Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter

On Sunday, April 20, 2014, Rubin Carter died in his sleep in Toronto, Ontario, of prostate cancer. He was 76. John Artis, his longtime friend and caregiver, was by his side.

In 1966, both Carter and Artis were arrested by the police for a triple-homicide in the Lafayette Bar and Grill in Paterson, New Jersey. They were wrongly convicted in 1967 and again in a new trial in 1976. After the second conviction was overturned in 1985, prosecutors chose not to try the case for a third time.

Carter's autobiography, The Sixteenth Round, was published in 1975. The story inspired Bob Dylan’s 1975 song "Hurricane" and the 1999 film The Hurricane starring Denzel Washington as Rubin Carter.

From 1993 until 2005 Carter lived in Toronto, Ontario, and was executive director of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted. Carter resigned from the association when they declined to support his protest of a judgeship appointment of Susan MacLean, who was the prosecutor of Guy Paul Morin, who served ten years in prison for rape and murder until exonerated by DNA evidence.