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In 1981, at the age of 20, Anthony Broadwater, a spirited U.S. Marine, traveled to Syracuse, New York, to care for his ailing father, only to be mistaken for sexual assault and imprisoned for 16 years.
In 2021, Anthony once again stood in court. And this time, he was greeted no longer by an unjust trial, but by a complete victory: he was acquitted.
This is a justice that is 40 years late. No one would have thought that the opportunity to help Anthony turn over the case was a clue discovered by a filmmaker while adapting the work.
1 A misidentification
On May 8, 1981, Alice Seabird, an 18-year-old student at Syracuse University, was attacked on her way back to her dormitory, dragged into a tunnel and violently abused. She called the police at the first time, but she was dismissed because of the lack of witnesses.
The police told her that not long ago, inside the same tunnel, a girl had also been assaulted. The difference was that the girl was brutally killed and dismembered by the murderer. "You're lucky to be alive." The policeman said to Alice.
After the case, the nightmare of sexual assault often lingered on Alice's side, and she could not continue her studies, and even she refused the acceptance letter she had received from the school of her choice.
On October 5, five months after the sexual assault, Alice met a person who was very similar to the sexual assault at the time, and she rushed to the police station to report that the man may have been the same sexual assault at the time. But because they didn't know the strange man's name, police couldn't lock him nearby.
At this point, an investigator told Alice that perhaps the person she was talking about was Anthony, a black man who had only recently arrived in the area.
Soon, the police arranged for the suspect to be identified. Five black men in pale blue shirts stand in a row on the side of a single-sided mirror on Nov. 4. Alice stood on the other side, trying to figure out which one was the suspect who had violated her.
Alice first ruled out the suspicion of the three men on the left, because in her impression, the suspect was not as tall as the three men. According to her recollection, Anthony was standing in the fourth position from left to right, and Alice initially identified not him, but the person standing next to Anthony.
But at this moment, assistant prosecutor Gail told her that she had identified the wrong person, but it was not her fault, because Anthony and the person standing next to him had been good friends, and in order to confuse Alice, Anthony also deliberately made the "friend" frown and appear fierce.
Hearing such an explanation, Alice assumed that Anthony was the one who had violated her. In 1982, the case went to trial, and Alice testified as a witness, firmly identifying him. At the same time, according to the results of the comparative analysis of the hair submitted by the police, the hair on Anthony's lower body was exactly the same as the hair found on Alice's body at the time of the crime.
In the end, Anthony was sentenced to 8 years, 4 months to 25 years in prison for five crimes, including first-degree sexual assault and first-degree sexual abuse.
2 Case vulnerabilities were found
After Anthony is jailed, Alice is also trying to heal her wounds. But because her family relationship is not harmonious, after being violated, Alice can't find someone to talk to. Later, she began writing, trying to write down everything she wanted to say. Encouraged by her literature teacher, in 1999, Alice published her autobiography, "They Say, I'm Lucky," based on this true experience.
In the book, Alice uses calm brushstrokes to describe in detail her own sexual assault and the long process of wrestling with her inner fear and despair, and this belief and courage to face herself have given courage to many victims who have had the same experience.
In 2002, her second work, Lovely Bones, was also a huge success, dominating the New York Times bestseller list for a long time, selling more than 10 million copies, being translated into 45 languages and being adapted into a film by the famous director Peter Jackson. The book also tells the heart-warming story of a 14-year-old girl who observes the world as a ghost after being sexually assaulted and killed.
Stills from the movie "Lovely Bones"
The success of "Lovely Bones" has led many film companies to also focus on her debut. In May 2021, Netflix decided to invest in "They Say, I'm Lucky" and remade it into the movie "Lucky".
In the run-up to the film, the involvement of producer Tim Mussiente completely changed the fate of Anthony and Alice.
Tim is a highly qualified law student. While reading the script, he noticed that the first draft of the script was very different from the contents of the memoirs, and began to doubt the legitimacy of the trial.
A month later, Tim was fired from the team for doubting the legitimacy of the case. Tim didn't give up and then hired a private investigator with 20 years of investigative experience to help investigate the matter.
According to the New York Times, Anthony was still struggling to save money for a lawyer. After his release from prison, he had to find jobs such as garbage cleaners and vegetable packers, but that was far from enough to pay a good lawyer.
Before Tim helped Anthony introduce and arrange lawyers, Anthony had hired four different groups of lawyers to prove his innocence. Despite the fact that each time it was fruitless, Anthony never gave up.
As Tim investigates further, he discovers that the case has more loopholes in the judicial process. Neither Anthony's arrest nor identification was consistent with the judicial process. The trial of the sexual assault case also took only two days.
Tim said in an interview that anyone with a modicum of legal knowledge knows that if a person can't identify the attacker in the queue, then the case of the "attacker" is over. Prosecutors and police officers can't say, "Well, although you are not recognized, we are going to try you."
While in prison, Anthony began studying law, filing five appeals, all rejected. In prison, he has always insisted on his innocence, but this is seen as a sign of poor confession and unrepentant attitude. Even after being found to be credible in two polygraph tests, Anthony's fate did not change.
This is related to the background of the times at that time. Syracuse in the 1980s was a city with 170,000 inhabitants, shrinking manufacturing and dependent on Syracuse University for economic development. Locals are known as "countrymen" and they are usually prevented from approaching the campus of the university town in the heart of the city. Black residents make up 16 per cent of the local population, most of whom live in poorer areas.
In an interview with The New York Times, Anthony's defense lawyer at the time said: "I often feel that in a jury where whites and Conservatives are overwhelming, my black clients are not being judged fairly. ”
In the history of American justice, the misidentification of white women in identifying black men is not unique.
In her book The Rights of Gender, author Srinivasan, she shows us a set of data: 52 percent of cases mistaking sexual assault were black men; among black men convicted of sexual assault, they were 3.5 times more likely to be innocent than white men.
The famous American black writer James Baldwin, in his famous book "If Beale Street Can Testify", also described a similar story of black people wrongly accused of sexual assault. He expressed the relationship between black and white in American society: "In the world of white people, black people play an immovable star, a pillar that cannot be removed. If it is removed, then the foundations of heaven and earth will be shaken. ”
In Alice's memoirs, she wrote: "Ever since the sexual assault case, I have developed a fear of black people. "More than once I wish it was white people who violated me."
3 Stains that can never be erased
In November 2021, the charges in the case against Anthony were seriously flawed in the chain of evidence, and the California court in Oneda overturned convictions on five related charges concerning Anthony Broadwater.
As soon as the verdict came out, the United States was in an uproar, and the film adaptation project "Lucky" of the American Netflix Company was announced to be aborted, and all funds were withdrawn. Plans to reprint Alice's novels have also been shelved, and multinational publishers have said they will carefully consider the publication of books about her.
The Onneda California prosecutor said in an interview: "I'm not going to evaluate this case as we usually say sorry after we made a mistake because it shouldn't have happened in the first place." ”
This is a belated justice. As a party, Anthony was even more excited and shed tears in court. For him, the verdict of 40 years ago not only became a stain that he could never erase, but also affected the direction of his entire life.
While serving his sentence, Anthony's father died tragically, and his social relations fell apart. None of the family members, except Anthony's wife, were unwilling to believe that he was innocent.
In 1998, Anthony, who had spent 16 years in prison, was released early. After his release from prison, New York City registered him as a sexual assault. Since then, the brand of sexual assault has followed him. Under the Jacobs Act of 1994 in the United States, sex offenders on parole or on probation must register with their local police department, and law enforcement agencies are obligated to disclose information to residents of the community where the sex offender is located.
This means that Anthony's every move is monitored by society and relevant departments, and his every change of address and work will be made public. As a result, Anthony did not have a formal job and had to make ends meet on temporary work. He also voluntarily accepts night work because it can be his reasonable alibi, so that he will not be used as a scapegoat for sexual assault again when similar cases occur in the future...
For 40 years, Anthony has lived in the shadow of this unjust trial, living a life of no privacy and no protection for sins he has never committed.
Eight days after Anthony was acquitted, Alice publicly issued an apology statement. "40 years ago, as an 18-year-old traumatic victim of sexual assault, I chose to trust the American justice system," she wrote. My goal in 1982 was justice, not injustice. What I didn't expect was that this life-changing case would forever change the life of another young man. Today, American society is beginning to acknowledge and address the racial discrimination that has always existed in our justice system, which often means that some people's justice comes at the expense of others. ”
Alice's apology caused much controversy as soon as it was issued, with some saying that she only mentioned the mistakes of the judicial system and racial discrimination, but rarely talked about her primary responsibility. Some argue that blaming Alice would only simplify all the problems and would also allow the police officers and prosecutors at the time to evade their responsibilities.
In their opinion, Alice did not mean to put innocent people in jail, because at that time she was not able to find the many loopholes in the case like Tim. Moreover, for a young girl who has just reached adulthood, being able to go to the police alone after being sexually assaulted, and later being willing to talk openly about all the details of her sexual assault, these require a lot of courage.
Later, Anthony accepted Alice's apology in an interview with The New York Times. He said: "It took a lot of courage to make this apology and I think she was brave because she went through the same storm as I did. It was a brave thing for her to make such a statement. I forgive her because I understand that she was a victim and so am I. ”
Sociologist Nicholas posted: "Anthony is more decent and brave than the people of our entire city, we should do better to compensate those who have been wrongly convicted, and need to be vigilant against the wrongdoing of prosecutors." ”
It's not easy to forgive someone who has indirectly ruined their life, but sometimes it seems like the only option to forgive and move on with your life. As Alice said in her memoirs about sexual assault through the protagonist's mouth: "I forgive you, I said what I had to say, and in order to save myself from real death, I will die part by part." ”
This article is the original manuscript of "Fangyuan" magazine, please indicate the author in a conspicuous position when reprinting, and indicate the source: Fangyuan (ID: fangyuanmagazine).
Editor 丨Xiao Lingyan Fang Jiajia design 丨Liu Yan
Trainee reporter 丨 Tu Simin
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