New York State Supreme Court Justice Gordon Cuffy on Nov. 22 vacated the rape conviction that kept Anthony Broadwater behind bars for 16 years.
Broadwater was convicted in 1982 of the rape of author Alice Sebold. Sebold, author of the book “The Lovely Bones,” wrote about the rape in her 1999 memoir “Lucky.”
The memoir, which sold over 1 million copies and setoff Sebold’s career as an author, had been set to become a Netflix film adaptation. But questions arose about Broadwater’s guilt after a producer for the project hired a private investigator to look into the events of the memoir.
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Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick sided with two defense attorneys who requested the conviction be vacated over concerns over the prosecution of the case four decades ago.
“I’m not going to sully this proceeding by saying, ‘I’m sorry.’ That doesn’t cut it,” Fitzpatrick said Monday in court. “This should never have happened.”
“I never, ever, ever thought I would see the day that I would be exonerated,” Broadwater, now 61, said following the decision.
The case was built primarily on Sebold’s testimony that Broadwater was the man who attacked her, and on hair analysis later deemed faulty. Sebold hasn’t commented publicly on the exoneration of the man her testimony sent to prison.
Sebold wrote in “Lucky” that while she was a freshman at Syracuse University on 1981, a Black man attacked and raped her. Five months later, Sebold spotted a Black man on the street. She believed he was her attacker and contacted authorities.
