New York to pay $5.5M to man exonerated in Sebold rape case

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) — A man who spent 16 years in prison after he was wrongfully convicted of raping author Alice Sebold when she was a student at Syracuse University has filed a $5.5 million lawsuit against New York State. The lawsuit was filed, his lawyers said on Monday.

The settlement comes after Anthony Broadwater’s conviction for raping Sebold in 1981 was overturned in 2021. It was signed last week by attorneys for Broadwater and New York Attorney General Letitia James, one of Broadwater’s attorneys, David Hammond.

Broadwater, 62, said in a statement broadcast by Hammond, “I appreciate what Attorney General James has done, and I hope and pray that others in my position can receive a similar measure of justice.” . We are all suffering from destroyed lives.”

“Clearly no amount of money can undo the injustice meted out to Mr. Broadwater, but the settlement now officially acknowledges him,” Sebold said in a statement released through a spokeswoman.

In May 1981, Sebold was raped in a park near campus when she was an 18-year-old first-year student. She described the attack and ensuing prosecution in a memoir, “Lucky”, published in 1999.

Sebold won acclaim for her 2002 novel “The Lovely Bones,” which recounts the events following the rape and murder of a teenage girl and was made into a film starring Saoirse Ronan, Susan Sarandon and Stanley Tucci.

Sebold, who is white, wrote in “Lucky” that she saw a black man on the street months after the rape and was sure he was her assailant.

“He was smiling as we approached. He recognized me. It was a walk in the park for him; he had met an acquaintance on the street,” Sebold wrote. “’Hey, girl,’ he said. ‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’ ,

The police arrested Broadwater, who had been given the pseudonym Gregory Madison in “Lucky”. But Sebold failed to identify her in a police lineup, choosing a different man as her assailant.

Broadwater was tried and convicted in 1982, after Sebold identified him as her rapist on a witness stand and an expert said microscopic hair analysis tied Broadwater to the crime. That type of analysis has been deemed junk science by the US Department of Justice.

Broadwater was released from prison in 1999. But he has to register as a sex offender until his sentence ends in November 2021.

William J. Fitzpatrick, the current district attorney for Onondaga County, the central New York county that includes Syracuse, joined the motion to vacate the conviction, noting that witness identifications, especially across racial lines, are often unreliable.

Broadwater’s settlement with the state must be approved by a judge before it becomes final.

“Anthony Broadwater was convicted of a crime he never committed, and jailed despite his innocence. While we cannot undo the mistakes of more than four decades ago, it The settlement agreement is an important step forward in giving Mr. Broadwater some semblance of justice,” James said in an emailed statement.

Broadwater has also filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Onondaga County, the city of Syracuse and an assistant district attorney and a police officer who were involved in prosecuting him. That matter is pending.

Sebold apologized to Broadwater in a statement released to The Associated Press in 2021 and later posted on Medium.

She wrote that “As an 18-year-old rape victim, I decided to put my faith in the American legal system. In 1982 my goal was justice—not the perpetuation of injustice. And certainly not forever, and irrevocably.” From, change the life of a young man with the same crime that changed mine.