Source: Emily Horowitz – reason.com – 11/29/21
Anthony Broadwater, now 61, had no idea his accuser achieved fame and fortune while he has been living as a pariah for over 20 years on the sex offender registry.
Alice Sebold’s bestselling 1999 memoir Lucky tells the story of a young woman raped by a stranger while attending Syracuse University. In the book, the rapist is caught and convicted. After writing about the experience, Sebold went on to write the bestseller The Lovely Bones, a fictional account of a teenage girl raped and killed. But last week Anthony Broadwater, the man who served 16 years in prison for raping Sebold, was exonerated.
Timothy Mucciante, a producer working on a film adaptation of Lucky, was fired after raising questions about inconsistencies in Sebold’s story. Mucciante, who has a legal background, started reviewing the police files; he became even more troubled by discrepancies between the memoir and the facts of the case, to the point where he “couldn’t sleep.” Mucciante ended up hiring a private investigator to investigate further, and the P.I. broke the case. Broadwater’s conviction turns out to have rested on shaky evidence: Sebold had had trouble identifying her assailant—she had initially picked a different man out of a lineup—and the only forensic evidence was a form of hair analysis that the government now considers junk science. Even at the time, the expert witness could only say that the attacker’s hair was “consistent” with Broadwater’s, not that it definitively was his hair.
Broadwater was placed on the New York Sex Offender Registry after his 1999 release, and he remained on it until a few days ago. His case starkly highlights the needless cruelty of sex offense registries.
I hope he can sue her for all the royalties from her slanderous book, and in a just system she would be convicted for falsely accusing him.
She should pay him for the damage she’s caused by misidentifying him as her rapist.
Terrible case. Both she and the system need to pay great restitution for this man. She should be greatly ashamed of her actions for going along with the DA despite having identified a completely different person in the line-up. She clearly had no idea who did and was just looking for satisfaction no matter the cost.
I’m still dumbfounded how no one on the prosecution side ever seems to be directly held accountable, even when it’s shown that it was their direct actions of withholding evidence and sometimes downright fabricating it that got that conviction.
Another example of how flawed the system is. Even for people who did do something clearly not even a life sentence or death sentence is enough of a deterrent to keep others from doing the same type of conduct or worse in the future. All around there’s no justice (whatever justice means).
Wow! The article does show how cruel and unusual punishment the registry is only to registrants. In the article, it cites how he served two sentences: one from jail and the other from the registry. I’m sure many of us feel this way. I do.
Maybe he can write or someone can write a book on his behalf, revealing how the registry is punishment and how society doesn’t want want you back after serving your time.
Still, what a sad story.