Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Alice Sebold, Anthony Broadwater and a terrible miscarriage of justice

Alice Sebold meets Prince Charles at the premiere of the film based on her novel 'The Lovely Bones' (Getty images)

There are few more terrible fates than to be condemned and imprisoned for a crime you didn’t commit; but to have borne witness in a trial that led to a man being unjustly punished must be terrible too.

The writer Alice Sebold has apologised for the wrongful imprisonment of Anthony Broadwater. He was convicted based on Sebold’s evidence, and other testimony, for her rape in 1981 when she was a student. There is no doubt that she was raped and beaten; it was, as she wrote in her best-selling memoir, Lucky, a trauma that shaped her life. But there is also now no doubt that it was her identification of Broadwater on the witness stand, as well as flawed forensic evidence based on microscopic hair analysis, that contributed to his conviction.

Some months after the attack, she identified a man in the neighbourhood that she thought might have been her attacker. But in a police suspect lineup she identified another man, saying it was because she was frightened of ‘the expression in his eyes’. A composite picture of the attacker based on her account did not resemble him. Yet in court she identified him as her attacker from the witness stand.

Of course, the other terrifying aspect to this miscarriage of justice is the willingness of juries to be mesmerised by the apparent objectivity of forensic evidence, including hair analysis that the US Department of Justice has subsequently identified as junk science. Most of us – so most juries – are captivated by the apparent testimony of ‘the science’; this is further proof of its fallibility. But Alice Sebold’s testimony undoubtedly helped put Broadwater in prison. 

We should, of course, remember that Sebold was a victim

We should, of course, remember that Seboldv is a victim: she was traumatised by a brutal attack, and she was only 18 at the time.

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