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Here comes the story of ‘The Hurricane’
By Michael D. Wamble
Staff Writer
On Jan. 17, DePaul University was hit by a hurricane.
Make that “The Hurricane.”
The moniker, joined forever to former prizefighter Rubin Carter,
proved prophetic as Carter pulled no punches in pointing out his
perspective on the critical challenges facing the United States
at a university prayer breakfast celebrating the life of Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr.
As a tape of his unofficial anthem by Bob Dylan played, general
applause turned to rhythmic clapping.
“If you don’t commit the crime, tell the truth, get a good lawyer,
have a solid alibi and credible witnesses. If you don’t fit the
profile, pass a lie detector test, have no motive, no opportunity
or no means, you’ll be set free, right?” Carter asked rhetorically
at the end of a list of what should keep one out of prison.
The audience answered, “No,” to all the tests Carter passed while
being accused of triple murder.
“That’s right,” he said. “That’s right.”
As Dylan once sang of this athlete from New Jersey, “Here comes
the story of ‘The Hurricane.’ ”
In 1966, his star as a heavyweight was still in ascension.
“I was a neon sign with a chip on my shoulder. And the next thing
I knew, I was on trial for my life,” he said of the nightmare
to come.
Carter was wrongly accused, tried and convicted of murders he
did not commit.
After serving 19 years of three life sentences in prison and narrowly
avoiding state execution, the case involving Carter was overturned
in 1985.
His life is the basis of the film, “The Hurricane,” starring Academy
Award-winner Denzel Washington. [The film received an A-3, adults
classification from the U.S. Catholic Conference’s Office for
Film and Broadcasting.]
“As a suspect, you are as good as guilty. People assume that you
had to do something to get arrested,” Carter said of an “us/them”
mentality held by many citizens.
“We must check our panic,” said Carter.
Carter’s commitment to the cause of those unjustly trapped by
the system that once confined him is evidenced in membership with
Board of Directors for Human Rights, the Alliance for Prison Justice
and the Toronto-based Association in Defense of the Wrongfully
Convicted.
“Those of us outside the country see you [in the U.S.] a bit differently
than you see yourselves. You are in serious trouble,” said Carter,
now a Toronto resident, of a ruling made by the 10th Circuit Court
in Texas that factual innocence is no longer a reason to seek
redress in court.
This was the vehicle by which Carter’s case was heard outside
the confines of a tainted state court system.
Commenting on government and privatized prisons in the U.S., Carter
said, “Prison destroys everything valuable to a person. It doesn’t
rehabilitate, it debilitates.”
A botched surgery compounded by a lack of competent medical care
caused blindness in his right eye. While others might become justifiably
angry at that injustice, Carter takes it in stride.
“Instead of thinking about it as losing sight, I looked at it
as having one eye that sees outwardly and one that sees inwardly,”
he said.
Introspection and transcendence have been invaluable in Carter’s
fight against the injustice inflicted upon him for being a black
man accused in America.
This 1-2 combination re-wired his neon sign to blink “Vacancy,”
opening him up to requests for correspondence from mothers like
Joann Patterson, whose son, Aaron, sits on Illinois’ death row
as an inmate, to requests from the Oval Office.
Carter attended a private screening of “The Hurricane” at the
White House with President Clinton, where the two men discussed
the issue of the death penalty. When asked about the specifics
of their conversation, he said it should remain private.
In an unprecedented gesture, Carter was awarded an honorary championship
belt by the World Boxing Council.
The belt, said Carter, is his second most treasured possession.
“About four or five years ago, I was given a peace medal by my
neighbors in Canada. These are the people I live next to who gave
a man once convicted of a triple murder a medal for being a good
neighbor. That I most treasure.
“Today, the neighborhood peace medal, tomorrow the Nobel Peace
Prize,” he said, smiling. “Dare to dream.”
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