Anthony Broadwater served 16 years in prison and decades on the sex offender registry for a rape he did not commit. Now, New York State has agreed to pay Mr. Broadwater $5.5 million to settle his wrongful conviction claims.

Mr. Broadwater, who is Black, was convicted in a 1981 bench trial of raping author Alice Sebold based on a questionable eyewitness identification and a lineup in which Ms. Sebold, who is White, identified a different Black man. The only other purported evidence against Mr. Broadwater was a microscopic hair analysis, which has since been deemed unreliable junk science by the FBI.

Mr. Broadwater was exonerated in 2021 after his attorneys David Hammond and Melissa Swartz exposed multiple errors that occurred during Mr. Broadwater’s trial. “I’m not going to sully this proceeding by saying, ‘I’m sorry.’ That doesn’t cut it,” said Onondaga District Attorney William Fitzpatrick in 2021 when he agreed to the overturning of Mr. Broadwater’s conviction. “This should never have happened.”

Mr. Broadwater was represented in his lawsuit against the State of New York by ECBAWM attorneys Earl Ward, Andrew G. Celli, Jr., and Max Selver, along with Mr. Hammond and Ms. Swartz.

Press
“New York to pay Anthony Broadwater $5.5M for wrongful conviction in rape of Alice Sebold,” Syracuse.com