Syracuse, N.Y. — Anthony Broadwater has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Syracuse and Onondaga County over his wrongful rape conviction and 16-year imprisonment.
The Syracuse man was exonerated last year of his wrongful conviction for the 1981 rape of Alice Sebold, a Syracuse University student who went on to become a best-selling author.
A state Supreme Court judge overturned the conviction last year because of serious flaws in Broadwater’s prosecution. His lawyers revealed Sebold initially identified another man in a police lineup as the rapist and prosecutors used faulty hair analysis to pin the crime on Broadwater.
William Fitzpatrick, Onondaga County district attorney, championed Broadwater’s innocence after being alerted to the injustice by Broadwater’s lawyers.
In February Broadwater filed a $50 million lawsuit against the state for wrongful imprisonment.
Instead of quickly settling the case and paying Broadwater his money, the state Attorney General’s Office filed court papers that put the case on track for trial in 2024, possibly later. It’s a legal process that can take years to get justice.
Broadwater, 62, has little money and tries to make ends meet selling scrap mental he finds on the street.
The federal lawsuit says Broadwater’s wrongful conviction and imprisonment violated his constitutional rights. It seeks monetary damages.
In addition to the city and county, other defendants named in the lawsuit include the late George Lorenz, a Syracuse police detective who died in 2017, and Gail Uebelhoer, a former Onondaga County assistant district attorney.
Broadwater was 20 years old when Sebold, then an 18-year-old college student, spotted him on Marshall Street in the summer of 1981 and accused him of being the man who raped her five months before in Thornden Park.
Sebold picked a different Black man out of a police lineup, but Broadwater was tried and convicted by a judge based on the botched lineup and debunked science.
Read more:
Alice Sebold case: How race and incompetence doomed Anthony Broadwater to prison