Rubin "Hurricane" Carter was a flamboyant and well-known figure in Paterson. they sentenced me to a life of living death. Catherine McGuire and her mother Anna Mapes Brown testified that Carter had asked them to lie for him at the first trial. He stumbles to the floor and plays dead. Have no fears about this because, look it isn't a case of dealing but it's just common sense. For actual identification of Carter and Artis, therefore, the prosecution had to rely on Bello and Bradley. They became entwined once more when Carter was diagnosed with cancer. He and Peters were married, but the couple separated when Carter moved out of the commune. Rubin didn't kill people," his cousin Johnny said. The prosecution found a letter Carter wrote to them from jail before the first trial, laying out the alibi story and asking them to "remember" it. The fact is that no person involved in prosecuting Carter and Artis has been, John Wayne Gacy Confessed to Killing Dozens (December 22, 1978). The detectives do not use the n-word or call anyone a Muslim, on the tape.). And he learned that words can be even more powerful than fists. (DeSimone, who rose to become chief of detectives in Paterson, died in 1979.). By a fortuitous coincidence, Carter's book hit the stands in 1974 a few weeks after a big break in his case: Bello had recanted his testimony and said he'd lied at the first trial. ", My mother grasped my hand tightly and cried, (wrote Carter). eyewitness identification of Carter and Artis. Did Carter shoot them?" "I still remember when a black man could be lynched for walking down the street with a white woman," he told a colleague. Artis had been paroled in 1981, and since Carter might be eligible soon, after losing appeals New Jersey declined to prosecute a third time. Victory would see him take the world title. An officer, a man with a huge scar across his face, approaches Marins and asks him bluntly: "Are these the men that shot you?" On the night of November 29, 1988, near the impoverished Marlborough neighborhood in south Kansas City, an explosion at a construction site killed six of the citys firefighters. Rubin Carter was born on May 6, 1937, in Clifton, New Jersey. He turned to their trainer and announced he could beat any man there. Names like Annie Ruth Haggins and the Cockershams reappear. Two black men enter the bar. Sarokin noted Bello had been given a lie-detector test, but not told the result directly; instead the prosecution had hinted to him the story he told about Carter and Artis being the gunmen had come through as true on the lie detector. Outside, a late model white car cruises slowly past the silent houses. But he hadn't learned his lesson, because, once at Jamesburg State Home for Boys, he tried to defend, "There's no doubt Carter was framed," Bradley told Selwyn Raab of. Bello turned. There he resumed boxing, and days after his release in 1961 had his first professional fight, winning a split decision and a purse of $20. As a boxer, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, who has died aged 76, was a middleweight Sonny Liston, an ex-convict whose only skill seemed to be inflicting hurt, which made him all the more intimidating to opponents. Although there was, in the words of Carter's lawyer, "a mountain" of circumstantial evidence against them, much of it came with problems attached, due to sloppy forensic work and the possibility that witnesses had been coached retrospectively. Martin was living with a group of Canadians who had formed an entrepreneurial commune and had taken on the responsibilities for his education. The Carter defense fund ended up in debt. At the 1976 trial, Fred Hogan was called as a defense witnessMr. Hogan is exposed. Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter : [voice over narration] Hurricane is the professional name that I acquired later on in life. And that is the only way of describing prison. According to his testimony, he heard three or four loud bangs. Firstly, the racial revenge theory; a prosecutor during the trial had said something to the effect of "this is what black people do". In real life, the time of the murders was given as 2:30 in the very first police report, before police could possibly have traced Carter's movements that night. Right then, and right here, because if you don't kill me, I will kill you.". For a man who is not bitter, Carter has left a trail of bitterness behind him. The producers of The Hurricane have not announced plans for a sequel. Carter lies back down and directs Artis to his house, wanting to pick up some more money before heading back out to the bars. Carter was composed but feeling abandoned; he believed the famous friends who had attached themselves to his cause had disappeared once he had been released. In real life, DeSimone cautioned Bello to tell the truth. For young Rubin, this act of self-protection, of looking after yourself whoever the opponent, had a lasting effect. On screen, the Canadians and young Lesra leap up in exultation as Rod Steiger frees Denzel Washington. But Carter was still angry. Standing only 5' 8" tall and weighing 160 lbs., he nevertheless had one of the most muscular builds in the sport. But is Carter innocent? If it had, it would have been laughed out the door. One had a pistol and another had a shotgun, Bello says. (To read that brief click here.) Only 42, Marins is too sick to work, but not too sick to play some pool and pass the night with his buddies at the Lafayette. Valentine, then 23, burst into tears when she saw it. Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter : [addressing the court] Justice is all I ask for. Oliver throws a bottle at the assailants and turns his back on them. He brought on the 'Hurricane'.". Carter was there in spirit if not body as Dylan, Stevie Wonder and Isaac Hayes took to the stage to raise money for Carter's legal fund. How much is Rubin Carter Worth? Much of the legal case was shrouded in late-1960s American civil unrest. He had gone from living in a New York ghetto to an Ontario mansion with a Canadian commune. Product. Humphreys wanted to confront Carter with all of the hated that spilled over in the pages of his autobiography The 16th Round. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis, Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter behind bars. If Kelley was trying to get money, (which she denies), she cooked the goose that laid the golden egg. But in Carter's 2000 biography, it was the Canadians who came under attack. There was a lead detective in the Lafayette Grill case by the name of Vincent DeSimone. Brendan Byrne, under public pressure to just pardon and release Carter and Artis, called for a new investigation into the murders. Biography and associated logos are trademarks of A+E Networksprotected in the US and other countries around the globe. Rubin Carter married, first, in 1963, Mae Thelma Basket. I'm a grandmother. He'd taken a bullet in the face during World War II. During the mid-1970s, his case became a cause celbr for a number of civil rights leaders, politicians and entertainers. Muddying the waters was the fact, uncovered by journalist Raab, that the police did not log the bullets in as evidence until five days after they said they found it. Inside were three men and one woman, all white, all of them regulars at the tavern . Now, in 1975, it was full of people fighting for his freedom. The defense felt they had stumbled on to a gold mine. It later emerged that, after watching the two gunmen leave, Bello went into the bar. He was in Bordentown Reformatory for a series of motel robberies. It's really a gathering of friends, it's just that one of them happens to be the bartender and the rest are on the other side of the counter. Then Carter caps it all off by explaining that he's not bitter about all that has been done to him. When Sgt. The 3 a.m. closing time at the Lafayette Grill drew near. One, he said, was Rubin Carter; the other, John Artis. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. Site contains certain content that is owned A&E Television Networks, LLC. Carter's wife divorced him. Lisa Peters : You can't understand living without you. He felt no-one could understand; not even Artis, who had been released on parole in 1981 for good behaviour and his role in stopping a prison riot. "Six feet underground, in total darkness, without sanitation, with five slices of stale bread and one glass of water," Carter said. A federal judge, Lee Sarokin, (played by Rod Steiger in the movie), ruled that there was no evidence that Carter hated white folks, or that he was angry about Holloway's shooting, Sarokin felt the prosecution was saying that Carter, a black man, wanted revenge just because he was black, as though all blacks went out and shot people when one of their own was killed. Perhaps one clue is offered by testimony from the first trial that, when Bello got home early that morning, he exclaimed to a friend, "Rubin Carter just shot up the whole bar!". Giardello was the world middleweight champion, but Carter was at the peak of his career. Caruso also wrote about a secret code word that people needed to know before approaching some of DeSimone's witnesses. Two more wins, including an impressive decision over future heavyweight champ Jimmy Ellis, led to a title shot against the middleweight champion Joey Giardello, who controlled the 15-round fight and won a unanimous decision. The following incidents from the movie, for example, are not true and this is just a partial list: As New Jersey columnist Paul Mulshine points out, "The movie seems to lie compulsively." Rubin (Hurricane) Carter had been in prison for 13 years, serving a life sentence for a triple murder he did not commit - a brutal slaying at a bar in Paterson, N.J., in 1966. Carter was damaged as much or more by the credibility problems he created for himself, as he was by Bello's shaky testimony. Were they being run down? The Freeing of Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter'' (St. Martin's Griffin, paper, $14.95), by Sam Chaiton and Terry Swinton . Their efforts intensified after the summer of 1983, when they began to work in New York with Carter's legal defense team, including lawyers Myron Beldock and Lewis Steel and constitutional scholar Leon Friedman, to seek a writ of habeas corpus from U.S. District Court Judge H. Lee Sarokin. The front door of the bar flies openBartender Oliver sees the two men with guns and hurls an empty beer bottle at them that smashes against the wall by the front door. On the stand, Bello admitted that he entered the Lafayette right after the shootings, walked past the bodies of the dead and dying, and scooped up about $60 from the cash register. The case got a boost four months after the murders when Bello dropped some hints to Sgt. In real life, the murders were always pegged at 2:30. They flipped straight to the final pages of Sarokin's verdict, where the words leapt off the page. "Rubin would paralyse you with a punch.". Justice on Fire is OConnors detailed account of the terrible explosion that led to the firefighters deaths and the terrible injustice that followed. He saw two Negroes come around the corner, laughing and swinging their guns. He elaborates, changes and exaggerates the events in his life, from his childhood on, and fashions them into dramatic stories. "How could an overweight, high-heeled Bello elude a world-class professional athlete and a former high school track star?" His movements were overwhelming. The round opens a two-inch by one-inch hole and severs his spinal cord, killing him instantly. The money was more important than ever - now a retrial had been ordered, Carter would only be able to get out of prison before the proceedings if he could post bail. Artis and Carter are whisked to the police station, where Detective Vincent de Simone, a man who Artis thinks resembles a bulldog after taking a wartime blast to the face, interviews them. Psychology, as Russian novelist Dostoevsky pointed out in a murder trial scene in The Brothers Karamazov, is a two-edged sword. Carter attracted lawyers who gave him years of free legal work. For Carter, this was a stifling reminder of the prison he had escaped. Four months later, the day before his 20th birthday, Artis is out buying soda. If this was director Norman Jewison's attempt to right one of the legions of wrongs of a justice system riddled with racism, he picked the wrong case. Caruso, for one thing, was very critical of the initial police investigation, which was deplorably lax. The campaign attracted celebrity backers and spawned a Bob Dylan song, Hurricane, released in 1975, which became its theme. A year later, at the iconic Madison Square Garden, he needed just 69 seconds and one punch to knock out Florentino Fernandez. I never agreed to wear the prison clothes, eat the prison food.I felt to do that would be to implicitly agree that I was a criminal settling into the routine of a prisoner who'd accepted that title. There's been a report of another shooting. He makes no effort to wipe it off. At that time, who should pop into Bello's life but Fred Hogan, an investigator in the New Jersey Public Defender's Office who had befriended Carter and taken up the cause of proving hisinnocence. to which Whitt replies, "No. The fight - reigning champion against loose cannon - took place against a backdrop of racial tension. On April 20, 2014, he breathed his lastafter suffering from prostate cancer. During the mid-1970s, his case became a cause celbr for a number of civil rights leaders, politicians and entertainers. Rubin Carter always remembered a childhood hunting trip. He was blind in one eye, the result of a botched operation by a prison doctor. In 1963, the 'Hurricane' was set to fight two-division champion Emile Griffith. The two, Catherine McGuire and Anna Mapes Brown, took the stand to corroborate his testimony. He had the surgery in the prison hospital. He staggers, clutches a pillar for support. Carter was angry at the justice system, at the police, at everyone. Before long, Martin's benefactors, most notably Sam Chaiton, Terry Swinton, and Lisa Peters, developed a strong bond with Carter and began to work for his release. The jury, which included two black men, convicted him again. Two weeks later, after their rivalry played out in front of one billion viewers, Frazier and Ali stood together to speak in Carter's defence. His tendency to invent grandiose claims for himself -- "I made the Olympics in 1956!" News & Politics; . (, Psychology, as Russian novelist Dostoevsky pointed out in a murder trial scene in, By the time Carter took the stand, he had already dug himself into a hole by his attempts to fashion an alibi. But Carter was a more flamboyant public figure than Liston and in the racially charged atmosphere of Paterson, New Jersey, in 1966, that was a dangerous thing. Login. Bello mentioned he had been promised a reward for his testimony; Bradley said he had been promised a deal that never materialised. Today, Carter claims that the grand juries held in July and August "exonerated" him and that he and Artis passed the lie detector tests. Bello had gone to Mohl to complain that some of Carter's friends were threatening him. His prison records show that he avoided work details and received citations for disobeying orders, but also make it clear that he was in the general lock up and not kept, as he claims today, in solitary confinement. Blowen evidently did not check into federal regulations limiting solitary confinement, or Carter's own autobiography that contradicts the interview. Guilty. A second ticks by. It's true that the police questioned Al Bello, the petty thief who was a witness at the murder scene, with a tape recorder rolling. We used to shoot at folks" - and bragged that he had once stabbed a man "everywhere but the bottom of his feet". There's Fred Nauyoks, 60, perched on a barstool, lighting up another cigarette and laying out some money for one last drink as he laughs and jokes with Oliver. Neither the prosecution nor the defense had much use for him, as he refused to take a lie detector test and had alcohol and drug problems. Carter received three life sentences, two consecutive and one concurrent, Artis got three concurrent life sentences. Carter, meanwhile, decided to right some wrongs on his own. Once Jewison had made that mistake in judgment, his need to fabricate the truth took over. But he also thought he detected corruption, as well. Throughout his examination, Marins kept stressing that he was in a complete state of shock on the morning following the shooting and couldn't possibly have known what he was saying when he was being questioned at the hospital by the police.". He started well, body blow after body blow pushing Giardello back, but he could not deliver the final strike. The jurors were selected from Hudson County, which the judge said was demographically similar. Big murder cases always seem to attract cranks, confessors, psychics and assorted hangers-on. Carter's biographer, James Hirsch, asks, why did Carter and Artis keep driving around that night, to be picked up a second time? I believe, though. Both Valentine and Bello called the police and Det. He told him about the Canadians that he lived with, and slowly, gradually, Carter became part of their family. One of the people making this criticism is, not surprisingly, one of the lawyers on the Carter/Artis defense team. Bradley played a minor role. Just a few minutes later, Det. He sometimes carried a pistol under his tailor-made jackets. I'm interested in one thing, Al, an' that's the truth. There is a prosecution side to the story, one that has been ignored or hidden for a long time. For nine years, Carter was a nomad. One dying. The prosecution called a supervisor from the hospital where Brown worked, who testified that Brown was on vacation at the time of the crime. There were marches and demonstrations, led by Muhammad Ali and other celebrities. One climbs into the driver's seat, the other the passenger side, and they drive off into the night. According to trial testimony, Carter was at the Nite Spot when Rawls arrived with the news of his stepfather's slaying. Also, Elizabeth Panagia, the owner of the Lafayette Grill, not Oliver, had been expected to be at work that night. Bello was on the lookout while Bradley, a career criminal, was trying to break into a nearby metal company. In 1999, widespread interest in the story of Carter was revived with a major motion picture, The Hurricane, directed by Norman Jewison and starring Washington. Then the vengeful guard came back to frame him and ruined his chance for parole. He read and studied extensively, and in 1974 published his autobiography, The 16th Round: From Number 1 Contender to Number 45472, to widespread acclaim. But by now, the story was much too confusing to be summed up on a protest sign or a bumper sticker. Extract of legal interview with Alfred Bello. The jury for the second trial in 1976, which is scarcely mentioned in the movie, was not all white. Police had to escort the handcuffed Conforti through a gauntlet of angry onlookers to a police car. From the beginning, the death of Jim Oliver and his patrons was linked in people's minds with the slaying of Roy Holloway, a black bartender. Both of them took the stand at the second trial to deny trying to bribe Bello, but Levinson admitted that he knew that Bello was talking about getting money to testify. Some people who knew Carter's parents, Lloyd and Bertha, marveled at how such a sober, hard-working Baptist couple could have produced a bird of paradise like Carter. 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