New York state has agreed to pay $5.5 million to settle a lawsuit filed by Anthony Broadwater, a Black man who spent 16 years in prison after he was wrongfully convicted of raping Alice Sebold, a former Syracuse student who wrote a book based on her assault.

According to NBC News, Sebold was an 18-year-old freshman at Syracuse in May 1981 when she was raped at a park near campus. Sebold, who is white, detailed the incident and subsequent prosecution in the 1999 memoir "Lucky."

In the memoir, Sebold wrote that she saw her attacker in the streets months after being raped.

“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,” she wrote. “‘Hey, girl,’ he said. ‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’"

Law enforcement officials arrested Broadwater despite Sebold's initial failure to identify him in a police lineup. Broadwater was tried and convicted in 1982 after the Syracuse student testified that he was her rapist and an expert claimed microscopic hair analysis, which has been deemed junk science by the DOJ, linked him to the crime.

Broadwater was released from prison in 1999 but was still registered as a sex offender until his conviction was vacated in November 2021. The settlement comes after his exoneration and was signed last week by lawyers for Broadwater and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

“Anthony Broadwater was convicted for a crime he never committed, and was incarcerated despite his innocence. While we cannot undo the wrongs from more than four decades ago, this settlement agreement is a critical step to deliver some semblance of justice to Mr. Broadwater,” James said in a statement.

Sebold apologized to Broadwater in 2021, per a statement released to the Associated Press.

“As a traumatized 18-year-old rape victim, I chose to put my faith in the American legal system. My goal in 1982 was justice — not to perpetuate injustice. And certainly not to forever, and irreparably, alter a young man’s life by the very crime that had altered mine,” she said in the statement.

A spokesperson for Sebold, who is also the writer of the critically-acclaimed novel turned movie “The Lovely Bones,” released a statement on her behalf following the announcement of the $5.5 million settlement.

“Obviously no amount of money can erase the injustices Mr. Broadwater suffered, but the settlement now officially acknowledges them,” Sebold said in the latest statement.

Broadwater also has a pending civil rights lawsuit against Onondaga County, the city of Syracuse, and an assistant district attorney and a police officer who were involved in prosecuting him.

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