Cuban government apologizes to Montreal-area family after delivering wrong body
Cuba's foreign affairs minister has apologized to a Montreal-area family after they were sent the wrong body following the death of a loved one.
For decades, throughout his years in prison and even after he was released, Anthony Broadwater insisted he was innocent of the rape of "The Lovely Bones" author Alice Sebold, a crime she described in her memoir, "Lucky."
Convicted in 1982, Broadwater spent more than 16 years in prison. He was denied parole at least five times because he wouldn't admit to a crime he didn't commit, according to his attorneys. And he passed two lie detector tests.
Broadwater, 61, tried five times to get the conviction overturned. And even after he was released, he didn't give up. But it didn't happen -- until Monday, when New York State Supreme Court Justice Gordon Cuffy vacated the rape conviction and other counts related to it.
The Onondaga County District Attorney joined in the motion to vacate the conviction.
Sebold described the rape, which happened when she was a freshman at Syracuse University in 1981, in painstaking detail in her memoir. It was published in 1999, the year after Broadwater's release from prison.
Almost five months after she was raped, Sebold saw Broadwater on the street in Syracuse. He reminded her of the rapist, and she reported the encounter to police, according to Broadwater's attorneys' affirmation. But later, she failed to identify Broadwater in a police lineup.
Broadwater was convicted on two pieces of evidence -- Sebold's account -- a cross-racial identification, since the author is White and Broadwater is Black -- and the analysis of a piece of hair that was later determined to be faulty, his attorneys wrote.
"Research has found that the risk of eyewitness misidentification is significantly increased when the witness and the subject are of different races," the affirmation stated.
As to the hair analysis, in 2015, "the FBI testified that microscopic hair analysis contained errors in at least 90 percent of the cases the agency reviewed," according to the attorneys' news release.
"We know now that the testimony of the forensic chemist stemmed from a largely debunked forensic approach to hair microscopy," the affirmation stated.
In "Lucky," Sebold wrote that "a detective and a prosecutor told her after the lineup that she picked out the wrong man and how the prosecutor deliberately coached her into rehabilitating her misidentification," according to the affirmation.
CNN has reached out to Sebold and her publishing company multiple times for comment.
The unreliability of the hair analysis and the conversation between the prosecutor and Sebold after the lineup would probably have led to a different verdict if it had been presented at trial, the attorneys said.
"I won't sully these proceedings by saying I'm sorry," District Attorney William Fitzpatrick said in the courtroom. "That doesn't cut it. This should never have happened."
Broadwater broke down in tears when the judge announced his decision.
"When the district attorney spoke to me, his words were so profound -- so strong -- it shook me," Broadwater told CNN on Wednesday. "It made me cry with joy and happiness because a man of this magnitude would say what he said on my behalf ... it's, it's beyond whatever I can say myself."
After his release, Broadwater remained on a sex offender list. He described how the conviction had ruined his life.
He struggled to find work after getting out of jail when employers found out about his criminal record.
"I did what I could do, and that was just you know -- creating work for myself doing landscaping, tree removal, hauling, clean-outs," he said.
His wife wanted children, but "I wouldn't bring children in the world because of this. And now, we're past days, we can't have children," Broadwater told reporters after the court hearing.
The couple met in 1999, about a year after he was released from prison, he told CNN. After their first date, he gave her the transcripts and other documents from his case, telling her to read them and decide if she wanted to be with him.
"She believed me and she gave me more strength," he said. "I just wanted a better quality of life, but I could never get a better quality of jobs."
Part of the reason Broadwater's attorneys, J. David Hammond and Melissa Swartz, got involved in the case is thanks to Tim Mucciante, who was involved in a project to develop a film adaptation of "Lucky."
Mucciante "had doubts that the story was the way that it was being portrayed in the film," said Hammond, which led him to hire a private investigator who is associated with their law firm.
"It didn't take long, digging around, that we realized, OK, there's something here," said Hammond. He and Swartz listened to the transcript of the trial and found "serious legal issues," which prompted them to bring a motion, he said.
Hammond and Swartz are at least the fifth set of lawyers he hired to help with his case, Broadwater said.
"I never gave up. I could never, ever give up and live under these conditions ... I was going to do everything I could to prove my innocence," he said.
Days after the judge's decision, Broadwater said, "it feels so surreal, I'm still soaking it in. I'm kind of like -- afraid in a sense. I'm so happy."
As to Sebold, Broadwater said he would like an apology.
"I sympathize with her, what happened to her," he said. "I just hope there's a sincere apology. I would accept it. I'm not bitter or have malice towards her."
Cuba's foreign affairs minister has apologized to a Montreal-area family after they were sent the wrong body following the death of a loved one.
The federal government's proposed change to capital gains taxation is expected to increase taxes on investments and mainly affect wealthy Canadians and businesses. Here's what you need to know about the move.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is accusing Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre of welcoming 'the support of conspiracy theorists and extremists,' after the Conservative leader was photographed meeting with protesters, which his office has defended.
"It's a bit of a complicated pattern; we've got a lot going on," said Jennifer Smith of the Meteorological Service of Canada in an interview with CTVNews.ca on Wednesday. "[As is] typical with weather, all of these things are related."
On a night she should have been mourning, a nurse from Quebec's Laurentians region says she was forced to clean up her husband after he died at a hospital in Montreal.
Police tangled with student demonstrators in Texas and California while new encampments sprouted Wednesday at Harvard and other colleges as school leaders sought ways to defuse a growing wave of pro-Palestinian protests.
Members of the Bank of Canada's governing council were split on how long the central bank should wait before it starts cutting interest rates when they met earlier this month.
A North Bay, Ont., lawyer who abandoned 15 clients – many of them child protection cases – has lost his licence to practise law.
A Winnipeg man said a single date gone wrong led to years of criminal harassment, false arrests, stress and depression.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.
When identical twin sisters Kim and Michelle Krezonoski were invited to compete against some of the world’s most elite female runners at last week’s Boston Marathon, they were in disbelief.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.