The Sunday Times - UK (2021-11-28)

36 The Sunday Times November 28, 2021

NEWS REVIEW

her she had fallen into a trap. Broadwater

had insisted on bringing along a friend

who looked like him, and the two men

stood next to one another, one looking

downcast and diminutive, the other star-

ing straight at her to throw off her judg-

ment. “They really worked a number on

you. He uses the friend, or the friend uses

him, in every line-up they do,” Uebelhoer

told her in Sebold’s account.

The case against Broadwater pro-

ceeded to trial. But Mucciante knew the

exchange should never have taken place.

“It’s completely inappropriate for an

assistant district attorney to make these

kinds of statement,” he says.

The racial undertones of the book

were causing other problems. The film

was being made in the wake of the 2020

murder of George Floyd. Mucciante says

a black actor who had been in pole posi-

tion to play the part of Broadwater pulled

out. A decision was made to change the

story: the assailant became a white man.

Mucciante disagreed, fell out with the

production team and was fired in June. It

was reported last week that the project

has been abandoned. After leaving, Muc-

ciante was free to work out what it was

about the book that bothered him so

Anthony

Broadwater

breaks down in

court as his 1982

rape conviction is

overturned.

Below,

Broadwater with

Timothy

Mucciante. Left,

Alice Sebold’s

novel The

Lovely Bones is

also about rape

Joey Delaney, six,

with parents Sophie

and Andrew, was

vomited on by a

drunk spectator

experience.” One idiot puker,

spoiling it for everyone else.

Except would it really be

so bad if drinking were

banned in the stands, as it is,

Crouchy notwithstanding, at

football matches? The Welsh

O

n October 5, 1981, a young

black man and a young white

woman crossed paths on

Marshall Street in Syracuse,

New York. They barely inter-

acted, but that moment

would set the course of both

of their lives. The woman

was the author Alice Sebold,

then an 18-year-old under-

graduate at Syracuse University reeling

from a rape she had endured five months

earlier. She was confused and angry

about what had happened to her, but in

that moment she felt certain of some-

thing for the first time in months: this was

the man who had raped her.

She would describe this moment years

later in her first book, a memoir called

Lucky, about her rape and the sub-

sequent trial of the man for taking her vir-

ginity in an underpass. “I knew his face

had been the face over me in the tunnel.

Knew I had kissed those lips, stared into

those eyes,” she wrote.

It would launch her onto the literary

scene. She was lauded by critics as some-

one who could “speak the unspeakable”

about sexual assault, a reputation she

cemented with her second book, The

Lovely Bones, published in 2002, the

story of a 14-year-old girl who is raped

and murdered. It sold more than a mil-

lion copies, topped bestseller lists and

was made into a film starring Saoirse

Ronan and Rachel Weisz.

For the man, Anthony Broadwater,

who had just left the marines, the day

would have very different consequences.

He was convicted of rape and served 16½

years in prison. Only now has it emerged

that on that autumn afternoon Sebold

made a terrible mistake.

On Monday, Broadwater, 61, was

cleared of any involvement in the crime.

He wept as a statement from the district

attorney, William Fitzpatrick, was read to

the court: “I will not tarnish this proceed-

ing by saying I’m sorry. That does not

matter. This should never have hap-

pened.”

How it did happen is a tale of our

times: one that shows the extent to which

race, inequality and prejudice still play a

pivotal role in the American justice sys-

tem. Most surprising of all is that Sebold’s

book was the key piece of evidence used

to overturn Broadwater’s conviction.

None of this would have happened

were it not for Timothy Mucciante, an

unassuming lawyer, writer and former

journalist from Michigan. In January,

Mucciante was hired as executive pro-

ducer of a film adaptation of Lucky,

Sebold’s memoir. It was a big production

and a big break for him, so he set about

familiarising himself with the book.

Almost 30 years after it was written,

Lucky is still a powerful read: the account

She

pointed

out the

only

black

guy in

court

him. Instead an expert had testified that

they were “consistent”. The scientific

basis for this technique has been thor-

oughly discredited in the years since the

1982 trial.

The second was Sebold’s account of

what had happened before and after the

line-up. The man she identified, Henry

Hudson, whom Sebold said could have

been an “identical twin”, looked nothing

like Broadwater. He had had nothing to

do with the crime, and he and Broad-

water had never met before they arrived

at the police station that day. Contrary to

what Sebold was told, Broadwater had

never been in a police line-up until then.

The racist undercurrents of the trial

trouble Mucciante most, particularly at a

time when the racial fault line running

through the justice system has been laid

bare. Transcripts show that in 1982 the

prosecution repeatedly brought up the

victim’s behaviour, clothing and virginity

to highlight her credibility and empha-

sise his alleged guilt in a way that his law-

yers described as a “dog whistle”. At one

point, attempting to make up for her

error in the line-up, Sebold was asked by

the prosecution to identify her rapist in

court. Broadwater was the only black

man in the room. “The idea that she

could point out the only black guy in the

courtroom and that is her only identifica-

tion of him ever — I mean, how much

more racist can we get?” Mucciante asks.

Sebold comes back to the issue of race

again and again in Lucky. She recalls the

discomfort she felt when the black boy-

friend of a friend tried to hug her and the

“fear I felt around certain black men

since the rape”. She is acutely aware of

how Broadwater’s trial looked — that she,

the white, middle-class daughter of an

academic, was accusing a black man of

rape. At one point she writes: “This

wouldn’t be the first time, or the last, that

I wished my rapist had been white.” But

never does she does appear to dwell on it

enough to consider if she made a mistake.

Sebold has declined to comment, and

her publisher, Scribner, said there was no

plan to alter the book.

Broadwater said last week that the con-

viction had ruined his life. He has been on

the sex offenders register, has been

turned down for jobs and said he

could count on two hands the

homes he had been welcomed

into. “That’s very traumatic

for me,” he told the judge.

Even so, Mucciante says

Broadwater is not angry with

Sebold.

“All he really wants from Alice

is for her to say, ‘I was 18. I was

misguided by the defence. It was

a mistake.’ He is not holding her

personally responsible. She

didn’t know any better.”

much. He found Dan Myers, a private

detective who had good police contacts

in Syracuse, and hired him to dig, with-

out really knowing what he was hoping to

find. Broadwater was released from

prison in 1999. Myers and a colleague

were able to track him down to a run-

down flat in Syracuse and interviewed

him for an hour. They got in the car after-

wards, looked at one another. “‘This

guy’s not guilty. Oh my God,’ we said.

That’s how it started,” Mucciante recalls.

Mucciante has no doubt Sebold’s error

was an honest one, but once they started

looking, they found red flags every-

where. The attacker was said to be

right-handed. “The first time I met

Anthony, he had to sign paper-

work for the private investiga-

tor and I noticed he signed it

with his left hand.”

Two points in particular

undermined the case. One was

that the only crime-scene evi-

dence against Broadwater was

microscopic hair analysis — a

hair had been retrieved from

Sebold’s body and Broadwater

had voluntarily submitted one,

believing it would exonerate

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KATRINA TULLOCH/AP; BASSO CANNARSA/PHOTO OPALE/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

The film producer who left the set

then cleared an innocent man

In 1981 Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones, gave evidence that sent someone she believed had raped

her to prison for 16 years. Last week he was exonerated. Rosie Kinchen hears how the case was cracked

of Sebold’s rape at 18, the trial and the

impact it had on her life. It is unflinching

in its detail. Sebold recounts the feeling of

being pushed to the ground; of having a

tongue forced into her mouth and hands

shoved inside her. “Those who say they

would rather fight to the death than be

raped are fools. I would rather be raped a

thousand times. You do what you have

to,” Sebold writes.

The first part of the book did not raise

any concerns in Mucciante’s mind.

“None of my doubts involve the story she

told about her assault, which was tragic,”

he told me last week. “My doubts came

about from the trial portion, which is

essentially the second half of the book.”

He was particularly concerned by the

police line-up. About a month after she

had seen Broadwater in the street, Sebold

was asked to pick out her attacker from a

line-up of five black men. She chose No 5;

Broadwater was No 4. In her memoir she

explains this away: the two men “were

like identical twins”, she observes.

An officer told her she had chosen

“the wrong one” and Sebold

recalls feeling crestfallen until,

she writes, the deputy district

attorney, Gail Uebelhoer, told

Tackle rugby’s grandstand drunks: real fans are sick of them

vomited copiously over his

scarf, Wales hat and parents.

Joey’s mum, Sophie, had to

clean up her tearful son and

resist the urge to smack the

idiot puker. “There was sick

everywhere,” she told the

BBC. “I had to stop myself

from crying from seeing my

son so upset and from the

absolute shock of it all.”

The Delaneys had found

themselves at the sharp (or

certainly splattered) end

of the problem

blighting rugby

stadiums around the

British Isles: drinking

during matches.

Tracey Crouch, the

MP and former sports

minister, might want a

word with the

Delaneys before she

S

pare a thought for six-

year-old Joey Delaney,

dead excited about

going to his first

international rugby

match last weekend —

Wales v Australia at

Cardiff ’s Principality

Stadium. His enthusiasm

was dampened in a most

unpleasant way when a

drunk fan in the row behind

Surely it’s possible

to sit through 80

minutes without a

pint? Liz Edwards

wonders when

elite egg-chasing

got quite so boozy

manage 90? Surely it brings

the game into disrepute.

Bad behaviour among

rugby “gentlemen” is, of

course, nothing new. I once

worked the bar for an Oxford

University men’s team

function. Later, wringing out

the mop by hand, someone

pointed out that the puddles

weren’t beer. After a college

rugby club do (I played

hooker for the women’s

team), one of the men’s team

threw up all over the 400-

year-old dining hall table.

Some say there is even

more annoying stuff that

doesn’t grab the headlines.

On a recent episode of Radio

5’s Fighting Talk, the former

England lock Martin Bayfield

bemoaned the constant

disruption of fans getting up

to go to the bar (and then,

inevitably, the loo). More

than £100 for a ticket, 30 elite

athletes pulling out all the

stops and they can’t stay put

and watch for 40 minutes.

In the corporate

hospitality boxes the “fans”

don’t even pretend to care

about the game. At

Twickenham they might join

in with Swing Low but really

they’re there for the booze

and schmooze.

I admit I’ve enjoyed that

Twickenham hospitality in

my time. I’ve taken a selfie

and chatted to my neighbour;

I’ve even nipped to the bar

for a pint or two (only from

the end of a row, promise).

But I’m there for the rucks

and mauls. And I’ve never

puked on a six-year-old.

pushes any harder for a

proposal to reintroduce

boozing during football

games. Or she could take a

trip to Murrayfield in

Edinburgh, Dublin’s Aviva

Stadium or Twickenham in

London, all of which attract

their share of beered-up men

(of course, it’s usually men)

behaving badly.

We might also spare a

thought for the thousands of

non-puking Welsh fans sick

with worry at the prospect of

watching live rugby without a

pint in hand. A previous pitch

invasion had already

prompted Mark Williams,

manager of the Principality

Stadium, to say, darkly: “We

might be forced to look at

additional measures that will

impact on the fan

Rugby Union (WRU) already

offers an alcohol-free zone in

the Cardiff stadium. Paul

Davies, a hero of Welsh

wheelchair rugby, told Wales

Online he was thinking the

unthinkable: he wanted the

WRU to close the bar during

games.

It’s a tough sell but perhaps

an appeal to rugby fans’ sense

of shame might work. That

old saw comparing rugby

with soccer — a hooligan’s

game played by gentlemen

rather than a gentleman’s

game played by hooligans —

might not bear much scrutiny

but it tells you plenty about

the sense of superiority that

comes with a preference for

an egg-shaped ball. Not able

to last 80 minutes without a

top-up, when the other lot

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