Pistol shots ring out in the barroom night
Enter Patty Valentine from the upper hall.
She Sees the bartender in a pool of blood,
Cries out, "My God, They Killed Them All!"
It's hot, in Paterson, New Jersey, thought to be the first industrial city in the United States. The cops are almost all white, there some black who does not respect the law, and a bar, Lafayette Bar & Grill, on East 18th , open late. On the night of June 17 to counter there is also J ames Oliver, white bartender who, they say, every now and then refuses to give water to the patrons blacks. Is counting the takings of the day. Fred "Bob" Nauyoaks, 60, is sitting at the center of the bar, near Oliver. At one end of the room, Hazel Tanis, a friend of Oliver's, is sipping a drink. She stopped at the bar for a chat with him after a day's work as a waitress. Two tables to the left instead of sitting Nauyoaks William Marins.
At 2:30 am two armed men, blacks, burst into the room. The lowest is holding a double-barreled shotgun, the other a 32-caliber revolver . The bartender looks up, spring is counting the money and throws a beer bottle to the two, but bounces off the air conditioner to the right of the door. Oliver turns around and tries to escape: a bullet in the lower reaches of the back. Cade behind the bar, died instantly. At the same instant the other man shot Nauyoaks behind the ear, turns to his left and hit above the eye Marins. Nauyoaks falls with his head on the counter seems to be asleep. A lit cigarette hangs still between his fingers. His feet still attached to the legs of the stool. He, like Oliver, died. Marins is in shock. He has a blind eye, a fractured skull. The killers they give it up for dead and turned to the door. And notice the woman, Hazel Tanis, terrified in a corner. The strike with a gun and four 32-caliber revolver in the throat, stomach, arms, intestines, liver and left lung. He died after a month in hospital.
"I did not do it," he says, and he throws up His hands
"I was only robbin 'the register, I hope you understand.
I Saw Them leavin ', "he says, and he stops
The two murderers out of the room, they walk along the sidewalk on 18th and turn right onto Lafayette, where he parked their car. They laugh, they talk aloud. In front of them, a hundred yards away, Alfred Bello, a thief with a long criminal record, who heard the shots while trying to penetrate with his friend Arthur Bradley in a sheet metal factory them looks, but thinks they are policemen and pretends not to notice. They throw away their arms, nearly empty; Bello understand that those two are not policemen and escaped. The two fled on board a white car. They also saw Patricia Graham , Patty Valentine, who lives just over the bar, and was awakened by the sound of gunfire. When they left, Bello entered the Lafayette Grill, and stole $ 62 from the cash register. Turn the corner, it should be on the 16th and give the money to Bradley. Then back to the Lafayette Grill, but this time called the police, who arrived within minutes. The scientific analyzing the crime scene.
Over the counter fell head "Cedar Grove Bob" Nauyoks, struck in the back of the skull from a 32 caliber bullet, which was holding a cigarette between your fingers when shooting is still on. We can say that has not had time to see who shot him. Behind Reverse Oliver is the counter, with the lower back was devastated by a rifle shot. Near the shoes Nauyoaks remains the bullet of a cartridge. On the floor, between the stools, there is a lot of blood, Marins, who has feigned death, and so survived. There is also money: Bello's fault, and confess. He had come to take coins to call the police, decided to steal a few dollars more and I am fallen a bit 'on the floor.
Meanwhile, Far Away in Another Part of Town
Rubin Carter and a couple of friends are drivin 'around.
Number one contender for the middleweight crown
Had no idea what kinda shit was about to go down
When a cop pulled him over to the side of the road
Just like the time before and the time before that.
In Paterson that's just the way things go.
Rubin Carter entra in scena
La polizia interroga subito Patty Valentine e Marins (che dovrà rispondere alle domande anche in ospedale) i quali confermano che gli assassini erano due, ed erano neri. Patty aggiunge che li ha visti fuggire su un'auto bianca . Viene diramato perciò un avviso a tutte le unità.
Alle 2.34, prima ancora di sentire l'avviso, un ufficiale di polizia di Paterson sta inseguendo un'auto bianca che sta procedendo a grande velocità diretta fuori dalla città. Ma la perde. Tornato a Paterson, lo stesso ufficiale riceve l'avviso di ricerca e ne ferma un'altra, a 14 isolati dal Lafayette Bar. Guidava John Artis , 19 anni, studente di college. John Royster era al posto del passeggero. Sul sedile di dietro c'era Rubin Carter . E quella di Rubin Carter non è any face.
Who is Rubin Carter
The Man the Authorities Came To Blame
For somethin 'that he never done.
Put in a prison cell, But one time he Could've Been-a
The champion of the world.
It 's a young turbulent, Rubin Carter. Several times in the reformatory in 1954 and runs 17 years joins the army. A few months after completing basic training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, will be sent in West Germany. And here she discovered her passion for boxing. He had to stay three years. There remains only 21 months, during which undergoes four times at the court martial on charges ranging dall'insubordinazione unjustified absence. He is chased in 1956 and described as "unfit for military service."
Back in New Jersey was sentenced again, to ten months for escaping from the reformatory. Shortly after release he was arrested again, for having assaulted and robbed, among other things, an elderly black woman of middle age. Pleads guilty and is imprisoned in Trenton (which will become depressingly familiar to him), a maximum security prison where he remained four years. Here rediscovers his passion for boxing and, once released, he decided to devote himself to professionalism.
The lower the standard average weights with which they fight, Carter still intimidates opponents to a shaved head, mustache prominent and aggressive style, which leads to numerous wins by ko in the first round of the meetings: that is how becomes for all " Hurricane." In July 1963, the Ring magazine places it first among the top ten contenders for the title of champion of the world average: fought six times this year, with 4 wins and 2 losses. Remains at the bottom of the top-10 until December 10, 1963 when he sent the carpet twice in the first round the world champion Emile Griffith. The victory, technical knockout, he does get a third contender for champion Joey Giardello .
The two will compete for the World December 14, 1964, in Philadelphia, on the distance of the fifteen shooting . Prior to that challenge, had won 20 matches on 24. A t the beginning Carter dominates , attacks with his usual relentless footwork and judicious use of the jab. Giardello, 34, also quick legs, he can not respond to a few well-placed right in the head. From the fourth round the world champion has a bleeding cut on his left eyebrow , following the inadvertent tested.
But yet protect the eye from the fifth round Giardello takes control of the match . With 96 career victories in 126 matches, Giardello is a boxer who goes the distance: he won 7 of 11 successive shots c on a unanimous verdict is confirmed sample. Carter pays too defensive tactics. But in the movie with Denzel Washington is the image that is on another. That is good for taking the position that "Hurricane" has long argued: that would have won at least nine out of 15 rounds, but in the city of brotherhood would be penalized by the referees as black.
This has Giardello then sued for defamation to the producers and director of the film. From that moment on, he won only 7 of 15 successive matches. Even so, in June 1966, a policeman recognizes him in the back seat of his car. The second car that Patty Valentine would be used by the killers of James Oliver bartender. For Patty Valentine Hurricane punches that would have replaced the bullets.
The first interrogation
Alfred Bello Had a partner and he HAD to rap for the cops.
Him and Arthur Dexter Bradley Were just out prowlin 'around
He said, "I saw two men runnin 'out, They looked like middleweights
They jumped into a white car with out-of-state plates."
The cop recognizes Carter, who tells him that he had been in a room with two friends and they were going to his house to get some more money. Artis was obeying the speed limit, and then in the car were three, and the cop lets them go.
Fifteen minutes later, Carter's car was sighted outside the La Petite Bar, a dozen blocks west of Lafayette. They spend another five minutes and the car, u na the 1966 Dodge Polara is seen for the third time. This time I'm in only Carter and Artis, which are taken at the crime scene for a confrontation with the witnesses .
Patty Valentine acknowledges the same as the machine on which the killers fled: in fact stand out headlights butterfly, which Patty had noticed and which are mounted on the Polara. Bello does not remember the number plate, just remember that it was a plate of New Jersey. And the car that Bello is not New Jersey. The two are brought to the station. few hours later the police found two shell casings in the car, one of a 12 caliber cartridge, the other a 32 caliber bullet . But it will be delivered Only five days later.
Neither Patty nor Marins, however, recognized Carter as the murderess. Years later, however, in 1975, the brother of William Marins, Jules, says that William was in fact recognized the face of Carter, but she had not told the police because she felt to be life threatening. A confession that William would have to Betty Panagia, the owner of the Lafayette Bar
Carter and Artis are still taken in Central. Are released at 19 of June 17 . Still no charges hanging over them. But Carter, while being interrogated by police, he failed the test the polygraph, which has no probative value in any case in court. The test is conducted by Sergeant John J. McGuire at 11 am. Carter denies having fired, denied that the car was used to murder her, says he does not know the identity of the victims and had not seen any news of the shooting before the fact.
" After careful analysis of the records of the polygraph examiner's opinion is that the subject tried to throw off all the relevant questions. What is involved in the crime. After the exam, compared with the opinion of the examiner, the party has denied any involvement in the crime . So writes John J. Mc Guire in the report submitted to the Director Gustave Brugger June 26.
But another expert in conducting the test the so-called "lie detector" McGuire argued that the time had only two or three years of experience with the polygraph . A key detail, since the interpretation of the test, and therefore the 'outcome of the case, based largely on the experience of the examiner own. The opinion on the guilt or innocence of Rubin Carter in the hours immediately following the murders of the Lafayette Grill was instead given to a cop who has rarely used the polygraph, which did not belong to New Jersey Polygraph Association. In general, Then, it was called an expert in the state police in such cases. That day, the Paterson Police decided it would not be needed.
Carter and Artis are released.
But the climate of violence between blacks and whites is far from dampened. Indeed. A month later returned to ignite, in Newark, New Jersey city made famous by the novels of Philip Roth.
Five days that changed a city
Many African-American residents began to complain. They felt powerless, deprived of their right to vote, without a significant political representation and victims of violence police. A framework was completed with unemployment, poverty and doubts about the quality of housing, despite being one of the first black majority city in the United States. Hugh Addonizio, the last black mayor of the city was accused of not wanting to incorporate blacks into the reference position in the civil community, not to have helped the people of color to get a better job. black protest leaders say the Newark Police Department is dominated by white officers who stop and question young black men with or without provocation. In fact, at the time, only 145 police officers on 1332 are in color, to Newark . In this climate, two policemen White, John DeSimone and Vito Pontrelli arrested John W. Smith, taxi driver guilty of passing the color wheel of the two policemen on the right on 15th street. And 'the uprising.
Smith was stopped, questioned, arrested and transported to the middle of the fourth district, where he was severely beaten by officers . The news spread and a threatening crowd enjoyed the station. A delegation of leaders of the black community is allowed to visit the prisoner, and once inside, asking it to be brought to the hospital. Once out of trying to calm the crowd, but in vain. Now I'm convinced that Smith died in custody, while just out the back door to be taken to hospital. The anger becomes uncontrollable, flying rocks and bottles.
riot police out in the crowd, once dispersed, it begins to break the windows of nearby shops and devastate the neighborhood. Violence blacks moving from the suburbs to the rest of the city, and is mobilized to the the New Jersey State Police that the thefts and robberies, the devastation of the windows reacts by shooting. After 48 hours, comes the National Guard and the level of confrontation is growing for a while '. Then of course, will deflate the insurgency, but leaves the battlefield 1500 arrested, 725 wounded and 43 victims, of which 79% black , killed by police. Many civilians also affected in their homes by bullets intended for the alleged thieves.
The youngest victim is Tonya Blanding, 4 years old, shot by a soldier of the National Guard while his father lit a cigarette. The older Messerlian Krikor, a white shoemaker shot while defending his property with a baseball bat. In the end, while the last fires of anger are going out, three teenagers blacks, unarmed, were killed by police all'Algiers Hotel. E 'in this context that in October, opens the trial of Rubin Carter. Because in the meantime, the summer is over, but something has changed for the boxer who in 1965 could become the world champion middleweight.
Il primo processo
Arthur Dexter Bradley said, "I'm really not sure."
Cops said, "A poor boy like you could use a break
We got you for the motel job and we're talkin' to your friend Bello
Now you don't wanta have to go back to jail, be a nice fellow.
You'll be doin' society a favor.
That sonofabitch is brave and gettin' braver.
We want to put His ass in stir
We want to pin this triple murder on HIM
He is not no Gentleman Jim. "
Bello and Bradley agree with the prosecutors: in exchange for the identification of Carter and Artis as the murderers, they are promised a relaxation of the charges pending and the reward of $ 10,000 recognized those who provide useful information to the arrest of the killers of the Lafayette Grill Bar Carter and Artis were arrested Oct. 14, 1966 with three charges of first degree murder.
the trial Bello identified Rubin Carter as the man with the gun, and Artis as the one with the gun. Explain that Carter wore a white jacket, clear or otherwise, vest and pants on the night of blacks . And wore a goatee. Artis, the highest of the two, wearing a dark suit, he says, black or brown. One of them brought in a hat, but does not remember who. Testifies that he recognized the car, which saw a plaque in New York and Pennsylvania, blue and orange. Remember that rear of the car had a curious geometric pattern, like a triangle , thinner at the ends, where the lights were placed. The car was white, fresh, stylish. Even a jury is entirely white. The prosecution, which immediately excludes the motive for the robbery, now looking for a single strategy: it was a revenge for racist.
Although they had neither the murder weapon, no definite motive, the prosecution urges all racially motivated murder. And the jury agreed. Carter and Artis were convicted of three murders and sentenced to three life sentences each .
Were All of Rubin's cards marked in advance
The Trial Was a pig-circus, he never HAD a chance.
The judge made Rubin's witnesses drunkards from the slums
To the white folks who watched he was a revolutionary bum
And to the black folks he was just a crazy nigger.
No one doubted that he pulled the trigger.
And though they could not produce the gun,
The D.A. said he was the one who did the deed
And the all-white AGREED jury.
The second process
Bello and Bradley recanted testimony of the first trial: On that basis, defense lawyers request a retrial , but the judge Samuel Larner, who presided over the first trial also denied the motion. They start advertising campaigns, Carter has the support of Mohammed Ali and Bob Dylan wrote "Hurricane," in which he claims innocence. During the hearings for retractions of Bello and Bradley, the 'accusation introduces the tape shows that the agreement between the two and the police. For the Supreme Court New Jersey's enough to argue that the news should have been made public in the first trial, because it affects the credibility of witnesses. In essence, Judge Mark Sullivan, was infringing the right to a fair trial. We must start again from scratch. The prosecution in the second process is supported by Burrell Ives Humphreys, who gives Carter and Artis to retake the polygraph test, but both refuse.
The prosecution urges that the original theory of racially motivated crime, but adds a new interpretation from the first trial. To understand the strategy of the state must return to June 17, six hours before the shooting, the Waltz Inn , another tavern in Paterson. The the owner, Leroy Holloway, black, is shot and killed by Frank twisted White, former owner of the premises. Several police officers testified that, immediately after the shooting, a large and "angry" crowd of people gathered in front of the Waltz Inn. In the following hours, as confirmed in the same testimony of Rubin Carter in front of the grand jury before trial, the voice of a "shock" of some action grievance begins to circulate in the black community . There is one witness, Clarence Carr, who said as in the handful of people that formed outside the Waltz Inn there were also white, who were all in disbelief, but no one has used racist terms and vowed revenge or retaliation to Conforti, dragged by police from the crowd.
To try to link the two murders, the State points out that the Lafayette Bar serve a clientele predominantly white and therefore constitutes an ideal target for such acts. According to the indictment, Carter and Artis were both aware of the murder of Halloway and the tension that ensued and it would be persuaded to act because Friends Edward Rawls, Holloway's stepson and part-time bartender at the Nite Spot bar often attended by Carter . Learned of the shooting, Rawls leaves his job and runs the hospital, where he was taken in the meantime his stepfather, then at the police station where, according to later testimony of the officers, demanding to know "what will you do about the man who killed my stepfather "was agitated and asked to leave. Image slightly to the denial process by William Johnson, a police officer testifying as Rawls was doing just questions. Later Rawls Nite Spot to meet Carter, and then allegedly Carter would put weapons in search of his old, disappeared or lost from one year , to commit the murder of Oliver.
The search for weapons is one of the central building in the indictment. The lawyers of the State, Carter, came to know of possible retaliation, s he would have gone to Neil Morrison, former manager of training camp Carter, who is suspected of stealing weapons, a 12-gauge shotgun and a pistol caliber 32 from the field a year earlier. Together they would be going from a mutual friend, Annabelle Chandler, to see if the item were true. For the state at the end Carter is the army, met several times with Rawls and decides to take part in the murder. Carter confirmed that he went to Annabelle's house, he had not discussed with her guns and pistols, because her friend was suffering from cancer. There are witnesses who recount how the decision to go to the home of Annabelle had taken before I knew of the murder of the Waltz Inn. Carter told the grand jury that he went to her because she had spoken of those weapons, and wanted to repeat the same things Morrison. But Annabelle, sick, does not want to talk about it, and the boxer dropped the matter there. There are witnesses who have found the weapons in the house. There is no evidence that the talks with Rawls , which then returns to the Nite Spot, have gone beyond the condolences.
For the prosecution, however, the mere fact that although the weapons were missing from one year, Carter is planning to look for the first time only hours after learning of the murder of Rawls's stepfather, and that the weapons the same as those used for the crime of the Lafayette Bar is a significant probative in charge of ' defendant, also affected by the inconsistencies in the reconstruction of each other's movements that night from his testimony to the grand jury and that of Artis.
The defense can make some breakthrough in the theory of the lawyers of the State. And it does highlight the holes blacks to key witnesses, pointing out that the identification of Carter and Artis by Patty Valentine and Bello was anything but certain, and as the reliability the main test, the bullets found in the car after Carter opened more than a few doubts.
But the defense suffered hard blows. More than one of the witnesses for the defense of the accused in the first trial, reprocess . Welton Deary, who knew Carter because he attended the same places over 60 years, had testified that she was with Carter at the Nite Spot at two o'clock on the morning of June 17, but in reality, he said, Carter had seen before, with Rawls, to Richie's Hideaway, another local city. He also falsely stated under oath that he saw Carter at the Nite Spot and his mother Catherine McGuire, as well as William Hartney. In 1976 he confessed that a few days before his testimony in 1967, Neil Morrison told him to go to a motel in Paterson, where he met Carter's lawyer that the witness had given information to . It would have been Carter's lawyer, said in cross-examination as to suggest that he say he saw the boxer at the Nite Spot and not Richie's Hideaway and the meeting place between two and two and a half.
and Anna Brown, the mother of Catherine McGuire, confessed that he had lied nine years earlier. Carter had sworn that had accompanied her home from the Nite Spot at 2.15 on 17 June 1966. During the second trial said instead that the incident had happened around one o'clock, but not that night. She also said that he went to Thunderbilt Motel with her daughter and Eddie Rawls's lawyer to meet with Carter, and that Rawls once asked her to "lie to help a friend."
The framework of the prosecution, at this point seems clear. The words of the prosecutor Humphreys final nell'arringa explain it perfectly:
" None of us like to admit to the world that there are unpleasant things as racial prejudice, anger, hatred towards those who are guilty only to have the skin of another color. We try to avoid it. We teach our children the contrary, we support the civil rights courses in schools. We keep in our hearts the words of Reverend King, who dreamed of a day when people will judge the children by the content of their character not by the color of their skin. Now, ladies and gentlemen, do not yet live in a world like that, and certainly not lived there in 1966. It was a world, and is a world full of people he hates. (...) Not all are immune from the injury, no group, no class is immune from hate and we know that revenge is one of the strongest motives that a human being can have. If we look around us we see it everywhere, between Greece and Turkey (...), we see the hatred and anger in people fighting for religion in Ireland. And we know that in 1966 there were legitimate complaints by many blacks and some blacks, as well as some whites, who do not behave as citizens devoted to the law. We all look out to these areas of the human mind with trepidation, but this means that we should turn around and do not look for these motives are too disgusting, because we do not want anything to do? We must look to these motives, analyze, and even if you all prefer to think that a crime like this can not be done for these reasons, I tell you exactly happened to these reasons . For what other reasons might be? "
a position against which the defense has been beaten hard, because the probative value of evidence in support of racial revenge motive was dominated by his ruling effect. But the judge said that the motive was based on material elements and was able to explain behavior that otherwise would remain inexplicable. The jury upheld the conviction and sentencing to life imprisonment after a closed session of nine hours.
The appeal
In 1981 Artis released on parole. Carter's defense continues to appeal, even before the Supreme Court of New Jersey, but acting: " There is nothing inherently wrong in advancing the theory of revenge as a motive for murder if the facts stand up to test of the theory. "With four votes in favor and three against, confirms the conviction of the boxer.
Until a group of Canadian ex-hippies made Lesra Martin, Sam Chaiton, the son of survivors in Bergen all'Olocauso -Belsen, Terry and Kathy Swindon, daughters of a wealthy businessman from Toronto, and Lisa Peters, a student and divorced mother of a young child, read the book Carter, who has since published "The 16th round," are convinced of his innocence, write to the boxer who agrees to meet them. You see in 1981, though the context is not exactly pleasant. Carter is confined to the Trenton prison, the same where he was imprisoned and sentenced Bruno Richard Hauptmann, accused of kidnapping the son of Charles Linsberg, which in a film of the sixties was played by a young Anthony Hopkins. The group offers to help his lawyers to try to get rid of.
Leon Friedman, renowned constitutional expert, was working with lawyers in drafting the request for Habeas Corpus , the only instrument which justice can correct violations of the federal Bill of Rights orders at the state level, serving essentially to ask the court to determine whether a defendant has been unjustly imprisoned or not. Petitions are complex, which usually represent the last card of those who believe to have been wrongly convicted. But the evidence must be significant: the goal is to ask the police to return the prisoners to freedom. If the habeas corpus is dismissed, the prisoner usually has no alternative.
Canadians are working to petition for two years. The document is ready in 1985. The the November 7 Judge H. Lee Sarokin ruled in favor of Carter and Artis : Carter is released immediately. The prosecutors, however, appealed and asked the court to submit an order to the superintendent of the prison to keep the boxer in prison until the appeal has not been resolved. The reason? It 'a dangerous man. The court refused. The courts of appeal shall act unanimously in favor of defendants. The State of New Jersey trying to appeal to the Supreme Court, but does not affect the proceedings. The lawyer shall not seek, however, a third trial.
The February 19, 1988 is approved a motion to permanently drop all charges for Carter and Artis. After 22 years of age can be said definitely free. Two innocent people who lost decades of their vita o due colpevoli che sono riusciti dopo due decenni a farla franca?
That's the story of the Hurricane,
But it won't be over till they clear his name
And give him back the time he's done.
Put in a prison cell, but one time he could-a been
The champion of the world.
