The real cost of launching a literary career? Imprisoning the wrong man for 16 years.

A rape conviction at the centre of a memoir by award-winning author Alice Sebold has been overturned because of serious flaws with the 1982 prosecution.

Anthony Broadwater, who spent 16 years in prison, was cleared on Monday by a judge of raping Sebold when she was a student at Syracuse University, an assault she wrote about in her 1999 memoir, Lucky.

Broadwater shook with emotion, sobbing as his head fell into his hands, as the judge in Syracuse vacated his conviction at the request of prosecutors.

Sebold, 58, wrote in Lucky of being raped as a first-year student at Syracuse in May 1981 and then spotting a Black man in the street months later that she was sure was her attacker.

Broadwater was tried and convicted in 1982 based largely on two pieces of evidence. On the witness stand, Sebold identified him as her rapist.

An expert said microscopic hair analysis had tied Broadwater to the crime. That type of analysis is now considered junk science by the US Department of Justice.

“Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it’s the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction,” Broadwater’s attorney, David Hammond, told the media.