{"id":47700,"date":"2019-04-07T05:00:58","date_gmt":"2019-04-07T09:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=47700"},"modified":"2020-08-07T09:40:49","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T13:40:49","slug":"rubin-hurricane-carter-and-the-murders-at-the-lafayette-bar-and-grill-in-paterson-new-jersey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2019\/04\/07\/rubin-hurricane-carter-and-the-murders-at-the-lafayette-bar-and-grill-in-paterson-new-jersey\/","title":{"rendered":"Rubin \u201cHurricane\u201d Carter and the murders at the Lafayette Bar and Grill in Paterson, New Jersey"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was too young to know anything about Rubin “Hurricane” Carter except what I “learned” from listening to Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane” long after the events. In Quillette<\/em>, Lona Manning<\/a> recounts the story, which doesn’t agree with Dylan’s interpretation (but Dylan was far from the only journalist or celebrity to be fooled):<\/p>\n

How many people who followed the BBC Radio 4 podcast series<\/a> about Rubin \u201cHurricane\u201d Carter were startled \u2014 or even outraged \u2014 when Carter was not<\/em> triumphantly vindicated in the final episode?<\/p>\n

In the small hours of June 17, 1966, two black men walked into a late-night Bar and Grill in Paterson, New Jersey and opened fire on the occupants. They left bartender James Oliver and patron Fred Nauyoks dead at the scene and mortally wounded a woman named Hazel Tanis, who would succumb to her injuries a month later. Another customer named Willie Marins lost an eye in the shooting but survived. Neighbors Patty Valentine and Ronald Ruggiero told police that they had seen two black males flee the scene in a white vehicle. This testimony was corroborated by petty thief Alfred Bello who walked past the dead and the dying to empty the cash register after the shooters had fled.<\/p>\n

Half an hour later, Paterson police stopped middleweight boxer Rubin Carter and his companion John Artis in a car bearing out-of-state plates that matched the eyewitnesses\u2019 description. A search of the car yielded a .32 and a 12 gauge shotgun, the weapons police later determined had been used in the shooting. Carter and Artis were eventually indicted by a grand jury and convicted of the Lafayette murders in 1967. Carter vehemently protested his innocence and his case became a cause c\u00e9l\u00e8bre<\/em> after his 1975 autobiography found its way into the hands of Bob Dylan. Carter was retried in 1976, after the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that the first conviction had been unsafe. Despite support from Dylan, Muhammad Ali and the New York Times<\/em>, the two were convicted again. John Artis was paroled in 1981, and Carter was finally released in 1985 after the second conviction was overturned and prosecutors declined to try him a third time.<\/p>\n