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Rubin "Hurricane" Carter (born May 6, 1937),
middleweight boxer from 1961–1966, is better
known for his controversial convictions (1967,
1976) for the murder of three people at the
Lafayette Grill in June, 1966, and his subsequent
release from prison (1985).

The question of Carter’s guilt or innocence
remains a strongly polarizing one, however, this
much is certain: either the criminal justice
system imprisoned an innocent man for almost 20
years, or it released a triple murderer from the
punishment that two separate juries had
recommended.

==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 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 14th
birthday. 

Carter escaped from the reformatory in 1954 and
joined the United States Army at age 17. Several
months after he completed 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.

Shortly after his return to New Jersey, Carter was
arrested for his reformatory escape, and served an
additional year; he was released in 1957. Less
than two months later - and probably after
drinking heavily - Carter robbed and brutally beat
three people, including a middle-aged woman. For
these crimes, Carter spent four years in Trenton
State Prison and Rahway State Prison. 

==Boxing career==
While in prison, Carter resumed his interest in
boxing, and promptly upon his release in September
1961, turned professional. 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 Magazines list
of the top 10 middleweights. 

He fought six times in 1963, winning four and
losing two. He remained ranked in the lower
regions of the top 10 until December 20, when he
surprised the boxing world by knocking out past
and future world champion Emile Griffith in the
first round. 

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 out of five fights against top
contenders (Luis Manuel Rodriguez, Harry Scott and
Dick Tiger). Tiger, in particular, had no problem
with the Hurricane, flooring him three times in
their match. 

In his autobiography, British boxing promoter
Mickey Duff describes an event that occurred
during Carter's 1965 visit to London for one of
his two bouts with British boxer Harry Scott.
Carter brought a pistol into the country,
concealed in his suitcase, and discharged it in
his hotel room. The hotel did not report the
incident to the police, although private
possession of handguns was then illegal in Great
Britain.

Carter’s boxing did not improve during 1966, and
by that summer, Ring Magazine no longer ranked him
among the top ten middleweight contenders.

==Convictions and appeals==
On June 17, 1966, at about 2:30 AM, two black
males entered the Lafayette Bar and Grill in
Paterson, New Jersey, and started shooting.  The
bartender and one male customer were killed
instantly.  A badly-wounded female customer died
almost a month later, while a third customer
survived the attack, despite being shot in the
head and losing the sight in one eye. Carter and a
companion, John Artis, were brought to the scene
and questioned extensively before being released.
There was little physical evidence, and no
eyewitness identified Carter or Artis as the
killers.  

However, several months later, two petty criminals
named Alfred Bello and Arthur Dexter Bradley –
who had been near the Lafayette that same night
– identified the two black males that they
claimed to have seen carrying weapons outside the
bar as Carter and Artis.  This, plus the
identification of Carter's car by another witness,
and the presence in Carter's car of ammunition
similar to 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.
 
Carter 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 (song) |Hurricane", which
expressed the view that Carter was innocent.
Meanwhile, Carter's supporters persuaded Bello and
Bradley to recant, or retract the stories they had
told at the 1967 trial. (See
http://graphicwitness.com/carter/).

While the recantations failed to produce a
retrial, additional evidence surfaced at the same
time, and in 1976 the New Jersey Supreme Court
granted Carter and Artis a new trial.  Although
Bello's credibility was questionable, he repeated
his 1967 trial testimony, and that, plus the
ammunition and the identification of Carter's
automobile, produced yet another conviction, this
time from a racially mixed jury. Carter and Artis
were again sentenced to life in prison.
 
Carter and his supporters continued to appeal on
various grounds. In 1982, the Supreme Court of New
Jersey affirmed his convictions in a 4-3 decision.
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, chided the State for having witheld
evidence regarding Bello's problematic polygraph
testing and related issues, and set aside their
convictions. New Jersey prosecutors unsuccessfully
appealed Sarokin's ruling all the way to the
United States Supreme Court, which declined to
hear the case. 

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 moved to dismiss
the original indictment brought against Carter and
Artis in 1966, effectively ending the prosecution.

==Movie adaptation==
Denzel Washington starred in a 1999 movie about
Carter's life, called “The Hurricane (1999
movie)|The Hurricane”; critics generally praised
Washington's performance, and he was nominated for
an Academy Award|Oscar. Although the movie billed
itself as “based on a true story”, the
filmmakers took significant liberties with the
facts, and the movie became almost as
controversial as Carter himself. For example, in
the movie's opening sequence, Carter pummels
middleweight champion Joey Giardello around the
ring, but loses the fight as the result of the
judges' racism. Offended by this portrayal of a
fight he had clearly won, Giardello sued the
movie's producers for libel.  The case was settled
before trial, with the producers paying the
retired champion a significant sum (reportedly
$300,000). 

The movie distorts other areas of Carter’s life.
 Washington appears in full uniform on-screen, a
decorated veteran wearing medals that Carter
himself never earned. The movie omits any mention
of Carter’s 1957 conviction and 4-year
imprisonment for assault and robbery, and
sanitizes the various crimes he committed as a
juvenile. 

The movie also depicts the lead detective who
investigated the murders ("Vincent Della Pesca")
as a Les Misérables|Javert-like, obsessed racist
who falsified evidence, threatened witnesses, and
sabotaged an automobile belonging to Carter’s
supporters. In reality, the lead detective on the
case, Vincent DeSimone, was a decorated World War
II veteran and an outstanding police officer who
rose through the ranks on merit to become Chief of
County Detectives. 

Various newspaper articles have suggested that the
controversy over the film’s accuracy may have
cost Washington the Oscar.

Artis, after being released on parole in 1985, was
imprisoned again in 1986 when he pled guilty to
dealing cocaine. Now a social worker, he works
with troubled youths in Virginia.

Carter has lived in Canada since 1988, and now
makes his living as a motivational speaker. 

Carter's career record in boxing was 27 wins, 12
losses and one draw in 40 fights, with 19
knockouts.

== External links ==
* http://www.boxrec.com/record011387.html