Re-entering the storm: Why new light is being shed on N.J.’s ‘Hurricane’ Carter case

N.J. boxer Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter was convicted in 1966 of murdering three people. His conviction was later overturned. Why we still don't know exactly what happened.

Air Date: March 26, 2019

Former middleweight boxing contender Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, second from left, leaves Passaic County courthouse in Patterson, N.J. with co-defendant John Artis, left, and officers on June 29,1967 in Patterson. Carter was sentenced to two consecutive life terms, and Artis to concurrent life terms in the slaying of three people a year earlier in a tavern. (AP Photo)

What do we really know about the late New Jersey boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter? That Bob Dylan wrote a song about him? That Denzel Washington played him in a movie? “The Hurricane Tapes,” a new podcast by the BBC, revisits Carter’s 1966 conviction — which was later overturned — for the murder of three people at a bar in Paterson, and sheds new light on a case that has continued to raise questions about the state’s criminal justice system. BBC reporter Steve Crossman joins us on this episode of The Why to discuss why we still don’t know exactly what happened that night in Paterson, and what he makes of the complicated man at the center of the story.

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