The Hurricane is a 1999 American biographical sports drama film directed and produced by Norman Jewison. The film stars Denzel Washington as Rubin "The Hurricane" Carter, a former middleweight boxer who was wrongly convicted of a triple murder in a bar in Paterson, New Jersey. The script was adapted by Armyan Bernstein and Dan Gordon from Carter's 1974 autobiography The Sixteenth Round: From Number 1 Contender To 45472 and the 1991 non-fiction work Lazarus and the Hurricane: The Freeing of Rubin "The Hurricane" Carter by Sam Chaiton and Terry Swinton.
Rubin "Hurricane" Carter was an American-Canadian middleweight boxer who was wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for murder, until released following a petition of habeas corpus after almost 20 years in prison.
Carmine Orlando Tilelli was an American boxer who was the world middleweight champion from 1963 to 1965. He adopted the name Joey Giardello in order to join the U.S. Army while underage, and continued to use the pseudonym throughout his boxing career.
East Jersey State Prison is a maximum security prison operated by the New Jersey Department of Corrections in Avenel, Woodbridge Township, New Jersey. It was established in 1896 as Rahway State Prison, and was the first reformatory in New Jersey, officially opening in 1901. It housed 1,227 inmates as of 2020.
Desire is the seventeenth studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on January 5, 1976, through Columbia Records. It is one of Dylan's most collaborative efforts, featuring the same caravan of musicians as the acclaimed Rolling Thunder Revue tours the previous year. Many of the songs also featured backing vocals by Emmylou Harris and Ronee Blakley. Most of the album was co-written by Jacques Levy, and is composed of lengthy story-songs, two of which quickly generated controversy: the 11-minute-long "Joey", which is seen as glorifying the violent gangster "Crazy Joey" Gallo, and "Hurricane", the opening track that tells a passionate account of the murder case against boxer Rubin Carter, who the song asserts was framed. Carter was released in 1985, after a judge overturned his conviction on appeal.
Vincent J. DeSimone, Jr. (1918–1979) was the chief of detectives of Passaic County, New Jersey, USA. In 1966, he was the lead detective who coached witnesses in the homicide case at Lafayette Grill in Paterson, New Jersey, in order to implicate boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter and John Artis. Carter and Artis were ultimately convicted and served nearly two decades in prison before the convictions were overturned in 1985.
The Rolling Thunder Revue was a 1975–76 concert tour by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan with numerous musicians and collaborators. The purpose of the tour was to allow Dylan, who was a major recording artist and concert performer, to play in smaller auditoriums in less populated cities where he could be more intimate with his audiences.
"Hurricane" is a protest song by Bob Dylan co-written with Jacques Levy and released as a single in November 1975. It was also included on Dylan's 1976 album Desire as its opening track. The song is about the imprisonment of boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter (1937–2014). It compiles acts of racism and profiling against Carter, which Dylan describes as leading to a false trial and conviction.
Vicellous Reon Shannon is an American actor known for his portrayal of Lesra Martin in the 1999 film The Hurricane, and Keith Palmer, the son of presidential candidate David Palmer in the Fox television series 24. Shannon also appeared in the 2006 film Annapolis.
Haddon Lee Sarokin was a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and a former United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey. After retiring as a judge, he became a blogger, often writing in support of those he saw as wrongly convicted.
Iwao Hakamada is a Japanese former professional boxer who was sentenced to death on 11 September 1968 for a 1966 mass murder that became known as the Hakamada Incident. In March 2011, Guinness World Records certified Hakamada as the world's longest-held death row inmate.
Raymond A. Brown was an American criminal defense lawyer who represented a wide variety of high-profile clients, ranging from politicians to accused spies, including New Jersey state senator Angelo Errichetti, boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter and "Dr. X" physician Mario Jascalevich.
Selwyn Raab is an American journalist, author and former investigative reporter for The New York Times. He has written extensively about the American Mafia and criminal justice issues.
The Big Shot (1942) is an American film noir crime drama film starring Humphrey Bogart as a crime boss and Irene Manning as the woman he falls in love with. Having finally reached stardom with such projects as The Maltese Falcon (1941), this would be the last film in which former supporting player Bogart would portray a gangster for Warner Bros..
Dewey Bozella is a former professional boxer who is known for being wrongfully imprisoned. Convicted in 1983 for the murder of an elderly woman, Bozella served 26 years in prison before his conviction was overturned in 2009 after being proved innocent.
Selwyn Jacob is a Canadian documentary filmmaker whose work has often explored the experiences of Black Canadians as well as other stories from Canada's multicultural communities, as both as an independent director and since 1997 as a producer with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).
Nathan Blenner (1965–1985) was a 20-year-old man from Queens, New York who was kidnapped in 1985 outside his home. His body was found with a single fatal bullet wound in his head. Willie Stuckey and David McCallum, both 16 at the time, were arrested and allegedly confessed to killing Blenner during an attempted car theft and later alleged to having a joyride in the victim's car.
Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese is a 2019 American documentary film, composed of both fictional and non-fictional material, covering Bob Dylan's 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue concert tour. Directed by Martin Scorsese, it is the director's second film on Bob Dylan, following 2005's No Direction Home. The bulk of Rolling Thunder Revue is compiled of outtakes from Dylan's 1978 film Renaldo and Clara, which was filmed in conjunction with the tour.
The Hurricane Tapes is a 13-part BBC World Service podcast series, released in 2019, discussing in detail the case of Rubin Carter, an American-Canadian middleweight boxer, wrongfully convicted twice of murder in 1966 and 1976 respectively and later released following a petition of habeas corpus in 1985 after serving almost 20 years in prison.
Lewis M. Steel is an American civil rights attorney and author who was co-lead counsel of the legal team that freed the boxer Rubin Carter and John Artis after they were wrongly convicted of murder. While working for the NAACP during the 1960s, he worked to desegregate public schools in the North. In 1971 he joined other civil rights lawyers, including William Kunstler, and New York Times columnist Tom Wicker, to negotiate a settlement of the Attica Prison riot. He was the lead attorney in Avagliano v. Sumitomo Shoji America, 457 U.S. 176 (1982) which established that American subsidiaries of foreign corporations must obey American civil rights laws. He works as a civil rights attorney at the New York law firm Outten & Golden LLP.
