DISTORTIONS IN THE HURRICANE
The following are some of the distortions of fact in the film The Hurricane, although the list is by no means comprehensive.
Rather than put live links throughout the page, I have simply listed the URL's where applicable and included the main links at the bottom as references. Quotes attributed to Judge Sarokin are taken directly from his 1985 Federal Court decision which overturned Carter's convictions.
I'll repeat once more what I stated on the movie review page - I don't pretend to know whether Carter was guilty or innocent of the murders. My complaint is with the way the film The Hurricane freely misrepresents the facts of the case.
THE JAMESBURG REFORMATORY
When Rubin Carter was eleven, he was sent to a reformatory boys home for stabbing a man who claimed Carter tried to steal his watch. Carter's version of the story is that the man attempted to molest one of Carter's friends. The movie portrays Carter's version as if it's undisputed truth instead of one person's claim of what happened. Didn't the media rabidly denounce Oliver Stone for doing the exact same thing in JFK?
The film clearly implies that the eight years Carter served at the reformatory all resulted from an unjustly harsh sentence for the knifing incident. The truth is somewhat different. From a 1964 article in The Saturday Evening Post, as reproduced at http://www.GRAPHICWITNESS.COM/carter/post.html:
"That's right," [Carter] says,"atrocious assault at age eleven. I stuck a man with my knife. I stabbed him everywhere but the bottom of his feet."
Rubin's sentence [at the reformatory] was indeterminate. "I was contumacious," he said and grinned over the surprise produced by his use of the word. "I just kept getting into more trouble at Jamesburg, and they just kept adding time."
Later on in the same article, Carter continues
"My partner and me," he says, "a fellow I knew in Jamesburg, we used to get up and put our guns in our pockets like you put your wallet in your pocket... We'd get a whim and do it. I couldn't begin to tell you how many hits, muggings, and stickups."...
Eventually the law brought an end to Carter's rampage. He drew six years on two counts of robbery and one of assault with intent to commit robbery.
It's one thing for the film to omit telling us of these other convictions, since they're not really pertinent to the case at hand, but it's another thing to portray Carter as an innocent man unjustly hounded through life by a jealous and bigotted police inspector.
POLICE INVESTIGATOR DELLA PESCA
Police investigator "Vincent Della Pesca" (played by Dan Hedaya), who hounds Carter throughout his life in best Les Miserables fashion, is a fabrication of the filmmakers. The lead investigator at Carter's first trial, Vincent DeSimone, did not know Carter before the trial. Also, he died in 1979, meaning he wasn't around to make sinister threats against Carter's Canadian supporters immediately prior to the 1985 federal hearing, as the film would like us to believe.
CARTER'S CAR IS STOPPED BY POLICE
The film gives the impression that the nightclub Carter was in around the time of the murders was "across town" from the crime scene, and that the police stopped his car at random because its occupants were black. In reality, the nightclub and the bar were just a few blocks apart, and Carter's car was stopped within the vicinity of the bar
[http://www.GRAPHICWITNESS.COM/carter/map.html].
In the film, Carter and Artis are pulled over by a patrol car. The officer explains the police are searching for a white car occupied by two black men. Denzel Washington indignantly asks,"Any two will do?" What the film fails to mention is that the policeman let them go after they produced a valid automobile registration. Twenty minutes later, they were stopped a second time and apprehended only after the police officer had obtained a more detailed description of the getaway car (a white car with triangular taillights, and an out-of-state license plate with yellow or gold numbers and a dark blue background) and realized it matched Carter's car. From Sarokin's decision:
Some ten minutes after the shootings, the same two policemen, having failed to stop the other white car, stopped the car carrying Carter, Artis and John Royster. They checked the car's registration, recognized Carter, and allowed the car to go on. This was about 15-16 blocks from the murder scene. Shortly after, a police description of the car was broadcast, the two officers again stopped the Carter car, this time even closer to the crime scene, this time with only the petitioners inside.
It should be mentioned that although Sarokin states the "description of the car was broadcast", the arresting officer testified he obtained it when visiting the crime scene
[http://www.GRAPHICWITNESS.COM/carter/map.html]. The point is, the film deliberately leads the viewer to believe the police had no valid reason to stop and apprehend Carter and Artis. In fact, the car matched a reasonably well-detailed description point for point.
2:30am VS. 2:45am
When Lesra and the three Canadians visit Carter in prison, one of the guys (Terry) states,"Three cops testified the murders occurred at 2:45am". As far as I can determine, this is a total fabrication. The police reconstruction of the movements of Carter's car [http://www.GRAPHICWITNESS.COM/carter/map.html] bases everything on the assumption the murders occurred at 2:30am. Paul Mulshine states in his column [http://www.nj.com/page1/ledger/e2efc7.html] that the trial records of The New Jersey Star-Ledger indicate the police testified at the second trial that the murders occurred at 2:30am. Judge Sarokin, when recapping the "undisputed facts of the case", states in his decision:
At approximately 2:30 a.m. on June 17, 1966, two armed black men entered the Lafayette Bar & Grill in Paterson, New Jersey and opened fire.
It seems the filmmakers are the only ones unclear as to what time the police said the murders occurred. Why? Because it allows them to cook up a totally phony sequence of events which "prove" Carter was innocent and was deliberately framed. Read on.
THE FEDERAL HEARING
The film completely distorts the reason for Carter's second trial conviction being thrown out in federal court. A big fuss is made about a prosecution investigator discovering that Della Pesca supposedly forged a phone log to make it appear the murders occurred at 2:45am instead of 2:30. It's then implied that disclosure of this evidence at the federal hearing plays a major role in the judge's decision. In reality, the police stated at the original trial that the murders occurred at 2:30am - this was never in dispute. There was a file compiled by an investigator for the prosecution at the second trial which was allegedly suppressed, but what the file contained is never made clear in Judge Sarokin's decision. And, as we'll see, it had no bearing on the case. When Carter's lawyers petitioned the federal court to have his convictions overturned, they submitted 12 grounds for their appeal. The one relating to the investigator for the prosecution was listed as number 12, and quoted by Sarokin as:
12. The state committed a Brady violation by failing to produce a file by a former investigator in the case.
A big deal is made in the film of the idea that this is all new evidence, and that presenting it in federal court without first presenting it to the New Jersey state courts is a bold move that might get the evidence thrown out permanently. Denzel Washington stands up before his attorneys and gives a speech amounting to "it's now or never" and they reluctantly concur. The reality is that Carter's lawyers backed down at the last minute. From Judge Sarokin's decision:
During oral argument, counsel for Petitioner Carter represented that the complaint would be amended to exclude Ground 12,
the identical issue rejected by the Appellate Division on July 2, 1985, so that there would be no dispute that he had presented only exhausted claims to his petition. Respondents agreed to the amendment of the complaint.
Although attorneys for Carter's alleged accomplice John Artis refused to amend their petition to exclude Ground 12, the point became moot when Sarokin ruled in their favor while making it clear that "Ground 12" did NOT play a part in the decision.
The film gives the impression that dramatic new evidence was submitted to a federal court, and that once the judge reviewed it, he realized Carter's innocence was beyond all doubt and duly exonerated him. In reality, every bit of evidence presented in the petition to the federal court had been previously submitted to New Jersey state courts (hence the statement above that Carter's attorney was presenting "only exhausted claims"). The only difference was that where the New Jersey courts ruled that Carter's petitions lacked merit, Judge Sarokin decided otherwise. It amounts to different judges examining the same evidence and forming differing opinions. Had the New Jersey judges and Sarokin held reversed positions, Carter wouldn't have been freed. Of course, if the film was honest about this, much of the audience would realize Carter's innocence is still clouded in ambiguity, and such a story wouldn't sell many tickets. So the filmmakers decided to twist the real events inside-out and sideways to create the dramatic, unambiguous type of myth that would generate a profit at the box office. After all, who cares about the truth when money is at stake?
References:
http://www.GRAPHICWITNESS.COM/carter
http://www.nj.com/page1/ledger/e2efc7.html
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