When John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson were trying to dispose of a dead body in the movie "Pulp Fiction," Travolta was offended by fix-it man Harvey Keitel's brusque manner.

"An apology would be nice," he said even as the body lay a-mouldering in the car trunk. An apology, albeit a perfunctory one, was forthcoming.

I say that to say this: An apology would be nice now, too.

The five New York City youngsters who did six to 11 years in prison for a rape and assault that evidence and a criminal's subsequent confession show they didn't commit deserve at least an apology -- and then, probably, a big, fat legal settlement -- from the state, the prosecutor and the District Attorney's Office.

Thus far, none has been forthcoming, despite indisputable -- make that previously-thought-to-be-indisputable -- DNA evidence. The closest thing to an apology the defendants received from DA Robert Morgenthau was the begrudging admission that there was "a probability that the verdicts would have been more favorable to the defendants" if the test results and confession had been known at the time.

In plain English, that means they wouldn't have been convicted.

If getting an admission from the DA that justice was not served was like pulling teeth, getting an admission from then-Prosecutor Linda Fairstein was akin to pulling hens' teeth: hens, of course, have no teeth, and Fairstein -- a dozen years later -- still won't acknowledge a miscarriage of justice. She says she has no doubt of the original suspects' guilt.

Cops, DA's and prosecutors are human beings, and humans make mistakes. That's forgivable, especially in an emotionally volatile case such as this.

What's not forgivable, though, is refusing to admit that a mistake has been made, despite irrefutable evidence.

In Fairstein's view, the five boys attacked the woman, raped her and left her bloodied and unconscious, and Matias Reyes -- the man whose confession and DNA have now linked him to the crime -- came along and raped her afterward.

Reyes, who is serving three life sentences for other rapes in Central Park and for raping and killing a pregnant woman, obviously didn't need someone to come along and soften up his victims for him: his brutality is well-documented.

That is not enough for Fairstein.

Her behavior in this crime and other high-profile cases could lead someone to question not only her motives, which may have been to further her career and book sales, but her methods, which included, the mother of one Central Park suspect said, interrogating juveniles with neither parents nor lawyers present.

Now, no one is contending that the five wrongly convicted boys -- whose confessions under controversial questioning they subsequently withdrew -- were en route to Bible study when the 28-year-old jogger was brutally attacked and raped. Indeed, the strongest alibi they can muster is that they were in a different section of Central Park mugging and harassing other people at the time the attacks occurred and wouldn't have been able to get to the area where the jogger was attacked in the required time.

A horrible crime was committed in Central Park that night, and one was obviously committed in court afterward.

Because of Fairstein's recalcitrance in the face of overwhelming evidence, another one is being committed even now.

An apology would indeed be nice.