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Rubin "Hurricane" Carter (born May 6, 1937), a middleweight boxer between 1961 and 1966, is better known for his controversial convictions (1967, 1976) for three June 1966 murders in Paterson, New Jersey, and his subsequent release from prison in 1985.
The question of Carter’s guilt or innocence remains a strongly polarizing one: either the criminal justice system released a triple murderer from the punishment that two separate juries had recommended, or it imprisoned an innocent man for almost 20 years.
Pre-boxing life
Carter grew up in Paterson, New Jersey, a middle son among seven children. His parents had a stable, long-lasting marriage, provided well for the family, and raised their other six children without significant problems. Only Rubin Carter seems to have acquired a criminal record, one that resulted in his being sentenced to a juvenile reformatory for assault and robbery shortly after his fourteenth birthday.
Carter escaped from the reformatory in 1954 and joined the United States Army at age seventeen. Several months after completing infantry basic training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, he was shipped to Germany, where, according to his 1974 autobiography, he became interested in boxing. However, Carter was a poor soldier, and was court-martialed four times for charges ranging from insubordination to being AWOL. In May 1956, the Army discharged him as "unfit for military service", well short of his scheduled date of separation. He had served twenty one months.
Boxing career
While in prison, Carter resumed his interest in boxing, and promptly upon his release in September 1961, turned professional. At 5 feet 8 inches, Carter was shorter than the average middleweight, but he fought all of his professional career at 155-160 pounds. His shaven head, prominent mustache, unwavering stare and solid frame made him an intimidating presence in the ring decades before such a look became commonplace. His aggressive style and punching power (which resulted in many early-round knockouts) drew attention, establishing him as a crowd favorite and earning him the nickname “Hurricane”. When he decisioned perennial contender Holley Mims on December 22, 1962, he entered Ring Magazine's list of the top 10 middleweights.
He fought six times in 1963, winning four of the fights and losing two.* He remained ranked in the lower part of the top 10 until December 20, when he surprised the boxing world by beating past and future world champion Emile Griffith in the first round, on the "three-knockdown" rule.
That win resulted in Carter being ranked as the #3 contender for Joey Giardello's middleweight title. Carter won two more fights (one a decision over future heavyweight champion Jimmy Ellis) in 1964, before meeting Giardello in Philadelphia for a 15-round championship match on December 14. Carter fought well, but the judges awarded Giardello a unanimous decision. Most of the press concurred; an informal poll conducted among sportswriters at ringside showed that 14 of 18 agreed that Giardello had outboxed the challenger. Carter was gracious in defeat and did not protest the judging.
After that fight, Carter's standing as a contender—as reflected by his ranking in Ring Magazine—began to decline. He fought nine times in 1965, but lost four of five fights against top contenders (Luis Manuel Rodriguez, Harry Scott and Dick Tiger). Tiger, in particular, had no problem with Carter, flooring him three times in their match. "It was", Carter said, "the worst beating that I took in my life - inside or outside the ring".*
June 17, 1966
Around 2:30 a.m. June 17, 1966, two black males entered the Lafayette Bar and Grill in Paterson, New Jersey, and started shooting. The bartender, Jim Oliver, and a male customer, Fred "Cedar Grove Bob" Nauyoks, were killed instantly. A badly wounded female customer, Hazel Tanis, died almost a month later, having been shot in the throat, stomach, intestine, spleen and left lung, and her arm shattered by shotgun pellets. A third customer, Willie Marins, survived the attack, despite being shot in the head and losing sight in one eye.* Two petty criminals, Alfred Bello and Arthur Dexter Bradley, who had been near the Lafayette to commit a burglary that same night, were eyewitnesses. Bello was one of the first people on the scene of the shootings and called a telephone operator to alert the police. A neighbor on the first floor, Patrica Valentine, saw two black males get into a white car and drive away from the bar. Another neighbor across the street, Ronald Ruggriero, also heard the shots and when he looked from his window he saw Bello running on Lafayette Street from 18th street toward 16th street. He also heard the screech of tires and saw a white car shoot past his window with two black males in the front seat.
Because Carter's car matched the description, Carter and a companion, John Artis, were brought to the scene thirty minutes after the incident and questioned extensively. There was little physical evidence, police took no fingerprints at the crime scene, and didn't have the necessary facilities to conduct a paraffin test on Carter and Artis, and no eyewitness identified them as the killers. However, on searching Carter's car, police found a live pistol round and a shotgun shell both of the same calibers used in the shootings. In the afternoon, Carter underwent a Polygraph Test. Examiner John J. McGuire came to the following conclusion: "After a careful analysis of the polygraph record of this subject, it is the opinion of the examiner that this subject was attempting deception to all the pertinent questions. And was involved in this crime. After the examination and confronted with the examiners opinion the subject denied any participation in the crime". Polygraph tests however, are not admissible as evidence and Carter was released sixteen hours later. One of the reasons that polygraph tests are inadmissible, is that they are notoriously easy to fool. Another is that, with the exception of recent technological advances, they are generally regarded as only 90% accurate.
Polygraph or "lie detector" tests, can only determine whether deceptive behaviour is being displayed.
First conviction and appeal
Several months later, Bello and Bradley identified the two black males that they claimed to have seen carrying weapons outside the bar as Carter and Artis. Even though the defense showed that the accused didn't match the description that the witnesses gave on June 17, the two stuck to their testimony. This, plus the identification of Carter's car by Patrica Valentine and the presence in Carter's car of the ammunition of the same calibers, but different brands, than that used in the murders, convinced an all-white jury that Carter and Artis were the killers. Both men were convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
During his time in prison, Carter wrote his autobiography "The Sixteenth Round: From Number 1 Contender to #45472", which was published in 1974. He maintained his innocence, and over the next nine years won increasing public support for a retrial or pardon. Bob Dylan wrote and performed a song, called "Hurricane" (1975), which expressed the view that Carter was innocent. Meanwhile, Carter's supporters persuaded Bello and Bradley to recant the stories they had told at the 1967 trial. This however failed to result in a retrial.[http://www.graphicwitness.com/carter/pdfs/74_12_10_Larner-decision.pdf
In 1976, the New Jersey Supreme Court granted Carter and Artis a new trial, after it was discovered that a police tape recording of witnesses was not made known to the defense before the first trial. It was a technical point. However, the prosecution held the view that they had tried to present testimony about the interviews, but were blocked by the defense.
Before a new trial was set, Carter rejected a pre-trial offer from the prosecutor, Burrell Ives Humphreys, to undertake a lie detector test, with the provision that were he to "pass", he would be released without having to stand trial. Were he to "fail" the test, there would have been no provision in law to present the results as evidence in court.
Second conviction and appeal
During the new trial, witness Alfred Bello recanted his confession. In the Judge's statement to the jury, the jury were informed that if they did not believe the witness, the defendants should be acquitted. The State objected vigorously and requested that the Court instruct the jury that it had presented other evidence for the jury's consideration. The State's request was denied. Carter and Artis were once again found guilty, by a jury that included two African-American jurors, in under nine hours. Carter and Artis were again sentenced to life in prison. Carter's defense continued to appeal on various grounds. In 1982, the Supreme Court of New Jersey acknowledged that the prosecution had withheld evidence, a so-called Brady violation, but affirmed the conviction in a 4-3 decision.
Appeal at the federal court
Three years later, Carter's attorneys filed a writ of habeas corpus in federal court, an often unsuccessful legal petition requesting federal review of the constitutionality of state court decisions. The effort paid off; in 1985, United States District Court judge H. Lee Sarokin ruled that Carter and Artis had not received a fair trial, saying that the prosecution had been "based on racism rather than reason and concealment rather than disclosure." He chided the State of New Jersey for having withheld evidence regarding Bello's problematic polygraph testing and related issues, and set aside their convictions.New Jersey prosecutors unsuccessfully appealed Sarokin's ruling at the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and at the United States Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case.[http://www.lawbuzz.com/justice/hurricane/habeas_corpus.htm
Although they could have tried the two a third time, Passaic County prosecutors chose not to. Witnesses had disappeared or died, the cost would have been extremely high, and even a conviction would have produced little result. Artis, for one, had already been paroled, and would not have been returned to prison even had he been re-convicted. In 1988, New Jersey prosecutors filed a motion to dismiss the original indictments brought against Carter and Artis in 1966, effectively dropping all charges.
Aftermath
John Artis, after being released on parole in 1985, was imprisoned again in 1986 when he pled guilty to dealing cocaine and to receiving a stolen handgun. Now a social worker, he works with troubled youths in Virginia.
Carter has lived on a farm just outside Toronto, Canada, since 1988, and was executive director of The Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted from 1993 until 2005. He now works as a motivational speaker. Carter publicly resigned from the Association in Defence of the Wrongfully Convicted when the prosecutor of Guy Paul Morin, a wrongfully convicted man, was promoted to a judgeship and the ADWC declined to support Carter's protest of the appointment. On October 14 2005, Rubin Carter received an honorary Doctorate of Laws from York University in recognition of his work with the ADWC and Innocence Project.
Carter's career record in boxing was 27 wins, 12 losses and one draw in 40 fights, with 19 knockouts. He received an honorary championship title belt from the World Boxing Council in 1993, as did Joey Giardello at the same banquet held in Las Vegas. In reality, these "belts" are nothing more than mementos. Carter was also inducted into the Boxing Hall Of Fame.
Carter's saga inspired a 1999 feature film called The Hurricane starring Denzel Washington in the title role, as well as the famous Bob Dylan song, "Hurricane."
External links
References
1937 births | Living people | African American boxers | American boxers | Disputed convictions
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