At the end of November 2021, the Daily Mail revealed how the adaptation of the book “Lucky”, by Alice Sebold, by the Netflix platform made it possible to exonerate Anthony Broadwater, a man sentenced to 16 years in prison.
In 1999, Alice Sebold published Lucky, a book that tells of the rape she suffered a few years earlier while a student at Syracuse University in New York. The book is published a year after the release of Anthony Broadwater, who was convicted and spent 16 years in prison. More than 20 years after the publication of Lucky, the book had to be adapted for the screen by the Netflix streaming platform. In an interview with Daily Mail, producer Timothy Mucciante recounted how this adaptation project caused him to have doubts about Anthony Broadwater’s guilt. “The script was very good, but it wasn’t as true to the book as I thought it would and I didn’t know why.”
The producer also confided in New York Times. “I started to have doubts, not about the story Alice told about her assault, which was tragic, but the second part of her book on the trial, which did not hold water.” Timothy Mucciante then decided to hire a private investigator, Dan Myers, to clarify certain parts of the trial.
The judicial inconsistencies of the case
Five months after her assault, Alice Sebold claimed to have passed her attacker in the street while walking, but did not know his name. She only knew that her attacker was a black man. She then went to a police station, which led to the arrest of Anthony Broadwater. Faced with five men suspected of being her attacker, Alice Sebold was unable to identify the culprit. However, following a hair analysis, the prosecutor supported the idea that the culprit was Anthony Broadwater. After which the latter was sentenced to 16 years in prison, yet claiming his innocence and appealing during all these years.
The recent investigation by producer Timothy Mucciante and Detective Dan Myers has raised the legal inconsistencies in the case. Indeed, for the producer, Alice Sebold did not intentionally act in such a way as to harm Anthony Broadwater. She was raped. However, Anthony Broadwater did not have a criminal record, as the book reveals Lucky. Not to mention the hair analysis which would have been presented as relentless evidence during the trial, when it is not.
Since the events, 40 years have passed. But Monday, November 22, 2021, following this new investigation, Anthony Broadwater’s sentence was quashed by the New York court. The lack of evidence thus led the judge to revise the judgment of the man who spent 16 years in prison.
If the horror suffered by Alice Sebold is not called into question, it is indeed a miscarriage of justice and a hastily established trial that is deplored. As a reminder, false accusations of rape represent 2 to 10% of accusations according to a study by the National Sexual Violence Resource Center published in 2012. In fact, the case of Alice Sebold and Anthony Broawcast reveals above all the systemic racism of American justice, quick to condemn black men to heavy penalties without the files still standing.