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On Tuesday a federal court unsealed the complaint filed on Nov. 21 in Anthony Broadwater’s civil lawsuit against the city of Syracuse, Onondaga County and five individual defendants for his wrongful 16-year imprisonment for the 1981 rape of then-Syracuse University freshman Alice Sebold.

The petition follows another February lawsuit – filed just months after his November 2021 exoneration – in which Broadwater sued the State of New York for $50 million over police and prosecutorial misconduct which led to his unjust conviction and imprisonment. Now, still having yet to receive a decision from the state, Broadwater filed suit at the city and county level for compensatory damages as well as against the five individual defendants listed for punitive damages.

The new lawsuit demands a trial by jury, and maintains that the case falls under federal courts’ jurisdiction because Broadwater’s claims seek compensation for violation of his rights under the U.S. Constitution.

Broadwater is suing under the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, as well as a federal statute establishing civil protections against deprivation of rights. The lawsuit claims that the “malicious criminal prosecution” of Broadwater as well as his wrongful and false conviction and imprisonment are violations of his “fundamental” constitutional rights.

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More coverage on Anthony Broadwater’s exoneration:

• Anthony Broadwater files unjust imprisonment suit against New York state
• Man convicted of raping ‘Lovely Bones’ author Alice Sebold exonerated

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Individually-listed defendants include then-Assistant District Attorney Gail Uebelhoer, Syracuse Police Department Detective George Lorenz, who died in 2017, and five anonymous defendants. The complaint claims that “false and highly suggestive representations” by Uebelhoer and Lorenz led to Sebold’s identification of Broadwater as her rapist and his subsequent wrongful conviction.

Broadwater’s 1982 conviction was predicated on a faulty hair analysis and Sebold’s identification of Broadwater near SU’s campus on Marshall street in October 1981, five months after she was raped in Thornden Park.

When Sebold did not choose Broadwater in a police lineup following her initial identification, Uebelhoer falsely told Sebold that the man Sebold chose was Broadwater’s friend included to trick her, and Lorenz rationalized that Sebold chose another person because she was “in a hurry to get out of there,” the lawsuit reads. Sebold first documented these conversations in her memoir “Lucky,” which she published 17 years after Broadwater’s conviction.

After 16 years of false imprisonment and 40 years of wrongful conviction, the lawsuit claims that from the time Broadwater was released from prison in 1998 and forced to register publicly as a Level Two sex offender, he’s had limited employment opportunities and lost jobs.

February’s lawsuit – which seeks damages for “past lost wages, future lost wages, plus lost benefits and pensions,” – didn’t receive comment from the state until Assistant Attorney General Bonnie Levy filed a response deflecting the petition for damages, writing that Broadwater hadn’t proven by “clear and convincing evidence” that he didn’t commit any of the crimes for which he was charged or “bring about his own conviction.”

The city of Syracuse and Onondaga County are required to answer the complaint by Dec. 27, according to two affidavits served Monday. As of Dec. 6, no defendant named in the lawsuit has filed an answer.

Published on December 6, 2022 at 11:49 pm

Contact Jana: jlseal@syr.edu | @JanaLoSeal