By all objective standards, Dave Hammond’s is the ultimate criminal-defense attorney’s success story. Working hand in hand with Melissa Swartz, and both lawyers not even forty, he managed to get Anthony Broadwater exonerated of his 1982 conviction for the rape of Alice Sebold, the celebrated author of The Lovely Bones. It was an extraordinary accomplishment. They proved that Sebold, a college freshman at the time of her attack, had identified the wrong man in court.
On the day I met with Hammond earlier this year, in downtown Syracuse, he was in his 12th-floor office, reviewing with pride the $50 million claim for unjust imprisonment that he had just filed against the state of New York. If the suit is successful, it will get Broadwater “reasonable and fair damages” for the 16 and a half years he was wrongfully incarcerated in maximum-security prisons, the 8 years that his life was constricted by the tight bands of his parole, and the 22 years he lived branded as a Level 2 sex offender.
