Rubin Carter was born May 6, 1937, in Clifton, New Jersey. Carter was twice wrongly accused of a triple murder in 1966, at the height of his boxing career, and sentenced to nearly two decades in prison. During the mid-1970s, his case became a focal point for a number of civil rights activists, politicians, and artists. He was eventually released from prison in 1985 after a federal judge reversed his convictions. His story inspired Bob Dylan’s 1975 song “Hurricane” and the 1999 film “The Hurricane,” starring Denzel Washington.
Early Life
Carter was born May 6, 1937, in Clifton, New Jersey. Carter, who grew up in Paterson, New Jersey, was arrested and committed to the Jamesburg State Home for Boys at the age of 12 after attacking a man with a Boy Scout knife. He said that the man was a pedophile who had tried to molest one of his buddies. Carter fled before his six-year sentence expired, and in 1954 he joined the Army, serving in a segregated corps and trained as a boxer. He won two European light-welterweight championships before returning to Paterson in 1956 to pursue a professional boxing career. Almost immediately after his return, authorities caught Carter and ordered him to serve the remaining 10 months of his term in a state reformatory.
Rise to Boxing Fame
Carter was arrested again in 1957, this time for handbag stealing. He was sentenced to four years in Trenton State Prison, a maximum-security facility, for that crime. Following his release, he channeled his immense rage toward his predicament and that of Paterson’s African American community into boxing, turning professional in 1961 and embarking on a spectacular four-fight winning streak that included two knockouts.
Carter quickly gained the moniker “Hurricane” for his lightning-fast fists and established himself as a top contender for the world middleweight championship. In a non-title contest in December 1963, he defeated the then-welterweight world champion, Emile Griffith, via first-round knockout. Despite losing his only championship chance against incumbent champion Joey Giardello in a 15-round split decision in December 1964, he was largely regarded as a good bet to win his next title fight.
Carter, a well-known Paterson resident, had a strained relationship with the police. In 1964, he was cited in The Saturday Evening Post criticizing police occupations of Black communities. His flamboyant lifestyle (Carter frequented the city’s nightclubs and bars) and juvenile past disturbed the cops, as did the vehement statements he allegedly made urging violence in the pursuit of racial justice.
Arrest for Triple Homicide
Carter was practicing for his second try at the world middleweight title (against champion Dick Tiger) in October 1966 when he was arrested for the triple murder of three Paterson bar goers on June 17. Carter and John Artis were detained on the night of the killing because they matched an eyewitness description of the killers (“two Negroes in a white car”), but a grand jury cleared them after the single surviving victim failed to identify them as the gunman.
The state now had two eyewitnesses, Alfred Bello and Arthur D. Bradley, who were able to make positive identifications. During the subsequent trial, the prosecution presented little to no evidence linking Carter and Artis to the crime, a shaky motive (racially motivated retaliation for the murder of a Black tavern owner by a white man in Paterson hours earlier), and the only two eyewitnesses were petty criminals involved in a burglary (who were later revealed to have received money and reduced sentences in exchange for their testimony). Nonetheless, on June 29, 1967, Carter and Artis were found guilty of triple murder and sentenced to three life sentences.
Carter maintained his innocence while confined at Trenton and Rahway State Prisons by resisting prison guards’ authority, refusing to wear an inmate uniform, and becoming a recluse in his cell. In 1974, he wrote his autobiography, The 16th Round: From Number 1 Contender to Number 45472, which received international recognition.
The story of Carter’s predicament drew the attention and support of many luminaries, including Dylan, who visited him in prison, composed the song “Hurricane” for his 1976 album Desire, and performed it at every stop of his Rolling Thunder Revue tour. Muhammad Ali, a prizefighter, and other prominent personalities from liberal politics, civil rights, and entertainment supported Carter’s release.
Trial and Support
In late 1974, Bello and Bradley both recanted their evidence, saying that they had lied in order to gain sympathetic treatment from the authorities. After an incriminating recording of a police interview with Bello and Bradley surfaced and The New York Times published an exposé, the New Jersey State Supreme Court ruled 7-0 to reverse Carter and Artis’ convictions. The two men were released on bond, but only for six months; they were convicted again at a second trial in the fall of 1976, during which Bello retracted his testimony.
Artis (who refused police’s 1974 offer to release him if he identified Carter as the gunman) was a model prisoner who was released on parole in 1981. Despite Carter’s lawyers’ efforts, the New Jersey State Supreme Court denied their appeal for a third trial in the fall of 1982, affirming the verdicts 4-3.
Inside the prison walls, Carter had long acknowledged the need to accept his situation. He spent his time reading and researching, with minimal interaction with others. During his first ten years in prison, his wife, Mae Thelma, stopped visiting him on his own request; the pair, who had a son and a daughter, divorced in 1984.
Carter began a relationship with Lesra Martin, a teenager from a Brooklyn neighborhood who read his memoirs and launched a correspondence. Martin was living with a group of Canadians who had formed an entrepreneurial commune and were responsible for his schooling. Martin’s sponsors, including Sam Chaiton, Terry Swinton, and Lisa Peters, quickly formed a strong bond with Carter and began working for his release.
Their efforts escalated after the summer of 1983, when they began working in New York with Carter’s legal defense team, which included lawyers Myron Beldock and Lewis Steel, as well as constitutional expert Leon Friedman, to get a writ of habeas corpus from U.S. District Court Judge H. Lee Sarokin.
Life After Prison
On November 7, 1985, Sarokin released Carter, declaring that “the extensive record clearly demonstrates that [the] petitioners’ convictions were predicated upon an appeal to racism rather than reason, and concealment rather than disclosure.” The state continued to fight Sarokin’s ruling, all the way to the United States Supreme Court, until February 1988, when a Passaic County (NJ) state judge formally dismissed Carter and Artis’ 1966 indictments, bringing an end to the 22-year drama.
Carter relocated to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and lived with the organization that had labored to rescue him. In 1991, he collaborated with Chaiton and Swinton on the book “Lazarus and the Hurricane: The Untold Story of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter’s Freeing.” He and Peters were married, but the couple separated when Carter left the commune.
The former prizefighter, who received an honorary championship title belt from the World Boxing Council in 1993, served as director of the Association in Defense of the Wrongfully Convicted, which was based at his Toronto home. He has also served on the boards of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta and the Alliance for Prison Justice in Boston.
In 1999, the film “The Hurricane,” directed by Norman Jewison and starring Washington, reignited interest in Carter’s narrative. The film was largely based on Carter’s 1974 autobiography and Chaiton and Swinton’s 1991 book, which was reissued in late 1999. In 2000, James S. Hirsch published a new authorized biography, Hurricane: The Miraculous Journey of Rubin Carter.
Later Years and Death
Carter created the advocacy group Innocence International in 2004 and frequently lectures on the pursuit of justice for wrongfully convicted individuals. Carter, who was battling prostate cancer in February 2014, advocated for the release of David McCallum, a Brooklyn man convicted of kidnapping and murder and imprisoned since 1985. Carter’s op-ed essay “Hurricane Carter’s Dying Wish” in The Daily News on February 21, 2014, discussed McCallum’s case and his own life, stating, “If I find a heaven after this life, I’ll be quite surprised.” In my own years on this world, however, I spent the first 49 years in hell and the last 28 years in heaven.To live in a society where truth matters and justice is served, no matter how late, would be bliss enough for all of us.
Carter, 76, died in his sleep on April 20, 2014, at his Toronto home. His death was due to complications from prostate cancer.