Rape conviction overturned due to discrepancies found in victim's memoir.

[Cicada 5]

In 1999, author Alice Sebold wrote her emotional memoir Lucky, in which she detailed being raped and beaten by a stranger when she was eighteen, near the Syracuse University campus. Now, the man convicted of that rape is being exonerated.

The man, Anthony J. Broadwater, was exonerated on Monday as a state judge, his defense lawyers, and the Onondaga County district attorney agreed “that the case against him had been woefully flawed,” according to reporting from The New York Times.

A mixture of junk science and faulty police work is seen as responsible for this failure in justice. Broadwater’s conviction was apparently based on two things: A type of identification through microscopic hair analysis—something that is now seen as faulty—and Sebold’s in-court identification.

Sebold had first identified another man in a police lineup, but changed her mind when the original prosecutors untruthfully told her that Broadwater and the misidentified man had purposely tried to trick and confuse her. Sadly, when it comes to identification across racial lines (Sebold is white, and Broadwater is Black) the risk of wrongful ID is higher.

As pointed out by The Innocence Project, “42 percent of wrongful convictions based on misidentifications are cross-racial misidentifications,” and that tends to only be found out by DNA analysis and later post-conviction work.

State Supreme Court Justice Gordon J. Cuffy overturned Mr. Broadwater’s conviction of first-degree rape and five related charges, which means he will no longer be categorized as a sex offender. In response to this, so far, Ms. Sebold had no comment on the decision, and a spokesman for Scribner, the publisher of Lucy, said that the publisher had no plans to update the text with any information concerning this change.

Rape Conviction Depicted In Alice Sebold's Lucky Overturned

In 1999 American author Alice Sebold wrote her emotional memoir Lucky in which she detailed her experience of being raped and beaten by a stranger.

www.themarysue.com

 

[Cicada 5]

Sebold was a victim of a horrible crime, and the idea that she identified the wrong man will no doubt be a traumatic experience for her. When junk science and people within the system lie to get convictions, it does harm to victim all over again.

For Broadwater, while he was released from jail in 1998, his life was forever changed by everything that happened. He and his wife wanted to have children, but he felt they couldn’t because of the stigma of his conviction and the limitations it would create.


“I just hope and pray that maybe Ms. Sebold will come forward and say, ‘Hey, I made a grave mistake,’ and give me an apology,” Mr. Broadwater said. “I sympathize with her. But she was wrong.”

Timothy Mucciante, who was working as an executive producer of the adaptation of Lucky, played a pivotal role in this story when he began to notice discrepancies between the memoir and the script.

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

Sebold had first identified another man in a police lineup, but changed her mind when the original prosecutors untruthfully told her that Broadwater and the misidentified man had purposely tried to trick and confuse her.

Um...what? We need an industrial strength unpacking tool for this passing sentence.

 

[Gordon_4]

Jesus Christ, maybe it should become required for all Prosecutors to wear big red noses if they insist on acting like utter clowns.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

"Faulty" is probably not an accurate or strong enough adjective to describe that police work, holy shit

 

[Seanchaidh]

"Faulty" is probably not an accurate or strong enough adjective to describe that police work, holy shit

Distressingly common, perhaps?

 

[Kwak]

What were the discrepancies in the memoir?

 

[SilentPony]

Um...what? We need an industrial strength unpacking tool for this passing sentence.

Yeah I don't get what this means. The DA told the woman two of the people in a police lineup had conspired to be in the same lineup to confuse the woman and produce a false positive ident?

 

[AnxietyProne]

*SIGH* Bullshit like this is how you get MGTOWS. Do you want MGTOWS?!

 

[Agema]

*SIGH* Bullshit like this is how you get MGTOWS. Do you want MGTOWS?!

I'm not sure this has really got much to do with MGTOWs.

Misidentification is not unusual - but identification is rarely enough to convict on its own. The real problem is that the police lied to and tricked the victim to turn misidentification into an apparent identification, and added some crappy forensics to seal the deal. This is therefore a problem of police processes.

 

[AnxietyProne]

I'm not sure this has really got much to do with MGTOWs.

The manosphere set tends to hop on just about ever false identification case and make it the norm.

 

[Agema]

The manosphere set tends to hop on just about ever false identification case and make it the norm.

Strikes me it's more of a "black men shouldn't fuck white women" sort of discrimination.

 

[AnxietyProne]

Strikes me it's more of a "black men shouldn't fuck white women" sort of discrimination.

Some of them, for sure, but that hang up belongs more to another species of Chud.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Alice Sebold apologizes to man cleared of 1981 rape featured in her memoir

Author struggles with role she played ‘within a system that sent an innocent man to jail’ after Anthony Broadwater, 61, exonerated

www.theguardian.com

 

[Agema]

Alice Sebold apologizes to man cleared of 1981 rape featured in her memoir

Author struggles with role she played ‘within a system that sent an innocent man to jail’ after Anthony Broadwater, 61, exonerated

www.theguardian.com

Some credit to her there, given some people can't accept and won't apologise.