive?
That’s the question that nagged me as I binged “When They See Us.” A recent addition to Netflix’s growing list of original content, the mini-series takes viewers through the Central Park Five incident.
Elizabeth Lederer, who prosecuted the case in 1990, stepped down from her position as part-time lecturer at Columbia Law School yesterday following the backlash from viewers of the show. Linda Fairstein, current novelist and former head of the sex crimes unit for the DA’s office in Manhattan, did not go unscathed either for the part she played in the case several years ago. The uproar that followed her portrayal in the series caused her publisher, Dutton, to drop her.
Knowing not to expect completely accurate portrayals from a Netflix series, I decided to see for myself what all the ruckus was about.
From the very first episode, we’re influenced to dislike Fairstein. Felicity Hoffman portrays her as a pushy, petty, bigoted woman with a cold heart and an agenda against the young men in custody.
“These kids, these kids were on a rampage,” Hoffman’s Fairstein insists to the fictional Morgantheu (Manhattan’s DA at the time). While I cringed at the overly dramatic delivery, I had to admit that after hearing the Farstein’s character’s explanation that there had been 3,412 in the year prior that she wanted to help put an end to, I thought maybe Fairstein’s critics were too harsh. After all, it’s easy to judge her now that we know the truth–as they say, hindsight is 20/20.
But the more I binged, the more outraged I became. The racial slurs and the bigoted behavior displayed by the prosecution team in the reenactment was tough to swallow. Because of the community I grew up in, I always viewed women and people of color as minority groups on equal footing. I could not have been more wrong. But I do wonder, would the outrage have been greater, worse, or nonexistent if it had been a male prosecutor who had behaved in this manner?
I wasn’t born until five years after this story broke. By then many had forgotten the incident while five innocent young black men suffered behind bars, their life and families in pieces. I can’t speak for what did or did not happen. Perhaps the prosecution truly did believe those boys were guilty or maybe, the attorneys were just trying to do their job and win. However one thing does not sit well with me.
Eli Rosenberg of the Washington Post noted in an article published yesterday, that New York Times writer Jim Dwyer admitted Lederer had misled the jury during the trial. She had stated that a strand of the victim’s hair had been found in the clothes of one of the five young boys who had been arrested. This was false information as confirmed by DNA tests later on.
If it turned out that the young men had truly been guilty, would the means have mattered? Win or lose, I’ve decided that for me, it would. As a young woman of color, I’ve learned that to succeed I have to be better, I have to work harder, I have to keep getting up when I’m knocked down. At the end of the day if you decide to use any means secure your win, you still lose, it’s just your integrity–not your case–at risk instead.
Project Mansfield 