WASHINGTON - Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, a US boxer made famous by a racially tinged wrongful murder conviction that landed him behind bars for 19 years, died Sunday, an association he directed said. He was 76. Carter, who passed away of prostate cancer in Toronto, was convicted twice in the 1966 murder of three people who were fatally shot at a tavern in Paterson, New Jersey, US and Canadian media reported.
The conviction, which cut short his illustrious boxing career as a fearsome middleweight contender, made him a pop culture cause celebre. His story caught the attention of boxing great Muhammad Ali and inspired Bob Dylan's 1975 song "Hurricane." Decades later, 1999 flick "The Hurricane," earned Denzel Washington an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Carter.
In 1985, Carter was exonerated by a US district court judge, H. Lee Sarokin, who said the conviction had been "based on an appeal to racism rather than reason," according to the nonprofit Chicago Innocence Project that investigates wrongful convictions. Carter was convicted along with his friend John Artis, who was also black, by an all-white Jury in the death of two white men and a white woman, according to US media.
Carter was given a second trial in 1976 and convicted yet again. After finally being released, Carter, a native of New Jersey, moved to Toronto. From 1993 to 2005, he served as the executive director of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted in Canada. The organization said it was "deeply saddened" by the death of Carter, "a truly courageous man who fought tirelessly to free others who had suffered the same fate."
Carter spent the latter part of his life advocating for the wrongly imprisoned. In February, he penned an article in the New York Daily News on that very topic. "I am now quite literally on my deathbed and am making my final wish to those with the legal authority to act," he said. "My single regret in life is that David McCallum of Brooklyn... is still in prison," he said, before advocating for the man's release.
Carter, whose formal education ended in the eighth grade, led a childhood dotted with unruly incidents before enlisting in the Army, where he first took up boxing, according to The New York Times. With an honorable discharge, he returned home and became caught up in petty crime before striking it big with his fierce and highly successful run in the boxing ring, it said.