'HURRICANE' CARTER STILL PLEADS CASE; EX-BOXER'S CONVICTION IN TRIPLE MURDER BROUGHT HIM FAME

Former boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter did the time -- 19 years in prison -- while insisting all along that he didn't do the crime.

"Hate put me in prison, but love busted me out," Carter told a crowd of more than 100 people Wednesday night at Southeast Missouri State University.

Carter, 64, said he was living the good life as a professional boxer when he was arrested and accused in the killings of three people at a New Jersey bar.

"When I was arrested in 1966 and accused of this diabolical crime, I believed that if you told the truth you wouldn't be penalized for it," he said.

Carter said he hated the police and the courts. "I was eating hate. I committed no crime. The crime was committed against me."

The bespectacled Carter said only the fact he could afford to hire a high-priced lawyer allowed him to escape the electric chair.

His claim of innocence in a triple-murder case was glorified in the movie, "The Hurricane," starring Denzel Washington.

That doesn't sit well with Cal Deal, a one-time New Jersey newspaper reporter who investigated the crime in the 1970s and interviewed Carter in prison.

Deal began delving into the case thinking that Carter was innocent. In the end he concluded that he was guilty.

Deal now lives in Florida and makes his living creating courtroom evidence charts.

"No judge or jury ever found him innocent," said Deal. "The weight of the evidence still stands."

Deal has created an Internet site, "Hurricane Carter: The Other Side of the Story," to showcase newspaper stories and court documents in an effort to show that Carter was guilty.

Carter and another man, John Artis, were twice convicted of the 1966 murders of the three people in a Patterson, N.J., bar and sentenced to life in prison.

At 2:30 a.m., on June 17, 1966, two armed black men entered the Lafayette Bar & Grill and opened fire. The bartender and a patron were killed immediately. A second customer died a month later from her wounds.

Deal argues that the murders were done in revenge of the fatal shooting of a black tavern owner six hours earlier by a white man.

But Carter insisted all along that he was innocent. Two key witnesses later changed their testimony.

Carter described the witnesses as two career criminals

Following his hour and a half speech Wednesday night, Carter dismissed Deal's comments, arguing that Deal was part of the system of hate.

Carter's case attracted international attention and was immortalized in the Bob Dylan song, "Hurricane."

Artis was released on parole in December 1981 after serving 15 years in prison. On Nov. 7, 1985, a federal judge overturned the convictions of both men. The judge said prosecutors improperly appealed to racial prejudice during the second trial by arguing that the killings were racially motivated.

In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Lee Sarokin said he was "convinced that a conviction which rests upon racial stereotypes, fears and prejudices violates rights too fundamental to permit deference to stand in the way of the relief sought."

To allow the convictions to stand would have diminished "fundamental constitutional rights," the judge ruled.

Carter was released from prison in 1985. In February 1988, a New Jersey judge signed an order officially dismissing the indictment, bringing an end to the 22-year saga.

Carter lives in Toronto, Canada, where he is on the board of directors of the Association in Defense of the Wrongfully Convicted. He also is a member of the board of directors of Human Rights in Atlanta and the Alliance for Prison Justice in Boston.

"Dare to dream," Carter told the crowd, saying he had met with President Clinton at the White House and had spoken before the United Nations.

Nearly 4,000 people are sitting on America's death rows. One out of seven may be innocent, he said, arguing against the death penalty.