DECEMBER 2022:
“Hate put me in PRISON, love’s gonna bust me out”
– Rubin “Hurricane” Carter
HE COULD HAVE BEEN THE CHAMPION OF THE WORLD…
Rubin “Hurricane” Carter was an American-Canadian middleweight boxer, who at the height of his career and on the cusp of becoming “Champion of the World” in boxing, Carter was wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for murder serving a life imprisonment, until almost 20 years into that life sentence Carter was released following a petition of habeas corpus.
In 1966, Carter, and his co-accused John Artis, were arrested for a triple homicide that was committed at the Lafayette Bar and Grill in Paterson, New Jersey. The killings occurred shortly after 2:30 am, when a car carrying Carter, Artis, and a third man, was stopped by police outside the bar while its occupants were on their way home from a nearby nightclub. They were allowed to go on their way but, after dropping off the third man, Carter and Artis were stopped and arrested while they were passing the bar a second time, 45 minutes later.
Carter and Artis were then interrogated for 17 hours, released, and then re-arrested a few weeks later. They were convicted of all three murders in 1967, and given life imprisonment to be served in Rahway State Prison.
Carter‘s autobiography, titled The Sixteenth Round: From Number 1 Contender to Number 45472, was published in 1974, and was written while he was in prison. Carter‘s story was the inspiration for the 1975 Bob Dylan song “Hurricane“ and the 1999 film The Hurricane, starring Denzel Washington as Carter.
AN EARLY FIGHTER AT LIFE…
Carter was born on May 6, 1937, in Clifton, New Jersey, and was the fourth of seven children. He would later in life admit that his father was a strict disciplinarian and it made for a troubled relationship with Carter and his father. At the age of eleven, Carter was sentenced to a juvenile reformatory for assault as a result of stabbing a man who he alleged had tried to sexually assault him. In 1954, Carter would escape from the reformatory and join the United States Army. A few months after he had completed his basic training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, Carter was sent to West Germany for deployment. While in Germany, Rubin began to box for the Army. Carter was discharged from the Army in 1956 as unfit for service after being court-martialed four times. Shortly after Carter’s discharge, he returned home to New Jersey and was convicted of two muggings and sent to prison.
CONTENDER RECORD…
Carter was released from prison in September 1961, and Rubin became a professional boxer after returning home to New Jersey. Carter was shorter than the average middleweight boxer, coming in at 5 ft 8 in, but he fought all of his professional career at the weight of 155-160 lbs. He was famous for his aggressive style of boxing and his punching power which often resulted in many early round knockouts. This drew attention to Carter and established him as a crowd favorite and earned him the nickname “Hurricane”. The world wouldn’t take notice of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter until after he defeated a number of middleweight contenders such as Holley Mims, Gomeo Brennan, George Benton and Florentino Fernandez. The American boxing magazine, The Ring, first listed Carter as one of its “Top 10” middleweight contenders in July 1963, and by the end of 1965 the magazine ranked Rubin as the number five middleweight.
Carter fought six times in 1963 and won four bouts while he lost two. Rubin “Hurricane” Carter remained ranked in the lower part of the top 10 until December 20, when he shocked the boxing world by flooring past and future world champion Emile Griffith twice in the first round and scoring a technical knockout. When Carter won that match, The Ring ranked him as the number three contender for Joey Giardello’s world middleweight title. Carter would win two more fights in 1964, with one of the fights being a decision over future heavyweight champion Jimmy Ellis before going up against Giardello. The match between Giardello and Carter would be in Philadelphia for a 15-round championship match on December 14. In the match, Carter landed a few solid rights to the head in the fourth round that left Giardello staggering but was unable to follow up those punches, and Giardello took control of the fight in the fifth round. The judges decided unanimously in favor of Giardello.
After the Giardello fight, Carter’s ranking began to decline. He would fight nine more times in 1965 and won five but lost three of four against contenders Luis Manuel Rodriguez, Harry Scott and Dick Tiger. Tiger, in particular, floored Carter three times in their match. “It was”, Carter said, “the worst beating that I took in my life—inside or outside the ring”. During his fight in London with Scott, Carter was involved in an incident in which a shot was fired in his hotel room. Carter‘s career record in boxing was 27 wins with 19 total knockouts, with 8 KOs and 11 TKOs, 12 losses, and one draw in 40 fights. He received an honorary championship title belt from the World Boxing Council in 1993, along with Joey Giardello, and was later inducted into the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame.
THE ACCUSED CRIME AND CONVICTION…
On June 17, 1966, at approximately 2:30 AM, two men entered the Lafayette Bar and Grill in Paterson, New Jersey, and opened fire on the patrons and staff. The bartender, James Oliver, and a customer, Fred Nauyoks, were killed immediately in the shooting. Hazel Tanis died in the hospital a month later, having suffered multiple wounds from shotgun pellets, and. A third customer, Willie Marins, survived the attack, despite a head wound that cost him sight in one eye. When Tanis and Marins were questioned by police, both told them the shooters had been two black males, but neither identified Carter or John Artis as the shooters.
Ten minutes after the murders, around 2:40 AM, a police cruiser had stopped Carter and Artis in a rental car, they had been returning from a night out at a nearby bar called the Nite Spot, Carter was in the back of the car and Artis was driving, but when they were pulled over a third man was in the car, John Royster sat in the passenger seat. The police recognized Carter, a well-known boxer and controversial figure locally in the community, and let him go. Minutes later, the same officers solicited a description of the getaway car from two eyewitnesses outside of the bar, Patricia “Pattie” Valentine and Alfred Bello.
Bello would later admit he acted as a lookout while an accomplice, Arthur Bradley, broke into a nearby warehouse. At the time of the murders, he claimed to have discovered the bodies when he entered the bar to buy cigarettes and it was also transcribed in his statement that he took the opportunity to empty the cash register and ran into the police as he was leaving. At the trial, Bello testified he was approaching the Lafayette when two black males, one with a shotgun, and the other with a pistol, came around the corner. Bello testified he ran from them, and they got into a white car that was double-parked near the Lafayette.
Valentine lived above the bar and heard the shots, like Bello, she reported seeing two black males leave the bar and then got into a white car. Their statements describe the car as having rear headlights that lit up completely like butterflies. At Carter’s retrial in 1976, Valentine changed this to an accurate description of Carter’s car, which had conventional taillights with aluminum decoration in a butterfly shape. Her statement aligned with that of Bello’s and the prosecution later suggested the confusion was the result of a misreading of a court transcript by the defense.
Carter was being driven home by Artis having dropped off Royster, when they were pulled over again at 3:00 AM, and the two men were then ordered to follow police to the station, where they were arrested. However, differences in descriptions given by Bello and Valentine along with the physical characteristic of the attackers provided by the two survivors, lack of forensic evidence, and the timeline provided by police were key factors in the conviction being overturned in 1985.
Forensics would later establish that the victims were shot by a .32-caliber pistol and a 12-gauge shotgun, although the weapons were never found. There was no forensic evidence linking Carter or Artis to the murders, and while gun residue tests were commonly used at the time, the lead detective in the case, Vincent DeSimone, later testified that he had no time to bring in an expert to carry out the tests. But he did have time, however, to arrange for an expert to conduct lie-detector tests, which Carter and Artis passed, but later in 1976, a conflicting second report was discovered that claimed the two black males had failed the tests. After 17 hours of interrogation, Carter and Artis were released. Carter and Artis voluntarily appeared before a grand jury, which found that there was no case to answer.
However, several months later Bello changed his story after Police discovered why he was in the area, and his theft of the cash register. Bello then positively identified Artis as one of the attackers, while Bradley came forward to identify Carter as the other attacker. Based on this new information, the two were re-arrested and later indicted for the murders. Bello would later claim that in return for his identification, he was promised the $10,500 reward offered for catching the killers, though he was never paid the reward.
The rental car driven by Artis and Carter had been impounded when they were arrested, and the car was retained by the police. Five days after Carter and Artis were released a detective reported that on searching the car again, they discovered two unfired rounds, one .32 caliber, the other 12-gauge. But neither round matched those that were retrieved from the victims, the .32 unspent round in the car being copper, while the round from the victim was brass. And with the shotgun shell round, the one used in the murders was an older model and a different wad and color than the one discovered in the car.
When asked to account for these differences at trial, the prosecution produced a second report that allegedly lodged 75 minutes after the murders and recorded the two rounds as evidence. The prosecution was unable to explain why, having the evidence, the police released the two men, or why the standard ‘bag and tag’ procedure was not followed. The prosecution also argued that since the expended rounds retrieved at the scene were a mixture, the fact that the two rounds did not match was meaningless, but what did matter was they were the same caliber as the those used in the shooting.
The defense, led by attorney Raymond A. Brown, focused on the inconsistencies in the evidence given by the eyewitnesses Marins and Bello. Brown also produced a witness who confirmed that Carter and Artis were still in the Nite Spot at the time of the shootings. The all-white jury convicted both men of first-degree murder, with a recommendation of mercy, so that they were not sentenced to death. Judge Samuel Larner imposed one concurrent and two consecutive life sentences on Carter and three concurrent life sentences on Artis.
1974 APPEAL…
In 1974, Bradley and Bello withdrew their identifications of Carter and Artis, and the defense used these recantations for a motion for a new trial. Judge Samuel Larner denied their motion on December 11, 1974, under the stamen of their motion “lacked the ring of truth”. Despite the ruling, Madison Avenue advertising executive George Lois had organized a campaign on Carter’s behalf. The publicity would increase Carter’s case’s public support for a retrial or pardon. Boxer Muhammad Ali lent his support to Carter and the campaign including publicly appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in September 1973 to wish Carter good luck and give his support of an appeal in the courts. Bob Dylan co-wrote with Jacques Levy a song called “Hurricane” about Rubin “Hurricane” Carter’s case and imprisonment that declared him wrongful imprisoned and innocent. Dylan performed the song at campaign rallies and fundraisers supporting Carter’s appeal. On December 7, 1975, Dylan performed the song at the concert at Trenton State Prison, where Carter was temporarily an inmate.
But during the hearing on the recantations, defense attorneys also argued that Bello and Bradley had lied during the 1967 trial, telling the jurors that the two had made only certain narrow, limited deals with prosecutors in exchange for their trial testimony. A detective taped an interrogation of Bello in 1966, and when it was played during the recantation hearing, defense attorneys argued that the tape revealed promises beyond what Bello had testified to. And if that was so, the prosecutor had either had a Brady obligation to disclose this additional exculpatory evidence, or a duty to disclose that their witness had lied on the stand.
Judge Larner denied the second argument as well, but the New Jersey Supreme Court unanimously held that the evidence of various deals made between the prosecution and witnesses Bello and Bradley should have been disclosed to the defense before or during the 1967 trial as this could have “affected the jury’s evaluation of the credibility” of the eyewitnesses. Justice Mark Sullivan of the New Jersey Supreme Court ruling said that “The defendants’ right to a fair trial was substantially prejudiced” As a result of this ruling, the court set aside the original convictions and granted Carter and Artis a new trial.
Even though he would be facing difficulties prosecuting a ten-year-old case, Prosecutor Burrell Ives Humphreys decided to retry the case in 1976. To ensure that the testimony wasn’t tainted or perjured in order to obtain a conviction, Humphreys had Bello polygraphed, twice. The first time was by Leonard H. Harrelson and the second time was by Richard Arther, and both are considered experts in their field. The results of both tests concluded that Bello was telling the truth when he said that he had seen Carter outside the Lafayette immediately after the murders. However, Harrelson also reported orally that Bello had been inside the bar shortly before and at the time of the shooting, a conclusion that contradicted Bello’s 1967 trial testimony wherein he had said that he had been on the street at the time of the shooting. But despite the oral report, Harrelson’s subsequent written report stated that Bello’s 1967 testimony had been truthful.
1976 TRIAL AND APPEAL…
During the new trial in 1976, Alfred Bello repeated his testimony from 1967 identifying Carter and Artis as the two armed men he had seen outside the Lafayette Grill and Bar. Bradley refused to cooperate with prosecutors, and neither the prosecution nor the defense called him as a witness. The defense instead responded with testimony from multiple witnesses who identified Carter at the locations he claimed to be at when the murders took place. Investigator Fred Hogan, whose efforts led to the recantations of Bello and Bradley also appeared as a defense witness. On cross-examination, Hogan was asked whether any bribes or inducements were offered to Bello to secure his recantation, which Hogan denied. Hogan’s original handwritten notes on his conversations with Bello were entered into evidence. The defense also pointed out the inconsistencies of the testimony of Patricia Valentine and read the 1967 testimony of William Marins, who had died in 1973, noting that his descriptions of the shooters were drastically different from Artis and Carter’s actual appearances.
The court also heard testimony in 1976 from a Carter associate that Passaic County prosecutors had tried to pressure her into testifying against Carter and prosecutors denied the charge. After deliberating the case for almost nine hours, the jury again found Carter and Artis guilty of the murders. Judge Leopizzi re-imposed the same sentences on both men: a double life sentence for Carter, and a single life sentence for Artis.
Artis was released on parole in 1981. Carter’s attorneys continued to work on his appeal. In 1982, the Supreme Court of New Jersey affirmed his convictions with a 4-3 ruling. Although the justices felt that the prosecutors should have disclosed Harrelson’s oral opinion to the defense about Bello’s location at the time of the murders, only a minority of the court thought this was material. The majority thus concluded that the prosecution had not withheld information the Brady disclosure law required them to provide the defense.
Carolyn Kelley was a bail bondswoman who alleges that in 1975–1976 she helped raise funds to win a second trial for Carter, which resulted in his release on bail in March 1976. On a fund-raising trip the following month, Kelley alleges that the boxer beat her severely over a disputed hotel bill. The Philadelphia Daily News reported the alleged beating in a front-page story several weeks later, and celebrity support for Carter quickly eroded, though Carter denied the accusation and there was insufficient evidence for legal prosecution.
HABEAS CORPUS…
In 1985, Carter’s attorneys filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in federal court. Later that year, Judge Haddon Lee Sarokin of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey granted the writ, Judge Sarokin noted in the ruling, that the prosecution’s case had been “predicated upon an appeal to racism rather than reason, and concealment rather than disclosure”, and set aside the convictions. Carter was freed without bail in November 1985 at 48 years old after spending 20 years in prison serving a double life sentence for murders he didn’t commit.
Prosecutors appealed Sarokin’s ruling to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and filed a motion with the court to return Carter to prison pending the outcome of the appeal. This motion was denied by the court and the court eventually upheld Sarokin’s opinion and affirmed his Brady analysis without commenting on his other rationale of it. The prosecutors then appealed the case to the United States Supreme Court, they declined to hear the case.
Therefore, prosecutors could have tried Carter and Artis a third time, but they ultimately decided not to and filed a motion to dismiss the original indictments. New Jersey Attorney General W. Cary Edwards said of the case, “It is just not legally feasible to sustain a prosecution, and not practical after almost 22 years to be trying anyone”. Acting Passaic County Prosecutor John P. Goceljak said that several factors made a retrial possible, including Bello’s “current unreliability” as a witness and the unavailability of the other witnesses. Goceljak also doubted whether the prosecution could even reintroduce the racially motivated crime theory due to the federal court rulings. A judge granted the motion to dismiss, bringing an end to the legal proceedings for Rubin “Hurricane” Carter.
A SECOND CHANCE AT LIFE FOR THE CHAMPION…
Mae Thelma Basket, whom Carter had married in 1963, divorced him after their second child was born because she found out that he had been unfaithful to her. Carter’s second marriage was to Lisa Peters, but the couple would end up separating later. But after his emancipation, Carter lived in Toronto, Ontario, where he became a Canadian citizen. He also gave back and paid forward the help that was given to him by Canada and was executive director of the Association in Defence of the Wrongfully Convicted (AIDWYC) from 1993 until 2005. In a case of mistaken identity, again, Carter was arrested in 1996, when he was 59, by Toronto Police who mistakenly identified him as a suspect in his thirties believed to have sold drugs to an undercover officer, Carter was released after the police realized their error.
Carter often served as a motivational speaker and on October 14, 2005, he received two honorary Doctorates of Law, one from York University in Toronto and the other from Griffith University in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. They were in recognition of his work with AIDWYC and the Innocence Project. Carter also received the Abolition Award from Death Penalty Focus in 1996.
Carter revealed that he had terminal prostate cancer in March 2012, while attending the International Justice Conference in Burswood, Western Australia. At the time, doctors gave him between three and six months to live. Beginning shortly after that time, John Artis lived with and cared for Carter, and on April 20, 2014, he confirmed that Carter, at the age of 76, had succumbed to his illness. He was afterward cremated, and his ashes were scattered in part over Cape Cod and in part at a horse farm in Kentucky.
In the months leading up to his death, Carter had worked for the exoneration of David McCallum, a Brooklyn man who had been incarcerated since 1985 on charges of murder. Two months before his death, Carter published “Hurricane Carter’s Dying Wish”, an opinion piece in the New York Daily News, in which he asked for an independent review of McCallum‘s conviction. “I request only that McCallum be granted a full hearing by the Brooklyn conviction integrity unit, now under the auspices of the new district attorney, Ken Thompson. Knowing what I do, I am certain that when the facts are brought to light, Thompson will recommend his immediate release … Just as my own verdict ‘was predicated on racism rather than reason and on concealment rather than disclosure’, as Sarokin wrote, so too was McCallum’s”, Carter wrote. On October 15, 2014, McCallum was exonerated. John Artis died of an Abdominal aortic aneurysm on November 7, 2021, at the age of 75.
As of August 8, 2022, the National Registry of Exonerations listed 3,200 defendants who were convicted of crimes in the United States and later exonerated because they were innocent. Of that number, 1 53% of them were Black, which is four times their proportion to the population, which is now 13.6%. I chose The Hurricane as a Featured Blog for the month because due to these alarming statistics, racial discrimination as a means of wrongfully convicting Black people is still as relevant as the weekend this film arrived in theaters in 1999, and as relevant as the night Rubin “Hurricane” Carter was arrested in 1966. The death of George Floyd has put the justice system and the police that arrest those put through the courts under a microscope, but the issue with that, is we should have already been examining our justice system and who it actually serves long before 2020. These staggering statistics are high because we have ignored the problem out of shameful ignorance and allowed it to manifest to where it is at now. While technology integrations and DNA proof have allowed so many wrongfully convicted to be exonerated, it shouldn’t be the process in the policing system or court system period, it is a failure to the people it represents. But until the United States deals with its racial issues, Black people being wrongfully convicted will continue to be an epidemic in the court system.
The Hurricane is available now to rent and stream on all digital platforms.