Rubin "Hurricane" Carter

Rubin Carter was born in Clifton, New Jersey. As a child, he suffered a severe speech impediment. When other children laughed at his stuttering, he soon discovered another way of getting his message across: his fists could do the talking.

To escape a troubled youth which included run-ins with the law, Carter enlisted in the US Army. He became a paratrooper, one of the elite "Screaming Eagles," and was stationed with the 11th Airborne in Germany. It was there that Carter was introduced to boxing, a sport at which he quickly excelled. Two years in a row, he won the European Light Welterweight Championship.

Carter's professional boxing career began in 1961, and his fast and furious style made him a crowd favorite. A distinctive fighter with an incredible left hook, shaved head, and baleful stare, Carter scored many early round knockouts, and earned the name "Hurricane."

As Carter was preparing to fight for the middleweight championship a second time, his career came to a shuddering halt. He and teenager, John Artis, were arrested in 1966 for the murder of three white individuals in a New Jersey bar. The prosecution sought the death penalty in a trial the following year. Although they steadfastly proclaimed their innocence, Carter and Artis were convicted and sentenced to triple-life terms, narrowly escaping the electric chair.

In 1974, upon the publication of Carter's autobiography, "The 16th Round: From Number 1 Contender to Number 45472," and the recantations of the state's two key witnesses, the Carter-Artis case attracted international attention. Carter became a civil rights cause celebrity and was immortalized in the Bob Dylan Song "Hurricane." In 1976, the New Jersey Supreme Court threw out the convictions because the state witnesses had committed perjury and vital evidence has been withheld from the defense.

A new trial ensued, but the injustice was repeated. Reconvicted and reincarcerated, Carter once again faded from the limelight. But he never gave up. He languished in prison until 1985 when, working closely with Professor Leon Friedman and Myron Beldock, he finally had the opportunity to present his claims to a federal court. The US District Court ruled that Carter's conviction had been based on "racism rather than reason and concealment rather than disclosure and that his imprisonment had been a travesty." A writ of habeas corpus was granted, and Carter exploded into the headlines again on November 8, 1985, when he was freed after serving more than 19 years for a crime he did not commit. The District Court's ruling was upheld all the way to the United States Supreme Court. In February 1988, the 22-year-old indictment against Carter was dismissed, and The 16th Round was finally over.

Carter now lives in Toronto, Ontario. An articulate and charismatic speaker, he lectures frequently at Bar associations, universities, high schools, and libraries on such diverse issues as literacy and education, wrongful convictions, and the death penalty. Carter has testified before the United States Congress on the need to preserve Federal review of state court convictions. He is on the board of directors of the Southern Center for Human Rights (Atlanta), the Alliance for Prison Justice (Boston), and is the executive director of the Toronto-based Association in Defense of the Wrongly Convicted.

Carter's story has been made into a Hollywood movie, Hurricane, directed by Norman Jewison and starring Denzel Washington, and was the inspiration for Jim Hirsch's book, Hurricane: The Miraculous Journey of Rubin Carter. To honor this champion fighter, the World Boxing Council awarded Carter "The WBC Championship Belt."