Posted on 04/20/2014 8:01:56 AM PDT by SMGFan
Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, the boxer who infamously served 19 years in jail after he was wrongly convicted for a triple murder, passed away Sunday in Toronto at the age of 76. Immortalized in a Bob Dylan song and a 1999 feature film, Carter was jailed in 1966 for a fatal shooting at a bar in New Jersey. Although he and his acquaintance John Artis passed a lie detector test and professed their innocence, the all-white jury convicted them. After multiple legal efforts, in 1985 a federal judge ruled that the convictions of Carter and Artis were based "upon an appeal to racism rather than reason and concealment rather than disclosure.” Once freed, Carter began a new life in Canada and devoted himself to helping others who were wrongly convicted.
Don’t know the story. For that I have a question: How bad was his rap sheet? If it was his first and only incident then indeed, justice did not prevail. But if like too many others, he kept getting into trouble beforehand I say ‘you win some, you lose some.’ There’s too much power in victimization.
I always think of Wooderson entering the Emporium [Dazed and Confused] whenever I see his name.
Otherwise,I skeptical.
From what I remember he probably did do it.
One of my favorites...
William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll...
From Wikipedia: According to Carolyn Kelley, a 61-year-old from Newark working as a bail bondswoman in 1975, she was asked to get involved in the effort to win a new trial for Mr. Carter. She devoted more than a year to raising funds for Mr. Carter. Mr. Carter's appeal was upheld. In March 1976, Mr. Carter was released on bail to await a new trial. A few weeks later, Mrs. Kelly says the boxer beat her into unconsciousness in his hotel room during a meeting she sought with him over affairs relating to her involvement with his cause. Rumors of the beating got out. Finally, Chuck Stone, a columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News, broke the story of the alleged beating in a front-page article. After Mr. Stone's column ran, the alleged beating became a national story. Mr. Carter's celebrity support melted away."
He was no angel, that's for sure.
I checked his story out when the movie was released - it looked to me like he probably was guilty.
I believe Dylan took extreme liberties with that story also.
I like Bob a lot, but he liked to go for the emotional response, as an artist tends to do. He's not historian.
He said he got a lot of his political info back then from his girlfriend Suze Rotolo.
Well the whole episode did result in one of the greatest Bob Dylan songs being written. Hopefully Bob shared some royalties with Hurricane after he got out of prison.
Yeah. And Rotolo was a complete apologist for Castro and other collectivist nonsense. She never wised up.
Speaking of Dylan protest songs of the justice system, I really liked Fairport Convention’s cover of “Percy’s Song.”
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