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.)