Was Rubin "Hurricane" Carter Framed For Triple Murder? and if so, why?

Part II: Were the police "out to get" Carter?

Part I: Was Rubin "Hurricane" Carter an activist?

The Lafayette Grill murders

"Sure, it's off the record."
In the movie, a wily journalist quotes Carter joking about shooting cops

Read the real article on which this story is based.

"Off the pigs": what happened to real activists who talked about shooting cops?

Framed for illegal gambling?

The Bradley letter -- Carter claims one of the witnesses confessed to him, in writing, about the plot to frame him. Could this be true?

The Lafayette Grill murders happened in June 1966. The article which he says inflamed the police against him, came out in October, 1964.

Hurricane Carter says he was framed for triple murder because he was a black activist and the police wanted to silence him. But:

There's no evidence that Carter was an activist in the 60's.

There's no evidence that the police harassed or framed him.


He was never "silenced."


Although he claims he knew about a police plot to get him before the murders even happened (see The 16th Round) He never presented this defense at the first trial -- his "I was framed for being an activist" claims didn't emerge until the 1970's.

Carter says he was harassed by the police because of a Saturday Evening Post article in which he joked about shooting cops

Here's what Carter claims happened as a result of the Saturday Evening Post article:

"It was at that point that police throughout the country came down on me. There were times when I was arrested three or four times just to put the headline RUBIN CARTER AGAINST THE POLICE in the papers. This is a very skillful maneuver to turn the victim into the criminal and the criminals into the victims."  Penthouse,1975

Carter's supporters, in Lazarus and the Hurricane, also repeat the claim that the police harassed him. They wrote: "In his home state of New Jersey, the police constantly pulled him in on trumped-up petty charges.”

Here is the evidence that Carter puts forth in his book, The 16th Round, to prove that the police targeted him after the quote about shooting cops came out in the Saturday Evening Post. Remember, this is the information supplied by Carter himself.

• He claims he was arrested outside of Hackensack and almost framed for breaking and entering.
• He was arrested (that is, framed) for assault in a nightclub.
• He says he was framed for illegal gambling (playing "craps")

But here is the actual record and chronology:

1964

• Jan.16 -- Charged with disorderly conduct in Hackensack
  
• July 2 -- Carter in bar fight
  
• Oct. 2 -- Warrant issued for Carter’s arrest over July bar fight
  
• Oct. 24 -- SATURDAY EVENING POST ARTICLE

1965

• Apr. 24 -- Carter arrested for disorderly conduct. Carter was caught in an after-hours illegal nightclub at 5:30 in the morning. In his autobiography, Carter changed the wording of a newspaper article about this incident, to fit his version of events. He wasn't the focus of this arrest. He was one of several patrons. The owner of the bar was the one who faced a heavy fine, not Carter.

Of the incidents of "harassment" mentioned by Carter or his sympathizers, only one happened after the SEP article came out. All the other incidents happened before. Carter tells it the other way around, and says he was being harassed because of the article.

October, 1964 -- Carter is arrested for beating people up in a bar the previous July, after one of his victims swears out a complaint against him.

So, the evidence that Carter puts forward to "prove" that the police were harassing him, is false and phony. What does this say about his credibility?

In the Penthouse interview and in his autobiography, Carter changes the dates of these incidents to cover up the fact that nothing happened to him as a result of the Saturday Evening Post article. Also, the scene in the movie, where someone smashes the windows at Carter's house, isn't mentioned in any of the Carter books.

J. Edgar Hoover

But what about the FBI? Weren't they out to get Carter?

Carter claims that J. Edgar Hoover was keeping tabs on him. There is no evidence of any FBI involvement with Carter before the Lafayette Grill Murders. (See Hurricane: the Miraculous Journey by James Hirsch.)

Carter hasn't claimed to be associated with the Black Panthers, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, the Deacons for Defense, Communists, or other groups that the FBI watched and infiltrated.

Carter claims that he was followed by a female FBI operative in Los Angeles. However, Hoover refused to hire female FBI agents. This so-called operative was so inept that Carter spotted her at every step -- at the airport, at the hotel, and at the police station!  It's another Carter tall tale.

Furthermore, as has been shown, Carter was not an activist and had no known Communist sympathies, so why would the FBI care where he went?

Professor Paul Wice of Drew University swallows the "I was framed" story lock, stock and barrel, and says, without a scrap of evidence to back him up, that: "police, prosecutors and the judicial system were united in their commitment to keep Carter in prison for the rest of his life (because).... he was an abrasive, violent person who might one day catalyze the rage of the city's black community and who thus needed to be silenced."

But while Rubin Carter was in prison, he was able to write and publish a book, grant newspaper, radio and television interviews, write letters to newspapers and magazines, host a rock concert, and participate fully in his campaign for release. Just how "silenced" was he?

In fact, the real activist in Paterson, was Carter's cousin, Ed -- who wasn't framed for murder.

"I was framed" -- the Penthouse interview

Carter claims that he was warned in advance by a dozen policemen that the police were out to get him -- so why didn't he mention this at his first trial?

In The 16th Round, Carter names the policemen and law enforcement officers who warned him in advance that he was a target:

Quite a few people who I could call my friends were lawmen -- black and white. In fact, all of my brothers-in-law in Washington are cops. There was also Peter Rush, a Secret Service man, who always did his roadwork with me whenever he wasn't out guarding some president, and who told me what the law people around the country were saying about me after that [Saturday Evening Post] article was published. (He later came to testify for me at my trial.) There was Billy Kilroy, a U.S. marshal and an old friend... Ray Sadowski, a state trooper, who actually got me started in boxing while I was still in prison; Bobby Ward, the detective who had sent me to Trenton State Prison [for mugging 3 people] but who turned out to be a helluva friend later on; Fred Hogan, an Atlantic Highlands cop who always stayed up in training camp with me; Ronald Lipton, a Jersey City detective who was one of my sparring partners; Howard Kline, a Paterson detective, and probably one of my friendliest of friends; Ernie Hutcherson, Melvin Jenkins, Moody -- all Paterson cops -- men I had grown up with. All of them were telling me the same story: "The Law was out to pin the Hurricane's black ass to the wall!

You'd think that the journalists and supporters anxious to prove Carter's innocence would have tracked down each of these men and asked them if they knew about a plot to frame Carter.

Fred Hogan was not a policemen at the time of the Lafayette Grill Murders, he was a teenager. Hogan told television host Bill O'Reilly of the O'Reilly Factor that he was not involved in Carter's case until 1971, five years after the murders. (He mentioned this as part of the discussion, he was not asked if he had any foreknowledge of a plot against Carter.)

Ronald Lipton was not a policemen at the time of the Lafayette Grill Murders, he was a teenager who hung around Carter's training facility.

Howard Kline was involved in investigating the Lafayette Grill murders, which would have been odd if he knew in advance about a frame-up. If there was a conspiracy against Carter, why would the bad cops let a cop who was friends with Carter anywhere near the investigation?

That's at least four people on the list who could not have warned Carter in advance that the police were out to get him. We have yet to see any evidence that any of the others on the list did in fact warn Carter of a supposed conspiracy, or that any journalists have checked it out.

Did the State of New Jersey "railroad" Carter into prison -- or worse, attempt to send to the chair? Here are some of the things that were done to make sure Carter and Artis got a fair trial:

• At the first trial, the trial judge agreed to exclude the testimony of Hazel Tanis, one of the victims.

• Tthe prosecution attempted to enter the Saturday Evening Post article into evidence (to show Carter's violent nature,) and Carter's lawyer successfully applied to have it excluded.

• Carter's application for his second trial was filed on his behalf by the Public Defender's Office.
  

• Carter's lawyers requested a postponement of the second trial, which was granted.
  

• When Carter lost the second trial, the State of New Jersey paid for the trial transcripts for his appeal, even though Bob Dylan and other celebrities had raised several hundred thousand dollars for his defense fund, which was wasted on limousines, hotel rooms, free drinks for the hangers-on and other questionable expenses.

• In this legal opinion, Judge Bruno Leopizzi lists some of the things he did to ensure Carter and Artis got a fair trial.

 (Thanks to Richard for the newspaper clippings from Paterson!
This research would not be possible without his efforts.)