Carter's inspirational speeches about his "wrongful conviction" contain many inaccurate statements. His speaking clients are paying a lot of money ($20,000 or more!) to hear a misleading version of the Lafayette Grill murder investigation. Carter claims that the case against him was inspired by racism because he was an outspoken activist and that he was framed by the authorities. There's no evidence for this.

... and their rebuttals

He was the number one contender at the time of the murders -- Not true!

"I was at the peak of my career, a professional prize fighter....

"...one fight away from becoming world champion....."

He faced an all-white jury
- partly true

"The odds of my being alive today were not exactly in my favor. There were three murder victims. All of them were white. The jury was all white. The police, the judge, the state witnesses and the prosecutors were all white. I at that time was Black."

He says the witnesses cleared him - not true

"Even though I did not remotely fit the description of the assailants...even though the two surviving victims did not and could not identify me and even said it was not me,

Not true! Neither Willie Marins nor Hazel Tanis cleared Carter, nor did either provide a clear description -- they had both been shot at point blank range and were in shock. Two witnesses identified his car.

He had a good alibi -- not true

even though I had a number of credible alibi witnesses placing me elsewhere at the time of the crime,

He passed a lie detector test
-- no way

even though I passed the lie detector test showing that I had no involvement,

He was "exonerated" by
a grand jury

and even though I testified voluntarily in front of two separate grand juries and was exonerated -- I was still convicted."

Bello and Bradley were suspects -- no, they weren't

"I had two petty criminals (Al Bello and Arthur Dexter Bradley), themselves suspects in the crime, who claimed--with the help of a $10,000 reward and promises of leniency for crimes that they committed that night that would have ended them in prison for 90 years--they saw me at the scene. The prosecutor knew that it's a lie."

Bello and Bradley were not suspects in the crime, because all witnesses and survivors said the killers were black. Bello was promised a reward, but still had not received it after the second trial. He may have received witness protection to re-locate. Both Bello and Bradley served jail time after testifying against Carter. The "90 years" supposes a maximum, consecutive sentence for every theft charge. The "90 years" applies only to Bradley -- he was arrested for a string of armed motel robberies, not for crimes he "committed that night."

He was an outspoken black activist -- a complete fabrication that many journalists have fallen for

"So I had earned a killer reputation in the ring. It was very easy for the media and the government to transfer that killer reputation in the ring to the streets, because black people were being murdered in the streets, and I was telling people, black people or any other kind of people, that every human being on this planet has the right of self-protection.

"J. Edgar Hoover, the five-star general of the internal security forces of the United States, had ordered every police officer under his command to disrupt, infiltrate, and destroy any black person who could bring black people together."

In the four books written by and about Carter, there is not a single quote from Carter, dating from this period, concerning black self-defense, apart from a remark made in jest and quoted in the Saturday Evening Post about shooting cops.

While the FBI spied on, even hounded, prominent black leaders like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, there's no evidence that the FBI spied on Carter. There is absolutely no trace of activism on Carter's part in the 60's.

http://members.shaw.ca/cartermyths/carteractivist.htm

"That's my son," Bertha Carter said. "He never told me any lies. When I asked about this, he said, 'Mother, I did not do it, but I know who did it.' "

She wouldn't elaborate, but family members said Carter believes that he was set up by organized crime because he wouldn't throw a boxing match.
Bergen Record, January 9, 2000

The police harassed him because he was so outspoken

"It was at that point [after he was quoted saying that maybe he should go to Harlem and shoot some cops] 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,1974

Carter makes some significant incorrect claims about his arrest record.

• He claims he was framed for illegal gambling after a boxing match when in fact he was arrested for disorderly conduct in an illegal after hours nightclub a few days before a boxing match.

• He changes the dates of his arrest record to imply that he was harassed after giving an "anti-cop" quote to Saturday Evening Post.

http://members.shaw.ca/cartermyths/Carterframed.htm

his biographer fell for this, but you don't have to

http://members.shaw.ca/cartermyths/Carterbiko.htm

Since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1976 that capital punishment is not “cruel and unusual,” 618 prisoners have been executed across the nation and about 80 have been exonerated.

Source: Death Penalty Information Center /ABCNEWS (2000)

[Update: As of April 2003, 107 death row inmates have been exonerated.]

Not true. At the time of the murders, Artis had been several years out of high school, had never gone to college, and was about to be drafted in the Army. Even Carter's autobiography says so.

"'I was accused of murdering three people in a New Jersey bar and I didn't even drink – then. I do now,' Carter said with a bold laugh."

UWO Gazette, March 14, 1997

He spent years in solitary, in the dark, underground, on bread and water

Boston Globe March 11, 1992 "For many of his years in prison, Carter was in solitary confinement. He learned to subsist on five slices of bread and two glasses of water and on food brought in from the outside -- there was a 25-pound-a-month limit."

New York Times, Jan. 16, 2000 "For 20 years, I was in solitary confinement, reviled as a racist triple murderer, just narrowly escaping the electric chair."

From the correction published in the New York Times on Jan. 19, 2000: "He was held in solitary confinement sporadically for a few months during his 19-year imprisonment, not for the entire time."

He chose to isolate himself in prison and friends brought him food so he did not have to eat in the cafeteria.

http://members.shaw.ca/cartermyths/carterprison.htm