Tag: wrongful imprisonment
Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter Dies; Boxer Was Wrongfully Imprisoned For Murder

Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter Dies; Boxer Was Wrongfully Imprisoned For Murder

By Jessica Gelt, Los Angeles Times

Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, the middleweight boxer whose wrongful triple-murder conviction inspired a film starring Denzel Washington and a song by Bob Dylan, died in Toronto on Sunday. He was 76.

Carter, who died of complications from prostate cancer, had a difficult upbringing in New Jersey and had stints in prison for assault and robbery before channeling himself into boxing. In 1963, Ring magazine listed him as one of its top 10 middleweight contenders of the year.

Three years later, his fortunes changed drastically after he and his friend John Artis were pulled over by police looking for the perpetrators of a triple homicide at the Lafayette Bar and Grill in Paterson, N.J. The victims were white; witnesses said they saw two black men flee the scene in a white car with out-of-state license plates.

Carter was convicted twice (in 1967 and 1976) by all-white juries. He spent 19 years in prison and became a cause celebre for legal injustice and racial inequality. The profile of his plight skyrocketed in 1975 with the release of Bob Dylan’s song “Hurricane.”

Here comes the story of the Hurricane

The man the authorities came to blame

For something that he never done

Put him in a prison cell but one time he could-a been

The champion of the world.

Dylan played the powerful tune — what many consider to be his last great protest song — during nearly every concert of that year’s sold-out Rolling Thunder tour, but Carter was still convicted again the following year.

Carter’s conviction was set aside in November 1985, when he was 48, by a federal judge, who ruled that Carter and Artis did not receive fair trials and released them.

He went on to become the first executive director of the Association for the Defense of the Wrongly Convicted.

Carter’s story got new life in 1999 with the release of the Norman Jewison film “Hurricane,” for which actor Denzel Washington received an Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of Carter.

The film was highly controversial, with detractors saying that it took major liberties with the truth. The film glossed over some of the more unpleasant aspects of Carter’s life, they said, and created a cliched parable of racism based on the actions of one cop rather than focusing on the more difficult subject of racism endemic in the justice system.

The fact that the critically acclaimed film landed only one Oscar nomination fueled the controversy. Supporters of the film said the unnecessary protests hindered the movie’s shot at more nominations.

Nonetheless, Carter was thrilled by the film and Washington’s portrayal of him.

“God bless Rubin Carter and his tireless fight to ensure justice for all,” Washington said in a statement to CNN on Sunday.

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Freed Hikers Highlight American Hypocrisy

Joshua Fattal and Shane Bauer — the two American hikers who were freed last week after more than two years of imprisonment in Iran — held a revealing press conference this morning that shined a light on the United States’ hypocritical national security policies.

Fattal and Bauer began by describing their horrible treatment while imprisoned in Iran, saying that “we have been held in almost total isolation from the world and everything we love, stripped of our rights and freedom. … Solitary confinement was the worst experience of our lives.” Fattal went on to say that “[m]any times, too many times, we heard the screams of other prisoners being beaten and there was nothing we could do to help them.”

If their ordeal sounds familiar, perhaps it’s because it is so similar to the way that the United States treats its prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and other military prisons across the globe. The United States holds detainees for years at a time without any hope of due process, and has been unapologetic about using torture to interrogate prisoners.

Indeed, that irony was not lost on Fattal and Bauer. As Bauer explained:

“In prison, every time we complained about our conditions, the guards would remind us of comparable conditions at Guantanamo Bay; they’d remind us of CIA prisons in other parts of the world; and conditions that Iranians and others experience in prisons in the U.S.

We do not believe that such human rights violation on the part of our government justify what has been done to us: not for a moment. However, we do believe that these actions on the part of the U.S. provide an excuse for other governments — including the government of Iran — to act in kind.”

Bauer is exactly right. The United States’ deplorable treatment of its detainees does not justify Iran’s, but it should not go unnoticed in this story. How can the United States criticize Iran’s treatment of American prisoners, when it would treat suspected Iranian spies captured in the United States in almost the exact same manner?

The mere fact that the United States’ human rights record can now be reasonably compared to Iran’s is an embarrassment. When Senator Obama was running for president, he promised to close Guantanamo Bay and end the use of torture on detainees. As Joshua Fattal and Shane Bauer have reminded us, we’re still waiting for him to follow through.