At approximately 2:30a.m. on June 17, 1966, two men entered the Lafayette Bar and Grill in
Paterson, New Jersey and began shooting. Ten minutes after the murders, around 2:40a.m., a police cruiser stopped Carter and Artis in a rental car, returning from a night out at the Nite Spot, a nearby bar. Carter was in the back, with Artis driving and a third man, John Royster, in the passenger seat. The police recognised Carter, a well-known and controversial local figure, but let him go. Minutes later, the same officers solicited a description of the getaway car from two eyewitnesses outside the bar, Patricia "Patty" Valentine and Alfred Bello. Bello later admitted he was in the area acting as a lookout while an accomplice, Arthur Bradley, broke into a nearby warehouse. At the time, he claimed to have discovered the bodies when he entered the bar to buy cigarettes; it also transpired that he took the opportunity to empty the cash register and encountered the police as he exited. At the trial, he testified he was approaching the Lafayette when two black males, one with a
shotgun, the other a
pistol, came around the corner. He ran from them and they got into a white car that was
double-parked near the Lafayette. They reportedly described it as white, with "a geometric design, sort of a butterfly type design in the back of the car" and New York state license plates, with blue background and orange lettering. Another neighbor, Ronald Ruggiero, also heard the shots and said that, from his window, he saw Alfred Bello running west on Lafayette Street toward 16th Street. He then heard the screech of tires and saw a white car shoot past, heading west, with two black males in the front seat. Valentine initially stated the car had rear lights which lit up completely like butterflies. At the retrial in 1976, she changed this to an accurate description of Carter's car, which had conventional tail-lights with aluminum decoration in a butterfly shape. This aligned with that provided by Bello; the prosecution later suggested the confusion was the result of a misreading of a court transcript by the defense. Having dropped off Royster, Carter was now being driven home by Artis; they were stopped again at 3:00a.m. and ordered to follow the police to the station, where they were arrested. However, variances in descriptions given by Valentine and Bello, the physical characteristics of the attackers provided by the two survivors, lack of forensic evidence, and the timeline provided by the police were key factors in the conviction being overturned in 1985. Forensics later established the victims were shot by a .32-caliber pistol and a 12-gauge shotgun, although the weapons were never found. There was no forensic evidence linking Carter or Artis to the murders. While gun residue tests were commonly used, DeSimone, the lead detective, later claimed he had insufficient time to bring in an expert to administer the tests. He did arrange for an expert to conduct lie detector tests, which they passed. In 1976, a second report was discovered, claiming they failed. After 17 hours of interrogation, they were released. Carter and Artis voluntarily appeared before a grand jury, which found there was no case to answer. Bello later claimed that in return he was promised the
US$10,500 reward offered for catching the killers, though it was never paid. The rental car had been impounded when Carter and Artis were arrested and retained by police. Five days after their release a detective reported that on searching it again he discovered two unfired rounds, one .32 caliber, the other 12-gauge. Neither matched those retrieved from the victims; the .32 round was brass, rather than copper, while the shotgun shell was an older model, with a different wad and color. Asked to account for these differences at the trial, the prosecution produced a second report, allegedly lodged 75 minutes after the murders which recorded the two rounds. They were unable to explain why, having that evidence, the police released the men, or why the standard 'bag and tag' procedure was not followed. They also argued that, since the expended rounds retrieved at the scene were also a mixture, the fact that the two rounds did not match was meaningless; what did matter was they were the same caliber as those used in the shootings. The defense, led by
Raymond A. Brown, focused on inconsistencies in the evidence given by eyewitnesses Marins and Bello. He also produced witnesses who confirmed Carter and Artis were still in the Nite Spot at the time of the shootings.
Retrial and release In 1974, Bello and Bradley withdrew their identifications of Carter and Artis, and these recantations were used as the basis for a motion for a new trial. Judge Samuel Larner denied the motion on December 11, saying they "lacked the ring of truth". Despite Larner's ruling,
Madison Avenue advertising executive
George Lois organized a campaign on Carter's behalf, which led to increasing public support for a retrial or pardon. Boxer
Muhammad Ali lent his support to the campaign (including publicly wishing Carter good luck on his appeal during his appearance on
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in September 1973).
Bob Dylan co-wrote (with
Jacques Levy) and performed a song called "
Hurricane" (1975), which declared that Carter was innocent. On December 7, 1975, Dylan performed the song at a concert at
Trenton State Prison, where Carter was temporarily an inmate. During the hearing on the recantations, defense attorneys also argued that Bello and Bradley had lied during the 1967 trial, telling the jurors that they had made only certain narrow, limited deals with prosecutors in exchange for their trial testimony. A detective taped one interrogation of Bello in 1966, and when it was played during the recantation hearing, defense attorneys argued that the tape revealed promises beyond that to which Bello had testified. If so, prosecutors had either had a
Brady obligation to disclose this additional exculpatory evidence, or a duty to disclose that their witnesses had lied on the stand. Larner denied this second argument as well, but the
New Jersey Supreme Court unanimously held that the evidence of various deals made between the prosecution and witnesses Bello and Bradley should have been disclosed to the defense before or during the 1967 trial as this could have "affected the jury's evaluation of the credibility" of the eyewitnesses. "The defendants' right to a fair trial was substantially prejudiced", said Justice Mark Sullivan.
Second conviction and appeal During the new trial in 1976, Alfred Bello repeated his 1967 testimony, identifying Carter and Artis as the two armed men he had seen outside the Lafayette Grill. Bradley refused to cooperate with prosecutors, and neither prosecution nor defense called him as a witness. The defense responded with testimony from multiple witnesses who identified Carter at the locations he claimed to be when the murders took place. Investigator Fred Hogan, whose efforts had led to the recantations of Bello and Bradley, appeared as a defense witness. Hogan was asked on cross examination whether any bribes or inducements were offered to Bello to secure his recantation, which Hogan denied. His original handwritten notes on his conversations with Bello were entered into evidence. The defense also pointed out the inconsistencies in the testimony of Patricia Valentine, and read the 1967 testimony of William Marins, who had died in 1973, noting that his descriptions of the shooters were drastically different from Artis's and Carter's actual appearances. The court also heard testimony from a Carter associate that
Passaic County prosecutors had tried to pressure her into testifying against Carter. Prosecutors denied the charge. After deliberating for almost nine hours, the jury again found Carter and Artis guilty of the murders. Judge Leopizzi re-imposed the same sentences on both men: a double life sentence for Carter, a single life sentence for Artis. Artis was released on
parole in 1981. Carter's attorneys continued to appeal. In 1982, the Supreme Court of New Jersey affirmed his convictions (4–3). Although the justices felt that the prosecutors should have disclosed Harrelson's oral opinion (about Bello's location at the time of the murders) to the defense, only a minority thought this was material. The majority thus concluded that the prosecution had not withheld information the Brady disclosure law required them to provide to the defense. According to bail bondswoman Carolyn Kelley, in 1975–1976 she helped raise funds to win a second trial for Carter, which resulted in his release on bail in March 1976. On a fund-raising trip the following month, Kelley said the boxer beat her (Kelley weighed 112 pounds at the time of the alleged beating) severely over a disputed hotel bill. The
Philadelphia Daily News reported the alleged beating in a front-page story several weeks later, and celebrity support for Carter quickly eroded, though Carter denied the accusation. Kelley declined to pursue charges, stating that she felt Carter needed help, and saying "I don't want to press charges because jail is not the place for Rubin. He needs treatment. I don't want to do anything to hurt him". Passaic County Judge William Marchese held hearings on the incident in July 1976 and changed the terms of Carter's bail after determining that the assault had occurred. Mae Thelma Basket, whom Carter had married in 1963,
Federal court action In 1985, Carter's attorneys filed a petition for a writ of
habeas corpus in federal court. Later that year, Judge
H. Lee Sarokin of the
United States District Court for the District of New Jersey granted the writ, noting that the prosecution had been "predicated upon an appeal to racism rather than reason, and concealment rather than disclosure", and set aside the convictions. The court denied this motion and eventually upheld Sarokin's opinion, affirming his Brady analysis without commenting on his other rationale. The prosecutors appealed to the
United States Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case. Prosecutors therefore could have tried Carter (and Artis) a third time, but decided not to, and filed a motion to dismiss the original indictments in 1988. "It is just not legally feasible to sustain a prosecution, and not practical after almost 22 years to be trying anyone", said New Jersey Attorney General W. Cary Edwards. Acting
Passaic County Prosecutor John P. Goceljak said several factors made a retrial impossible, including Bello's "current unreliability" as a witness and the unavailability of other witnesses. Goceljak also doubted whether the prosecution could reintroduce the racially motivated crime theory due to the federal court rulings. A judge granted the motion to dismiss, bringing an end to the legal proceedings. ==Post-release==