Rubin “Hurricane” Carter was a top middleweight boxer from Paterson, New Jersey, whose life changed overnight in June 1966. Just two years earlier, he’d been in reach of the middleweight crown. After two men shot four people at the Lafayette Bar and Grill, killing three that night and a fourth a month later, police stopped Carter and his friend John Artis. They were stopped first with another man while returning from a club, then again after dropping him off. Carter had a record, but more importantly, he had spoken publicly against the over-policing of Black neighborhoods.

After a 17 hour interrogation and a failed attempt to get the surviving victim to identify them, the case initially fell apart. A grand jury found no grounds to charge them, and both men walked. Despite the lack of physical evidence, police kept targeting Carter and Artis, building their case on shaky testimony from two petty criminals who were coached and promised deals in exchange for identifying them.

Carter and Artis were convicted, retried, and convicted again. The case relied on recanted statements, inconsistent witnesses, and a storyline driven more by fear and bias than by solid evidence. Appeals failed for years, even as outside supporters pointed out the many holes in the prosecution’s theory. It wasn’t until 1985 that a federal judge granted Carter a writ of habeas corpus, ruling that the convictions were built on racism, suppression of evidence, and a fundamentally unfair process. Nearly twenty years after his arrest, Carter finally walked out of prison.

Carter spent the rest of his life speaking about wrongful convictions and helping others caught in the same system that failed him. He was a complicated man, not perfect, but he and John Artis were clearly undeserving of what was done to them, and Artis especially was often overlooked in the retelling. Their case is a reminder that a flawed investigation can steal decades from a person’s life and that justice, when it finally arrives at all, usually comes far too late. I write about the life of Rubin Carter and the case here if you are interested: https://open.substack.com/pub/aid2000/p/hare-brained-history-volume-47-rubin?r=4mmzre&utm_medium=ios