Biography
Rubin "Hurricane" Carter was a nationally ranked middleweight boxer when he was convicted of the Lafayette Bar killings.
On June 17, 1966, three people were shot to death at the Lafayette Bar and Grill in Paterson, New Jersey. Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, a nationally ranked middleweight boxer, and John Artis, a young man with no criminal record, were arrested and — on the testimony of two petty criminals, Alfred Bello and Arthur Bradley — convicted of the triple murder in 1967 and sentenced to life. No forensic evidence linked either man to the killings.
Bello and Bradley recanted in 1974, but a 1976 retrial again convicted both men. The case became an international cause célèbre — championed in Bob Dylan's 1975 song "Hurricane" and by a broad civil-rights and labor coalition — as an emblem of racist wrongful conviction. In November 1985, federal judge H. Lee Sarokin overturned the convictions, finding the prosecution had been "predicated upon an appeal to racism rather than reason, and concealment rather than disclosure." Carter was freed, and the charges were dismissed in 1988.
The newspaper distinguishes a June 1966 police stop and approximately seventeen-hour detention followed by release from the separate October 14, 1966 arrest that began the murder prosecution. It discusses the 1974 witness recantations and denial of bail in 1975. The two custody encounters are not treated as uninterrupted confinement. The Black Panther, September22,1975, volumeXIVnumber1, original PDF page 23. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/black-panther/14%20no%201%201-28%20sep%2022%201975.pdf#page=23
The Militant reported that Judge Bruno Leopizzi resentenced Rubin Carter and John Artis on February 9, 1977 after their December retrial. It named Assistant Prosecutor Ronald Marmo and Prosecutor Burrell Humphreys. Carter received two consecutive life terms and a concurrent life term; Artis received three concurrent life terms.
The Black Panther’s December 6, 1975 report describes efforts to obtain a retrial for Rubin Carter and attributes the original prosecution to coerced testimony by Alfred Bello and Arthur Bradley. It identifies Samuel Larner as the initial-trial judge and Vincent Hull Jr. as the trial prosecutor. It also reports Larner’s refusal to grant a new trial after the witnesses recanted.
The Black Panther, December 6, 1975, volume XIV no.12, PDF page 22; The Black Panther, December 6, 1975, volume XIV no.12, PDF page 23.
The brief reports the new Carter–Artis trial opening October 12, 1976 after reversal of their earlier murder convictions and life sentences. Both were actually free on bail pending retrial. The move from Paterson to Jersey City is described as responding to prejudicial publicity; evidence presentation was scheduled for October 25. This bail interval is not continuous imprisonment, and a new trial opening is not a new conviction.
