Eye of the Hurricane: My Path from Darkness to Freedom
Rubin "Hurricane" Carter & Ken Klonsky, 2011
Chicago Review Press
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781569765685
Summary
Eye of the Hurricane: My Path from Darkness to Freedom is a self-portrait of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, a twentieth-century icon and controversial victim of the U.S. justice system turned spokesperson for the wrongfully convicted. In this moving narrative Dr. Carter tells of all the "prisons" he has survived—from his childhood through his wrongful incarceration and after. A spiritual as well as a factual autobiography, Eye of the Hurricane explores Carter's personal philosophy, born of the unimaginable duress of wrongful imprisonment and conceived through his defiance of the brutal institution of prison and ten years of solitary confinement.
His is not a comfortable story or a comfortable philosophy, but it offers hope for those who have none and serves as a call to action for those who abhor injustice. Eye of the Hurricane may well change the way we view crime and punishment in the twenty-first century. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 6, 1937
• Where—Paterson, New Jersey, USA
• Education—self-taught
• Currently—lives in Tortonto, Ontario, Canada
Rubin "Hurricane" Carter fought professionally as a middleweight boxer from 1961 to 1966. In 1966, he was arrested for a triple homicide in the Lafayette Bar and Grill in Paterson, New Jersey. He and another man, John Artis, were tried and convicted twice (1967 and 1976) for the murders, but after the second conviction was overturned in 1985, prosecutors chose not to try the case for a third time. From 1993 to 2005 Carter served as executive director of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted. In 2011, Carter published his memoir, Eye of the Hurricane.
Early Life
Carter grew up in Paterson, New Jersey, the fourth of seven children. He acquired a criminal record and was sentenced to a juvenile reformatory for assault and robbery shortly after his 14th birthday. Carter escaped from the reformatory in 1954 and joined the Army. A few months after completing infantry basic training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, he was sent to West Germany. He adopted Islam and changed his name for a while. In May 1956, he received an "Undesirable" discharge, having served 21 months of his three-year term of enlistment.
Carter was discharged from the Army on May 29, 1956, and was arrested less than a month later for his escape from the Jamesburg Home for Boys. After his return to New Jersey, Carter was picked up by authorities and sentenced to an additional 9 months for escaping from the reformatory, he was sent to Annandale prison for five months. Shortly after being released, Carter committed a series of muggings. He pleaded guilty to the charges and was imprisoned in East Jersey State Prison in Avenel, New Jersey, a maximum-security facility, where he would remain for the next four years.
Boxing Career
Upon his release from prison in September 1961, Carter became a professional boxer. His aggressive style and punching power drew attention, establishing him as a crowd favorite and earning him the nickname "Hurricane." The Ring first listed him as one of its "Top 10" middleweight contenders in July 1963.
He received an honorary championship title belt from the World Boxing Council in 1993 and was later inducted into the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame.
Murders
On June 17, 1966, two males entered the Lafayette Bar and Grill in Paterson, New Jersey, and started shooting. The bartender, James Oliver, and a male customer, Fred Nauyoks, were killed instantly. A severely wounded female customer, Hazel Tanis, died almost a month later. A third customer, Willie Marins, survived the attack, despite a gunshot wound to the head that cost him the sight in one eye. Both Marins and Tanis told police that the shooters had been black males after being interrogated, although neither identified Carter or John Artis, both of whom were subsequently arrested, charged, tried, and convicted.
Petty criminal Alfred Bello was an eyewitness. Bello later testified that he was approaching the Lafayette when two black males came around the corner walking towards him. He ran from them, and they got into a white car that was double-parked near the Lafayette. Bello was one of the first people on the scene of the shootings, as was Patricia Graham. Graham told the police that she saw two black males get into a white car and drive westbound. Both Bello and Valentine provided a description of the car to the police, which changed at the second court case.
First Conviction
Carter's car matched this description, and police stopped it and brought Carter and another occupant, John Artis, to the scene about 31 minutes after the incident. There was little physical evidence; police took no fingerprints at the crime scene, and lacked the facilities to conduct a paraffin test on Carter and Artis. None of the eyewitnesses identified Carter or Artis as the shooter. The defense would later raise questions about this evidence, as it was not logged with a property clerk until five days after the murders.
Carter and Artis were taken to police headquarters and questioned. They were released later that day.
Several months later, Bello disclosed to the police that he had an accomplice during the attempted burglary, one Arthur Dexter Bradley. On further questioning, Bello and Bradley both identified Carter as one of the two males they had seen carrying weapons outside the bar the night of the murders; Bello also identified Artis as the other. Based on this additional evidence, Carter and Artis were arrested and indicted.
At the 1967 trial, Carter was represented by well-known attorney Raymond A. Brown. Brown's focus...was on inconsistencies in some of the descriptions given by eyewitnesses Marins and Bello. The defense also produced a number of alibi witnesses who testified that Carter and Artis had been in another nearby bar at about the time of the shootings. However, prosecutors were able to impeach the testimony given by these witnesses. Both men were convicted. Although prosecutors had sought the death penalty, jurors recommended that each defendant receive a life sentence for each murder.
In 1974, Bello and Bradley recanted their identifications of Carter and Artis, and these recantations were used as the basis for a motion for a new trial. Judge Samuel Larner denied the motion, saying that the recantations "lacked the ring of truth."
Despite Larner's ruling, Madison Avenue advertising guru George Lois organized a campaign on Carter's behalf, which led to increasing public support for a retrial or pardon. Muhammad Ali lent his support to the campaign, and Bob Dylan wrote song called "Hurricane" (1975), which declared that Carter was innocent. In 1975 Dylan performed the song at a concert where Carter was temporarily an inmate.
However, during the hearing on the recantations, defense attorneys also argued that Bello and Bradley had lied during the 1967 trial. Prosecutor Burrell Ives Humphreys decided to try Carter and Artis again. It was concludede that Bello was telling the truth when he said that he had seen Carter, outside the Lafayette immediately after the murders.
Second Conviction and Appeal
During the new trial, witness Alfred Bello repeated his 1967 testimony, identifying Carter and Artis as the two armed men he had seen outside the Lafayette Grill. Bradley refused to cooperate with prosecutors, and neither prosecution nor defense called him as a witness.
The defense responded with testimony from multiple witnesses identifying Carter at the locations he claimed to be at the morning the murders happened.
After deliberating 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, a single life sentence for Artis.
Artis was paroled in 1981. Carter, 48 years old, was freed without bail in November 1985. The prosecutors appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case.
Aftermath
Carter now lives in Toronto, Ontario, and was executive director of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted (AIDWYC) from 1993 until 2005. Carter resigned when the AIDWYC declined to support Carter's protest of the appointment (to a judgeship) of the prosecutor of Canadian Guy Paul Morin, who had to serve ten years in prison after a wrongful conviction for rape and murder.
Carter often serves as a motivational speaker. On October 14, 2005, he received two honorary Doctorates of Law, one from York University (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) and one from Griffith University (Brisbane, Queensland, Australia), in recognition of his work with AIDWYC and the Innocence Project. Carter received the Abolition Award from Death Penalty Focus in 1996. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)
Ken Klonsky
Ken Klonsky, co-author of Dr. Rubin Carter’s Eye of the Hurricane, is a former Toronto teacher and writer now living in Vancouver. He works as Director of Media Relations, and advocates for prisoners, at Innocence International, the organization conceived by Dr. Carter to help free wrongly convicted prisoners worldwide. Songs of Aging Children, Klonsky’s collection of short stories about troubled youth, was published in 1992, and Taking Steam, a play co-authored with the late Brian Shein, was staged in New York and Toronto in 1983. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
An uplifting tale of how a man can transcend shackles of all sorts.
Globe and Mail
Long story short, if Eye of the Hurricane doesn’t inspire you, nothing will.
Smooth Magazine
Carter was a top middleweight boxing contender of the early 1960s (who had already served time in prison) until he was arrested for a triple murder in 1966 and convicted—not once but twice. He was incarcerated until his conviction was finally overturned on appeal in 1985. Bob Dylan had protested his imprisonment in song; later Denzel Washington portrayed him on the screen. While in prison, Carter authored his first book, The Sixteenth Round. Perhaps the greatest proof of his innocence is his career after he was released from prison. As he relates here, he spent 13 years as chair and CEO of the Association in Defense of the Wrongly Convicted, and since splitting with that organization in 2005 has been CEO of Innocence International, another group working to free innocent prisoners. While he harks back to his own legal tribulations, the core of his new book is his condemnation of the flaws in our criminal justice system: the book's protagonists are the wrongly convicted prisoners whose stories he imparts. The legal verdicts on Carter were impaired, but the verdict on this book is positive. It is not a sports book for the casual boxing fan, but it's essential for the socially conscious. —Jim Burns, Jacksonville P.L., FL
Library Journal
Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, a former middleweight prizefighter whose 1967 imprisonment for a triple homicide at a...New Jersey bar became a cause celebre in the 1970s...was released from prison in 1985 by a federal judge who cited a conviction predicated on “an appeal to racism rather than reason.”.... For more information about Carter, check out Sam Chaiton and Terry Swinton’s Lazarus and the Hurricane (1991) and James Hirsch’s Hurricane.
Booklist
Discussion Questions
Thanks to Lauren Sommerfield of The BWB Bookclub, Massena, New York, for submitting her questions:
1. How does the tone of the book change from beginning to end? Do you feel differently about the author's message in different stages of the book?
2. Does Dr. Rubin Carter's struggle appear to be an internal struggle or an external struggle? Why?
3. If wrongfully convicted and sentenced to life in prison, do you think you would have chosen to "fall in line" of the prison system to make your time there easier, or been defiant like Dr. Carter, to fight for your innocence and freedom?
4. Dr. Carter believes many people and groups of people are to blame for wrongful conviction: investigating police officers, lawyers, judges, American society in general. Who do you think is to blame for wrongful convictions? What is something that could/should be changed to prevent it?
5. Did anything presented in this book change your opinion about capital punishment? Does it change your views on the interrogation process and the possibility of false confessions?
6. Dr. Carter describes instances in the book of different, specific, spiritual awakenings he has experienced. What do you make of these spiritual awakenings? Are they a result of past events or were they meant to help him with future events? Are they a coping mechanism?
7. Dr. Carter believes much of society is "asleep". Do you agree? Do you believe our country is more "asleep" than others?
8. Do you believe Dr. Carter's time in prison was worth it for him since upon his release he was and is able to help so many others in the same situations?
9. How do you think his life would be today had he been acquitted of all charges and never sent to prison?
10. Would you ever turn yourself in for a crime you committed knowing you would spend years in prison? Would you ever turn your child in for a crime they committed?
(Questions submitted by Lauren Sommerfield of Massena, New York.)