Spotted in the NY Daily News:
Rubin (Hurricane) Carter, the middleweight contender-turned-murder suspect-turned-cause célèbre when his triple homicide conviction was exposed as a sham, died Sunday. He was 76.
Carter — wrongly jailed for nearly two decades — lost a battle with prostate cancer that dropped the former fighter’s weight to a mere 90 pounds.
He died early Sunday morning in Toronto, according to his longtime friend John Artis, who had been caring for him and was wrongly convicted of the same crime.
The indefatigable Carter was twice wrongfully convicted in the 1966 killings of two customers and a bartender inside the Lafayette Bar & Grill in Paterson, N.J.
It wasn’t until 19 years later that a federal judge overturned his second conviction, ruling the prosecution’s behavior was “as heinous as the crimes for which (Carter was) tried and convicted.”
Carter’s struggle for justice inspired Bob Dylan’s hit single “Hurricane” and a movie of the same name with Denzel Washington, earning him an Oscar nomination in the title role.
Prior to his arrest for the slayings, the New Jersey-born fighter appeared poised for a shot at the middleweight championship.
You can read more here.
