New York state has agreed to pay $5.5 million to settle a lawsuit brought by a man who spent 16 years in prison after he was wrongfully convicted of sexually assaulting The Lovely Bones scribe Alice Sebold in 1981, his lawyers said. Anthony Broadwater, now 62, was “relieved” by the settlement, one of his attorneys told Gothamist, calling the conviction “the epitome of racism.” After being convicted largely on the basis of a type of hair evidence now deemed inadmissible by the FBI, Broadwater was imprisoned until his release in 1999, whereupon he was required to register as a sex offender. “He’s been declined jobs, he’s been terminated from employment, he’s been told he can’t seek educational opportunities because of his sex offender registration,” the lawyer said. His conviction was finally vacated in 2021. A judge verbally approved the agreement last month, one of Broadwater’s attorneys told The New York Times. It has since been signed by Broadwater’s lawyers and the New York attorney general’s office, but must also be signed by a judge before it is finalized.
