ProPublica revisits Broadwater case, renews pressure on Syracuse institutions

ProPublica’s June 30 investigation, “That Guy Is Still Out There,” put Syracuse police, prosecutors and Syracuse University back under scrutiny over Anthony Broadwater’s 1981 rape case, which involved Alice Sebold when she was a Syracuse University freshman. The project took 2 1/2 years to examine the case, and its findings renewed pressure on institutions tied to one of Syracuse’s most damaging legal failures.

Broadwater was arrested by Syracuse police in October 1981, convicted, and served 16 years in prison before his exoneration in November 2021. Even after his release, he spent 23 more years on the sex offender registry. The case turned on an identification that later unraveled: Sebold first identified Broadwater on the street about five months after the attack, but could not pick him out in a lineup and instead identified another Black man. Microscopic hair evidence used in the prosecution was later described as unreliable.

The legal fallout did not end with the exoneration. Broadwater filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the City of Syracuse, Onondaga County and individual officials on November 21, 2022. In 2023, New York agreed to pay him $5.5 million for the wrongful conviction. Sebold apologized publicly in 2021, adding another chapter to a case that has continued to shape how many people in Syracuse view the system that handled it.

The renewed attention also lands on Syracuse University under a new leader. J. Michael Haynie assumed the chancellorship in May 2026, after being appointed in March, making Broadwater’s case part of the university’s current institutional history, not just its past. The unanswered questions now sit with Syracuse police, prosecutors and the courts: how race shaped the investigation, why the identification problems did not stop the case, and whether the city’s current practices would prevent another wrongful conviction like Broadwater’s. Syracuse law professor Paula Johnson has said race was central and that the city rushed to convict a poor young Black man after a white college student was raped.