The 16th Round
Carter's autobiography, published in 1974, is full of fictions, distortions, half-truths and outright falsehoods about the case and his life. There's nothing wrong with telling tall tales, unless you're trying to persuade people that you're innocent of a terrible crime.  When that's the case, it might be a good idea to be strictly honest.

Carter pretty much blames everybody he ever came into contact with, for doing him wrong. From his childhood delinquency, to his assault charges, to his failing boxing career, it's never his fault. When he gets to his arrest and trial for murder, the stories fly thick and fast.

He says that on the night of the crime he was pulled over because he was black. Not true -- he was pulled over because his car matched the description of the killers' car, given independently by two witnesses.

He says Arthur Dexter Bradley, one of the two petty thieves who testified against him, gave him a letter admitting that the whole thing was a frame up. So where's this letter?

He says he was an outspoken advocate for black power. So why is there no record of this?

He says that because of a jocular remark he made about shooting cops, the police started to harass him and finally framed him for murder. But his facts don't add up.

Although it was used as the basis for a big Hollywood movie, the factual truthfulness of Carter's biography has never been checked out -- until now.

Lazarus and the Hurricane
published in 1991 by "the Canadians," a group of people who befriended Carter and dedicated themselves to his release.  This book has persuaded a lot of people that Carter and Artis were deliberately framed with forgeries and perjured evidence.  But the book is extremely slanted in its presentation of the facts of the case.

For example, the prosecution believed that the Lafayette Grill murders were a revenge slaying for the murder of a black bartender by a white man, earlier that evening. The Canadians only say the black bartender was "a black man (Carter and Artis) did not know (who) had been killed by a white man they had never heard of in another Paterson bar earlier that night," implying that Carter and Artis had zero connection or reason to be interested in Leroy Holloway's murder.

What they don't tell you is that Leroy Holloway was the stepfather of Eddie Rawls, a good friend of Carter's. Rawls and Carter were seen together that night, after Holloway was murdered and before the Lafayette Grill murders.

There's a lot of holes in the Canadians' theory that Detective Vince DeSimone forged evidence to mess up Carter's alibi.  They suggested that the getaway car was a Monaco, not a Polara like Carter drove. And what about the mysterious cabdriver they found who said he saw Carter at the Nite Spot nightclub at the same time the murders took place? Again, the Canadians rely on ignoring evidence they don't like and misrepresenting the facts.

Sadly for the Canadians, their loyalty to Carter ended in betrayal and hurt.

Hurricane: the miraculous
transformation of Rubin Carter
James S. Hirsch, the author, knows that Carter claims that he was deliberately framed by the police -- nearly murdered, in fact. You'd think that Hirsch, a former journalist for the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, would want to investigate this shocking claim. But Hirsch ducks the question. Instead, there's a long boring section on how Carter became spiritually transformed while in prison, from an angry radical to a mellow, spiritual guy. In the course of researching this book, Hirsch had to have become aware that Carter often says things that aren't true. Either that, or Hirsch is a shockingly sloppy researcher. But Hirsch leaves you, the reader, in the dark about Carter's penchant for saying things that aren't true, which is a central facet of his character.

Hirsch is also incorrect about some important points about the murder investigation -- what happened when Carter was detained on the murder night, whether Detective DeSimone used racist language, and more.  There's a lot the book didn't tell you -- but you can read it here.

This book was written with the cooperation and financial involvement of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, so it's hardly an objective presentation of the case.

Rubin "Hurricane" Carter
and the American Justice System
by Paul Wice of Drew University

This book provides a history of the case from beginning to end, but Wice relies on Carter's autobiography and the defense's slanted version for some of his "facts." So, his assertion that Carter was deliberately framed is completely unsupported by any evidence whatsoever and some of his facts are wrong.