Rubin Carter

Rubin "Hurricane" Carter (May 6, 1937 – April 20, 2014) was an American-Canadian middleweight boxer, wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for murder until released following a petition of habeas corpus after almost 20 years in prison.

In 1966, Carter, and his co-accused, John Artis, were arrested for a triple homicide that was committed at the Lafayette Bar and Grill in Paterson, New Jersey, United States. Shortly after the killings at 2:30 am, a car carrying Carter, Artis, and a third man, was stopped by police outside the bar while its occupants were on their way home from a nearby nightclub. They were allowed to go on their way, but after dropping off the third man, Carter and Artis were stopped and arrested while they were passing the bar a second time 45 minutes later.

Carter and Artis were interrogated for 17 hours, released, then re-arrested weeks later. In 1967, they were convicted of all three murders and given life sentences to be served in Rahway State Prison; a retrial in 1976 upheld their sentences, but they were overturned in 1985. Prosecutors appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court but declined to try the case a third time after the appeal failed.

Carter's autobiography, titled The Sixteenth Round, written while he was in prison, was published in 1974 by Viking Press. The story inspired the 1975 Bob Dylan song "Hurricane" and the 1999 film The Hurricane, starring Denzel Washington as Carter. From 1993 to 2005, Carter served as executive director of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted (later rebranded as Innocence Canada).

In 2019, the case was the focus of a 13-part BBC podcast series, The Hurricane Tapes. The series was based on interviews which were conducted with survivors, case notes which were taken during the original investigations, and 40 hours of recorded interviews of Carter by the author Ken Klonsky, who cited them in his 2011 book The Eye of the Hurricane.

Carter was born in Clifton, New Jersey, in 1937, the fourth of seven children. He later admitted to a troubled relationship with his father, a strict disciplinarian; at the age of eleven, he was sentenced to a juvenile reformatory for assault, having stabbed a man who he alleged had tried to assault him sexually. Carter escaped from the reformatory in 1954 and joined the United States Army. A few months after completing basic training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, he was sent to West Germany. While in Germany, Carter began to box for the Army. He was discharged in 1956 as unfit for service after four courts-martial. Shortly after his discharge, he returned home to New Jersey, was convicted of two muggings, and was sent to prison.

After his release from prison in September 1961, Carter became a professional boxer. At 5 ft 8 in (1.73 m), Carter was shorter than the average middleweight, but he fought all of his professional careers at 155–160 lb (70–72.6 kg). His aggressive style and punching power (resulting in many early-round knockouts) drew attention, establishing him as a crowd favorite and earning him the nickname "Hurricane." After he defeated a number of middleweight contenders—such as Florentino Fernandez, Holley Mims, Gomeo Brennan, and George Benton—the boxing world took notice. The Ring first listed him as one of its "Top 10" middleweight contenders in July 1963. At the end of 1965, they ranked him as the number five middleweight.

He fought six times in 1963, winning four bouts and losing two. He remained ranked in the lower part of the top 10 until December 20, when he surprised the boxing world by flooring past and future world champion Emile Griffith twice in the first round and scoring a technical knockout. That win resulted in The Ring's ranking Carter as the number three contender for Joey Giardello's world 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 landed a few solid rights to the head in the fourth round that left Giardello staggering, but he was unable to follow them up, and Giardello took control of the fight in the fifth round. The judges decided unanimously in favor of Giardello.

After that fight, Carter's ranking in The Ring began to decline. He fought nine times in 1965, winning five but losing three of four against contenders Luis Manuel Rodríguez, Dick Tiger, and Harry Scott. Tiger, in particular, floored Carter three times in their match. "It was," Carter said, "the worst beating that I took in my life—inside or outside the ring." During his visit to London to fight Scott, Carter was involved in an incident in which a shot was fired in his hotel room.

Carter's career record in boxing was 27 wins with 19 total knockouts (8 KOs and 11 TKOs), 12 losses, and one draw in 40 fights. He received an honorary championship title belt from the World Boxing Council in 1993 (as did Joey Giardello at the same banquet). He was later inducted into the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame.