Anthony Broadwater to receive $5.5 million settlement from New York state

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Editor’s Note: This story contains mentions of rape.

New York state will pay a settlement of $5.5 million to Anthony Broadwater, who in February 2022 sued the state after being wrongfully convicted for 40 years and imprisoned for 16 years for the 1981 rape of then-Syracuse University freshman Alice Sebold.

Broadwater was convicted after Sebold spotted him on Marshall Street and identified him as her rapist five months after her May 1981 rape in Thornden Park. Sebold later chose a different man in a lineup, but revised her choice to identify Broadwater after conversations with officials. The lawsuit points to those conversations as having swayed Sebold and contributed to Broadwater’s wrongful conviction.

The conversations — between Sebold and then-Assistant District Attorney Gail Uebelhoer and former Syracuse Police Detective George Lorenz — were first publicly documented in Sebold’s 1999 memoir entitled “Lucky,” which detailed her rape and the ensuing investigation. The conversations surfacing over 20 years later led to the eventual overturn of Broadwater’s conviction by Onondaga County Supreme Court Justice Gordon Cuffy in November 2021.

Broadwater’s attorneys proposed the $5.5 million settlement in February of this year, and attorneys from both parties signed it last week.

While the settlement still needs to be signed by a judge, NYS Court of Claims Judge Ramon E. Rivera verbally approved the agreement in February 2023, Melissa Swartz, one of Broadwater’s lawyers, told The New York Times.

Broadwater’s initial lawsuit against the state demanded $50 million in compensatory damages, including lost wages and emotional suffering, among other reasons, as a result of his unjust conviction and imprisonment. The lawsuit came three months after Broadwater’s conviction was overturned in November 2021 on the basis that the 1982 conviction relied solely on Sebold’s identification and faulty hair analysis.

The FBI and the United States Department of Justice have since deemed hair analysis to be a flawed forensic tool. An April 2015 analysis by the FBI, the DOJ and other parties found that the FBI’s microscopic hair analysis contained errors in at least 90% of cases. The report focused on cases prior to 2000, when hair analysis was routinely used and before the forensic tool was determined to be flawed.

Despite Broadwater’s passing two polygraph tests and a lack of evidence beyond Sebold’s identification and the hair analysis, he was convicted of first-degree rape and five other related charges, and sentenced to a minimum of eight years in prison. After being released from prison in 1998, Broadwater was required to register as a sex offender for an additional 23 years until the conviction was overturned.

Sebold issued an online statement apologizing to Broadwater following his exoneration, in which she apologized for her role in his conviction and unjust imprisonment, and lamented the systemic injustice of the American judicial system which enabled the conviction.

“I am sorry most of all for the fact that the life you could have led was unjustly robbed from you, and I know that no apology can change what happened to you and never will, “ Sebold said in the statement. “Of the many things I wish for you, I hope most of all that you and your family will be granted the time and privacy to heal.”

Broadwater also filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in November 2022 against Onondaga County, the City of Syracuse and individually-listed defendants from the initial trial, including Uebelhoer, Lorenz, who died in 2017, and five unnamed defendants.

In the federal lawsuit, Broadwater claims his wrongful conviction violated his fundamental constitutional rights under the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, as well as a federal civil protections statute. The case is still pending.

“I appreciate what Attorney General James has done and I hope and pray that others in my situation can achieve the same measure of justice,” Broadwater said in a statement on Monday. “We all suffer from destroyed lives.”