Filmmaker’s doubts help clear man convicted of author Alice Sebold’s rape

Author Alice Sebold wrote about the rape in her memoir 'Lucky,' which helped launch her writing career and sold more than one million copies.

A man once convicted of raping American novelist Alice Sebold has been cleared of any wrongdoing after a film producer crafting a movie about the case helped to exonerate him.

Anthony Broadwater spent 16 years in prison after a 1982 trial found him guilty of raping Sebold while she was an 18-year-old student at Syracuse University.

Sebold went on to tell the story in her 1999 memoir, Lucky.

That memoir was in the process of being adapted for film, but research for the movie led one producer to become skeptical of Broadwater’s guilt when the first draft of the film script differed so much from the book. It prompted Tim Mucciante to take a closer look at the circumstances that lead to Broadwater’s conviction.

“I started poking around and trying to figure out what really happened here,” Mucciante told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Sebold, 58, wrote in Lucky of being raped in a tunnel as a first-year Syracuse student in 1981 and then spotting a Black man in the street months later that she was sure was her attacker.

“He was smiling as he approached. He recognized me. It was a stroll in the park to him; he had met an acquaintance on the street,” wrote Sebold, who is white. “‘Hey, girl,’ he said. ‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?'”

She said she didn’t respond: “I looked directly at him. Knew his face had been the face over me in the tunnel.”