Rubin "Hurricane" Carter (May 6, 1937 – April 20, 2014) was an American-Canadian middleweight boxer who was wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for murder,[2] 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 which 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.

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.

[10] That win resulted in The Ring's ranking of 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.

[citation needed] 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 ended short with a record of 27 wins with 19 total knockouts (8 KOs and 11 TKOs), 12 losses and one draw in 40 fights.

[15] Ten minutes after the murders, around 2:40 AM, a police cruiser stopped Carter and Artis in a rental car, returning from a night out at the Nite Spot, a nearby bar.

Minutes later, the same officers solicited a description of the getaway car from two eyewitnesses outside the bar, Patricia "Patty" Valentine and Alfred Bello.

At the time, he claimed to have discovered the bodies when he entered the bar to buy cigarettes; it also transpired that he took the opportunity to empty the cash register and encountered the police as he exited.

He then heard the screech of tires and saw a white car shoot past, heading west, with two black males in the front seat.

At the retrial in 1976, she changed this to an accurate description of Carter's car, which had conventional tail-lights with aluminum decoration in a butterfly shape.

[19] Having dropped off Royster, Carter was now being driven home by Artis; they were stopped again at 3:00 AM and ordered to follow the police to the station, where they were arrested.

Neither matched those retrieved from the victims; the .32 round was brass, rather than copper, while the shotgun shell was an older model, with a different wad and color.

[22] Asked to account for these differences at the trial, the prosecution produced a second report, allegedly lodged 75 minutes after the murders which recorded the two rounds.

[26] Despite Larner's ruling, Madison Avenue advertising executive George Lois organized a campaign on Carter's behalf, which led to increasing public support for a retrial or pardon.

Boxer Muhammad Ali lent his support to the campaign (including publicly wishing Carter good luck on his appeal during his appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in September 1973).

[citation needed] Larner denied this second argument as well, but the New Jersey Supreme Court unanimously held that the evidence of various deals made between the prosecution and witnesses Bello and Bradley should have been disclosed to the defense before or during the 1967 trial as this could have "affected the jury's evaluation of the credibility" of the eyewitnesses.

To ensure, as best he could, that he did not use perjured testimony to obtain a conviction, Humphreys had Bello polygraphed—once by Leonard H. Harrelson and a second time by Richard Arther, both well-known and respected experts in the field.

[citation needed] The defense responded with testimony from multiple witnesses who identified Carter at the locations he claimed to be when the murders took place.

Although the justices felt that the prosecutors should have disclosed Harrelson's oral opinion (about Bello's location at the time of the murders) to the defense, only a minority thought this was material.

Passaic County Judge William Marchese held hearings on the incident in July 1976 and changed the terms of Carter's bail after determining that the assault had occurred.

Goceljak also doubted whether the prosecution could reintroduce the racially motivated crime theory[clarification needed] due to the federal court rulings.

[41] Carter lived in Toronto, Ontario, where he became a Canadian citizen,[42] and was executive director of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted (AIDWYC) from 1993 until 2005.

[4] In 1996, Carter, then 59, was arrested when Toronto police mistakenly identified him as a suspect in his thirties believed to have sold drugs to an undercover officer.

[46] In March 2012, while attending the International Justice Conference in Burswood, Western Australia, Carter revealed that he had terminal prostate cancer.

[50][51] In the months leading up to his death, Carter had worked for the exoneration of David McCallum, a Brooklyn man who had been incarcerated since 1985 on charges of murder.

"I request only that McCallum be granted a full hearing by the Brooklyn conviction integrity unit, now under the auspices of the new district attorney, Ken Thompson.