It was a case of too little, too late. Author Alice Sebold has finally expressed regret for wrongfully getting an innocent man jailed for 16 years while her publisher has also pulled the bestseller she claimed was based on a real crime.
She apologized to Anthony Broadwater and said that she was truly sorry for what he had to go through. Broadwater, now 61, was exonerated by a court in Syracuse last Monday.
She said that she deeply regretted the loss of the life that Anthony could have enjoyed and admitted that no amount of apology could undo the wrong done to him. She said that she would regret the incident for the rest of her life.
Alice Sebold said that it had taken her 8 days to comprehend the injustice of the whole incident. She said that she had chosen repose faith in the American legal system. She says that all she sought back in 1982 was justice. It hadn’t been her intention to propagate injustice, she claims.
Alice Sebold says that she had never comprehended that the crime could irreparably alter the life of an innocent man. She blames the system and the society back then for not having questioned the flimsy grounds on which the Black man was convicted, though nothing much has changed.
The Flawed And Flimsy Evidence Used In The Alice Sebold Was Used To Convict Thousands Of Black Defendants By A Racist Judicial System
Broadwater was released in 1999 but continues to be on the sex offenders list. It turned into a complete life sentence for him.
Sebold tried to pass off the incident on systemic issues plaguing the American judicial system. But she had picked out another man during the trial after initially having identified a different man in the lineup.
Broadwater remains just one among the thousands of colored people brutalized by a racist judicial system. His conviction was based on 2 pieces of evidence; Alice Sebold wrongly identifying him, and a junk science method of hair analysis.
Broadwater’s innocence was established when an executive producer Tim Mucciante for the movie adaptation of ‘Lucky’ found discrepancies in the trial and hired a private investigator. It led to Broadwater being exonerated of all charges against Alice Sebold finally.
Alice Sebold used the story to kickstart her literary career and made millions in book sales. Broadwater has lived in squalor all his life and never had the courage to have children as he did not want them to suffer the stigma.
