Sebold is the author of the novel "The Lovely Bones," and the memoir is "Lucky."
The exoneration came about because there was to be a film of “Lucky,” and the executive producer, Timothy Mucciante, noticed problems with the story of the conviction of Broadwater.
Mr. Mucciante said that he ended up leaving the production in June because of his skepticism about the case and how it was being portrayed. He hired a private investigator, Dan Myers... to look into the evidence against Mr. Broadwater, and became convinced of Mr. Broadwater’s innocence. Mr. Myers suggested they bring the evidence they gathered to a lawyer and recommended [David] Hammond, who reviewed the investigation and agreed there was a strong case. Around the same time, Mr. Broadwater decided to hire Mr. Hammond based on the recommendation of another local lawyer. Mr. Broadwater, who was released in 1998, had been scrimping and saving to hire lawyer after lawyer to try and prove his innocence.
Mucciante sounds like something of a hero in this story, but you can see how practical considerations would have been adequate motivation. Imagine if this movie, based on Sebold's telling of her story, had come out and the whole world suddenly took a hard look and considered things from Broadwater's point of view. Broadwater would have come forward, and the movie would have been destroyed. I question how the movie idea even got as far as it did. And how did the book sit out there for so long without a serious challenge? Broadwater has been "scrimping" for 20 years trying to get some attention to his ordeal, which goes back 40 years?!
Posts
32 comments:
"The Lovely Bones"
I rather liked that movie, much to my own surprise.
I thought The Innocence Project was catching these kinds of cases. What happened, I wonder.
Well now they have a hugely cinematic ending and it sounds like a much more interesting story arc. Truth is stranger than “true crime” novels after all.
Fuck Alice See old. As I understand it, she could not id the guy and the hair test was notoriously wrong
He needs to sue her for everything including the fillings in her teeth
Can we hear from #MeToo and all the other professional misandrists?
What would make a great movie: A story about a director/producer starting to doubt the storyline of a movie, bailing on it, and finding out the truth.
I can't imagine Ms. Sebold's lawyer would suggest she apologize. Would that open her up to legal joepardy?
“Prosecutorial ethics” is one of your tags, Althouse? Curiously enough I looked up the syllabus for the Wisconsin Law class in prosecutorial ethics after the Rittenhouse trial and the release of Darrell Brooks so he could get into a knife fight and run over elderly white folks and a little white child.
And I found it. It’s a sheet of paper that’s blank on both sides.
@Lem, I think the Innocence Project focuses mostly on death row cases.
I question how the movie idea even got as far as it did. And how did the book sit out there for so long without a serious challenge? Broadwater has been "scrimping" for 20 years trying to get some attention to his ordeal, which goes back 40 years?!
Zero self awareness.
He was just a splooge stooge.
Men have been attacked and mocked at every point by every institution.
And you wonder why a woman falsely claiming to be raped got her story published and turned into a movie?
See also Handmaid's Tale.
"“Prosecutorial ethics” is one of your tags, Althouse? Curiously enough I looked up the syllabus for the Wisconsin Law class in prosecutorial ethics after the Rittenhouse trial and the release of Darrell Brooks so he could get into a knife fight and run over elderly white folks and a little white child. And I found it. It’s a sheet of paper that’s blank on both sides."
You obviously don't know how to look. You just look up the words and if a course doesn't have that as its title, you think the subject matter isn't taught? Do you have any idea how stupid that is?
You think prosecutorial misconduct isn't part of teaching criminal law, criminal appeals, and the Innocence Project? Get a clue!
Maybe she fears that an apology could be used by her victim to do to her what she did to him. Ruin her life?
"Broadwater has been "scrimping" for 20 years trying to get some attention to his ordeal, which goes back 40 years?!"
Gee, imagine that: blacks can live with the truth, for a lifetime, and - unless some rich whites decide to care - nothing will happen.
Been there, done that.
@bigmike thanks
"And how did the book sit out there for so long without a serious challenge?"
Believe the women, they never lie, goes back a long way.
WRT Big Mike. Metaphor alert.
I had some experience with this when working with forensic patients. Because of the mental-health interplay of circumstances, reporting, and witnesses, the cases were more often ambiguous than not, once you really looked at them. Lots of railroading, because they were sometimes people who had been violent or frightening in other ways and everyone wanted this off the table ASAP. Complicating this, many had the sociopathic streak one sees in all criminals that denied any guilt whatsoever and blamed others. So given that real but limited sample of a few hundred over the years, I came to see who got attention and appeals and who didn't as not quite random, but very idiosyncratic. Some things attract the attention of journalists or crusading attorneys, some things don't. Some people attract many to their side even when they are guilty, while others inspire no one. I imagine there are patterns that someone in CJ research has discovered.
I hope the accuser doesn't remain silent on this.
@Althouse, oh dear! Whose ox just got gored? My remark was a snarky joke at the expense of Wisconsin prosecutors who, from where I sit out here in Virginia, themselves belong in jail. I get the legal jiggery-pokery behind charging Rittenhouse with using a short-barreled rifle (illegal, without a special permit), but when an astute judge asks to measure the barrel and the prosecution is forced to stipulate that the barrel is of legal length, what does that say about the ethical standards of prosecutors in Wisconsin? And then John Chisholm’s office (and Chisholm is a graduate of Wisconsin Law) asked for only $1000 bail for a bail jumper. Forget it, Althouse. You are trying to defend the indefensible.
The US has a much higher conviction rate than other countries.
Prosecutors and judges have immunity, which is questionable on it's constitutionality per Glenn Reynolds:
And prosecutors and judges get absolute immunity because don’t ask stupid questions prole.
Which opens trials up to a lot of unethical, but "legal" actions. Such as over charging. Same thing that happened to the January 6th Shaman, instead of risking 20 years, due to his lawyer, he chose 46 months.
Doc Shipwreckedcrew To Represent January 6th Even 'Shaman't
Conrad Black has a great article on the judicial system:
It Will Take More Than the Rittenhouse Verdict To Vindicate American Justice
Research shows that identification across racial lines is frequently mistaken. However, identification across some political lines is invariably correct. Thus we can say with absolute certainty that Brett Kavanaugh is guilty. This method of identification is not, however, sufficient to identify Democratic sex offenders and should not be used in the cases of Clinton. Biden et al. (but not Al Franken who left photographic evidence of his misdeed)......I looked at the NYT article. They linked to stories about three other Black men who had been wrongly convicted. This proves how flawed our justice system is. If three men over the last forty years have been wrongfully convicted, shouldn't we reform bail procedures and, perhaps, just do away with prisons altogether.
Althouse: "You think prosecutorial misconduct isn't part of teaching criminal law, criminal appeals, and the Innocence Project?"
Is it taught as a "how to"?
Hehehe. Racist deplorables find prosecutorial misconduct troubling just now when some pale pudgy wannabe murders a few scum buckets.
Dylan played a large role in getting things moving for the exoneration of Hurricane, despite the near 100% possibility he was guilty.
Maybe the film would've inspired Dylan to write a song.
@Big Mike
You just changed the subject and then insulted me for not having already addressed your new topic. Pathetic!
Respond to what I said but apologizing for getting something plainly wrong.
"Althouse: "You think prosecutorial misconduct isn't part of teaching criminal law, criminal appeals, and the Innocence Project?" Is it taught as a "how to"?"
Why on earth would you imagine Wisconsin Law School professors favor the prosecution? That makes no sense.
@Althouse, sorry, but neither of your responses to me recognized that I was making a snarky joke at the expense of the justice system in Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Law School. Yes, I know how to use Google and other web browsers. I made a very comfortable living designing computer systems in a career that began in the era of vacuum tube computers just being replaced by room-sized machines based on transistors, and ended almost fifty years later with my using some of the largest and most power massively parallel database engines available (Teradata and Oracle Exadata). In fact, years ago, I googled Wisconsin Law's ethics curriculum because I was thinking of making a similar snide putdown of the legal profession in Wisconsin. But at that time I decided not to bother. IIRC there was one class and it was called something like Professional Responsibilities. However since then the justice system in Wisconsin seems only to have gotten more despicable.
No, I don't like prosecutors who concoct cases for political points. No, I don't like prosecutors who apparently don't believe in the natural right to self defense. No, I don't like prosecutors whose quaint legal theories put bail jumpers with long rap sheets back out on the street for trivial bail dollar figures. And John Chisholm learned everything he knows about the law from you and your former colleagues at Wisconsin Law. The lot of you have more to answer for than you seem prepared to accept.
As far as I am concerned people like Thomas Binger and John Chisholm are proof that it must be possible for a woman to be impregnated by anal sex, since nothing else explains either of them.
Maybe the reference of "how to" is an observation on the results...?
Howard: "Hehehe. Racist deplorables find prosecutorial misconduct troubling just now when some pale pudgy wannabe murders a few scum buckets."
Just a week back you were calling those scumbuckets "heroes" and you were lauding their courage and bravery.
When did you decide your earlier moronic lies were no longer tenable causing you to revert to your typical "projection mode" of posting?
Did it become too taxing for you to be constantly praising child rapists and women abusers?
Interesting. I really liked "Lucky", moreso than her novel, "The Lovely Bones". I do recall in the book she couldn't identify him in the line-up so convicting the wrong man sounds very possible without detracting from the rest of it. This shows the problem with getting so emotional about a crime, you prejudge the defendant and forget innocent until proven guilty.
Seebold was not in charge of the prosecution. She was a mere witness, guided by investigators and prosecutors. She owes nobody an apology: they do. And I bet that they wouldn’t have gone through with the prosecution if the defendant didn’t have prior sex crime charges or other violent crimes in his rap sheet. If I’m wrong about that, I’ll happily apologize. But the focus should be on errors made by the court, about which she had no say.
Many Innocence Project offenders were charged in the wrong rape mainly because they had long histories of other nearby sexual assaults. The Innocence Project also serially lies about the real causes of false convictions. Their stats about causes of wrongful conviction are sheer nonsense. And many of the people they get off are either guilty as hell, like the Central Park Five, or co-offenders in joint rape-murders who just didn’t leave sperm at the site. It’s more common than many realize to have a dominant team or crew of offenders where only a few participate in the actual sexual assault.
I researched their cases in Georgia in depth and, at the time, two of the acquitted were actually guilty of the gang rape; one was a serial rapist in the same vicinity popped for the wrong rape that night and caught breaking into another women’s apartment nearby with a knife in his pants; one was driving the victim’s car and claimed no involvement. One was genuinely wrongfully convicted.
In virtually none of these cases does a victim’s identification alone suffice. In virtually no prosecutions for stranger rape over the last five decades has the victim’s identification alone resulted in a prosecution. And most false identifications are not by the victim but by co-defendants or prison cell mates.
Thanks so much for that info, Tina. This isn't something I know much about.
Gemma: they just like having a white woman to Mayella Ewell, as I call it. And remember, the whole town knew that Mayella was being repeatedly raped by her father in the book version of To Kill a Mockingbird, and Atticus did nothing to stop that.
Post a Comment