FOR NINETEEN YEARS, Rubin Carter fought prison’s web of controls and regulations and resisted its communal dehumanization. His total opposition to the prison was a matter of principle—as an innocent man, he would not be treated as a convict—but his lonely rebellion also echoed his conduct as a free man. He never followed the crowd and he never joined groups. As a boy, he walked a different route to school from that of his brothers and sisters. As a boxer, he did the opposite of what his trainer told him. As a prisoner, he defied the administration at every turn.
And as a free man, he could no more live in a commune than an eagle could live in a birdcage.
By the time Carter gave his dramatic speech at the Plaza Hotel, he had lived with the Canadians for almost two and a half years. They had rescued him from the States, and he was grateful. But the attributes that made the Canadians perfect allies for the imprisoned Carter—their circle-the-wagons paranoia and lockstep lifestyle—made them insufferable for the liberated Carter. Within the commune, individual identities were suppressed. The Canadians lived together, traveled together, worked together, and bedded together—although their libidos, at this point, were languid. “It was the most sexless house I’ve ever been in,” Carter later said.
The Canadians rejected the label of “commune,” which they thought to be a sixties fad. They felt themselves to be sui generis. They could do anything—from importing batiks from Malaysia to freeing a convicted triple murderer from New Jersey—as long as they did it together. Once in Canada, Carter and company retained their life of sub rosa splendor. They leased a nineteenth-century country home in the suburb of Woodbridge, about a thirty-minute drive northwest of Toronto. The house, set back from a graceful road that wended through thickly branched trees and velvet lawns, had previously been a home for unwed pregnant women. As the Canadians did with all their living quarters, they renovated or redecorated, making it uniquely their own. In this case, they adorned the house with Aubusson rugs, original lithographs, and prints of Old Masters. They also had a swimming pool with deck chairs and, in the driveway, the blue Mercedes and a Jeep Cherokee, the latter purchased specifically for Rubin.
It was evident to outsiders that Carter, a celebrity who enjoyed the limelight, was ill suited for this furtive, inscrutable clan. When a Toronto Star reporter, Susan Kastner, visited Carter in the summer of 1989, she was allowed to speak with only one person besides Rubin. The spokesman identified himself as “T,” which was one more letter than the New York Times had been given the previous year. Kastner was told that seven people lived in the house, but there were no other signs of life besides Carter and T. The grounds were eerie, bereft.
Sitting by the pool, Carter wore a beautifully cut dove gray linen shirt, his speech as fluid as a mountain stream. He smiled proudly, showing off his C$16,000 worth of dental work to repair his eroded enamel and a severe underbite, which had developed in prison. (“The only dental care they had in prison,” Carter later said, “is, ‘Yank it out!’”)
Earlier that day, Carter’s face had gone rigid at the sight of a front page photograph in the Toronto Star. A convicted rapist who had escaped custody had been apprehended by police, and the black-and-white picture showed the rapist on the street surrounded by cops, his wrists handcuffed behind his back, his head snapped back, howling like a wolf. Mad Dog was his nickname, and Carter felt a pain deep inside. “Everybody assumes he’s an animal who needs to be penned up,” he told Kastner. “But he could have been just like me.”
It was a jarring moment for the reporter, who realized how the serene setting belied Carter’s years of trauma. At the same time, T (Terry Swinton) seemed to take undue pride in Carter. Kastner wrote that Swinton “shoots Carter a warm, proprietary glance. ‘Doesn’t he look great now, though? Young, healthy?’” To Kastner, the whole situation —this black survivor of New Jersey’s prisons turned fashion plate sitting with the mysterious T at a vacant country estate—was bizarre. She didn’t say so in her column, but she sensed that nothing quite fit.
Indeed, Carter’s life in Canada, from the outset, was anything but serene. The relationship between Lisa and Rubin never blossomed, and tensions between the two surfaced immediately. Lisa hassled Carter over what time he awoke (he was always a late sleeper) and whether he was sufficiently committed to the house. Carter bristled at being told what to do and where to go. When a visitor knocked, everyone in the house would hide and Swinton would answer the door. Carter refused to hide. He also complained to Lisa about her disparagement of former commune members, people of other nationalities and religions, and outsiders in general.
Nonetheless, Carter initially had good reasons for staying with the group. He had no money, no way of making a living, and no place to settle down. He wanted to live in Canada—he thought Canadians were more tolerant than Americans—but it would take time for him to qualify for landed immigrant status and for health and insurance benefits.
He also wanted to repay his debt to the Canadians. They had spent at least $400,000 on his freedom, and they had been supporting him in grand style since his release from prison. He was determined to leave the commune no worse off financially than when it met him. He could earn money by lecturing and by selling his story through a book, movie, or both. Paying off the debt would take years, but he would not be satisfied until he did.
Lisa also hoped that Carter’s story would generate income for the house, but their deteriorating relationship soon overwhelmed all other concerns. His reluctance to conform continued to anger her. According to Gus Sinclair, one day Lisa propped a leg against a wall and held up her arms as if to protect herself from a falling pile of bricks. “That bastard is as tough as they come,” she said, “and I feel like I have to stand like this to keep him from overwhelming me.”
Less than five months after Carter had been in Canada, Lisa decided he had to leave. She threw his suitcases and his clothes in the hall, told him to get out, then retreated into her own bedroom until he was gone. Sinclair made reservations for Carter to fly to Philadelphia, gave him C$500, and helped him pack. Carter asked for several small favors. Most important, he wanted what had been prepared so far of a screenplay of his life, written by Chaiton, Swinton, and Carter. Sinclair asked Chaiton for a copy, but he was told it was not Carter’s for the taking.
“I’m sorry,” Sinclair told Carter.
Carter was more relieved than angry. The house was claustrophobic. He didn’t know what he would do, but maybe it was best for him to move on. “Let’s get going,” he said. He got into a car with Eitel Renbaum and headed for the airport.
The commune’s autocratic environment took its toll on other members. Sean Cunningham, Marty’s friend, slept at the commune four or five nights a week for seven years to escape difficulties in his own home. Like the others, he found a self-contained world that seemed to protect him from outside forces, but he severed ties with the house when he realized how damaging the experience was. The members of the group “had a twisted and infantile way of wanting to belong,” he said. “The house took away our inner voice, our spirit. It took years to recuperate from that.”
A month after Carter was shown the door, Gus Sinclair left, disillusioned by the experimental living arrangement he had helped create eighteen years earlier. What began with so much idealism and positive energy, he felt, had long ago devolved into a “quasi-tyranny” with petty infighting among members. The crusade to free Carter was the group’s last great accomplishment, but now all he saw were crass efforts to cash in on the achievement through book and movie deals. The commune, according to Sinclair, had C$100,000 in the bank at the time, but he was given only C$1,500 as his parting share. He was dropped off at the local YMCA—but was told the YMCA had not had rooms for more than twenty-five years. Sinclair realized how long he had been isolated.
Rubin Carter, however, would not be gone long. He knocked around the United States, staying with friends and relatives in New Jersey, New York, and Virginia, borrowing money and trying to sell his own book or movie deal. He had working titles—No Holds Barred and No Bars to Hold and The Hole in the Wall – and several chapters written, but he found no buyers. While traveling between the two countries, he contracted tuberculosis, a disease that he picked up in prison but that did not manifest itself until now. Hospitalized in Canada, he called Lisa, who invited him back to convalesce. The pair reconciled, and their relationship entered a new phase, becoming a partnership grounded in mutual self-interest.
In 1989 Rubin and Lisa were married, and she took his last name. The marriage, Carter said, did not reflect an amorous breakthrough between them. In fact, the longer he stayed in the commune, the less emotional intimacy existed between them, a development that Carter said satisfied both parties. The marriage addressed the practical considerations of Carter’s gaining landed immigrant status, for the Canadian government was more likely to grant it to the spouse of a citizen. Carter felt his union with Lisa solidified his position in his adopted country. Whatever his motives, the marriage confirmed to outsiders that he had indeed found a home.
Lisa had a clear incentive to keep Rubin with the group. He was their product—or, as Carter described it, “a trophy horse to fill the coffers.” Swinton and Chaiton were writing their own book about the Canadians’ involvement with Carter, and it would look odd if the hero of the story were estranged from his saviors.
Carter and the Canadians presented a unified front for many years. They appeared together before journalists, at public ceremonies and conferences, and for publicity events surrounding the book eventually finished by Swinton and Chaiton, Lazarus and the Hurricane. Published in Canada in 1991, it described how a group of do-good but unidentified Canadians (their last names are never given) saved a grateful Lesra Martin and Rubin Carter from their respective plights of poverty and imprisonment. The movie rights were purchased, and proceeds from the book and film went to the house. Slowly, Carter was paying back his debt.
The commune’s obsession with privacy meant that Carter still effectively lived underground. From Woodbridge, the group moved again to a six-bedroom, half-timbered house in King City, about twenty miles north of Toronto. They converted the structure into a European hunting lodge and built a two-stall barn for their horses. Carter had few contacts outside the house. External friendships were still forbidden, but one outsider managed to break through. Perry Catena was a financial planner in Toronto whose stout, muscular build evoked the stature of a middleweight. He heard Carter on the radio and was captivated by his story and his voice. He then read The Sixteenth Round and, spellbound, drove up to King City to find him. Catena knew there weren’t many black men in the small town, so someone had to know his whereabouts. Catena went everywhere in King City—the bakery, grocery store, church, doughnut shop, fire hall, drugstore, real estate office, hockey arena, several restaurants, and an art museum. He even went door-to-door in residential neighborhoods. With the exception of a drugstore owner who had sold Carter cigarettes, no one had ever seen the man. Yes, Carter was free, but he was tucked so far away that he was virtually invisible.
A year later, Catena learned that his stealth hero had surfaced to give a speech at a Toronto high school. Through the school, Catena left a message with “Rubin’s people.” Three weeks later Terry Swinton called and, in an initial screening, spoke with Catena for an hour. Three months later he called again and arranged for Catena to visit Carter. Eventually Catena spent the day at the elusive King City house and was invited back, later becoming one of Carter’s few good friends. Other admirers who lacked Catena’s persistence never got close.
In the early nineties, Carter began to break out of his seclusion and become politically active, focusing on an issue close to his heart—wrongly convicted prisoners and Death Row inmates. Before his own arrest in 1966, Carter had never been political. He was rarely motivated by any cause beyond his own success. At the time, he also recognized that blacks were under siege, physically and legally, so he became outspoken in advocating that blacks use whatever means necessary to defend themselves, particularly against the police. His caustic remarks embellished his militant reputation; in prison, in the years leading up to his second conviction, his message had evolved into a racial indictment of the criminal justice system. Now in his fifties, Carter had lost none of his indignation over injustice, but he was no longer the firebrand. He was now willing to channel his passions through more constructive protest. His own experiences had taught him that the best way—indeed, the only way—to beat the system is to work within the system. Verbal grenades may get the headlines, but they don’t overturn wrongful convictions or stop state-sponsored executions.
A Canadian carpenter named Guy Paul Morin drew Carter into his role as spokesman for the wrongly convicted. Morin had been charged with the 1984 rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl. Acquitted at his first trial, Morin was tried a second time in 1992 and convicted. The linchpin to his conviction was an alleged “jailhouse confession,” in which two inmates testified that Morin had confessed to the crime when they were in jail together. The inmates had also made deals with prosecutors for leniency in their own cases. Carter knew about such deals. A defense committee was formed for Morin, and Carter was among those who spoke on his behalf. Eighteen months after Morin’s second trial, his conviction was overturned thanks to new DNA evidence that exonerated him of the crime.
The defense committee formed on Morin’s behalf decided to stay in business. It changed its name to the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted (AIDWYC), and Rubin Carter was named its executive director. Carter gave the association an attractive, high-profile leader who was proof that unjust convictions do occur. The association, in turn, gave Carter a platform from which he could speak out on the criminal justice system, and it gave him a life outside the commune.
Carter’s living arrangements, however, continued to concern his friends. They noticed that when he traveled by himself, the first thing he did when he got off the plane was call home. Then he would call again as soon as he reached the hotel and again when he reached his room. A dependence on the prison had been replaced by a dependence on the commune. Fred Hogan, the public investigator in New Jersey who was Carter’s first ally to research the murders, noticed that when he talked to Carter on the phone, one or two of the Canadians were always on the other line. “Instead of hanging up, they would stay on the fucking phone,” Hogan later complained. “It was a control thing.”
Michael Blowen, a reporter for the Boston Globe, interviewed Carter in King City and remained friends with him. During his visit, Carter was wearing sunglasses to shield a troubled eye. When Blowen asked a question, Carter looked out of the side of his sunglasses at Chaiton or Swinton to make sure neither of them was going to answer. Later, when Carter gave a speech at Harvard University, Rubin, Lisa, Chaiton, and Swinton visited Blowen at his home. Any time a question was directed toward Carter, Lisa answered for him. Blowen also realized that the Canadians forbade anyone in their group to drink alcohol. “The drink of choice was basically tea, and when you went wild, you maybe had a cup of coffee,” Blowen said. When he met Carter once at Boston’s Logan International Airport—without the Canadians—Carter drank whiskey, laughed, and was more relaxed than Blowen had ever seen him.
But Carter’s drinking was also a serious matter. His alcoholism had effectively been dormant for twenty years. In prison, he stopped consuming the “hooch,” or wine, concocted by the inmates after the Rahway prison riot in 1971, when a massive drunk was considered the cause of the uprising. While Carter could not drink in front of the Canadians, he binged when he was beyond their view. On one occasion the commune’s accountant, Michael Murnaghan, invited Carter on a fishing trip to Alaska. Over the objections of his housemates, Carter accepted. Murnaghan never saw Carter take a sip, but after several days he found an empty crock of vodka that Carter had consumed.
In 1992 Carter again complained to Lisa about his lack of freedom—every time he left the house, someone escorted him—and once again he was told to leave. This time Carter left in his own Jeep, crossed the U.S. border, and headed for New York City. But an eye problem again brought his travels to a halt. This time, a burning sensation in his long-gone right eye created the worst pain he had ever felt. He couldn’t drive, so he called the commune and asked for help. Chaiton flew to a small town in upstate New York, found Carter in his Jeep on the side of the road, and drove him back to Toronto. Once in the hospital, Carter learned that his tuberculosis from several years before had reappeared in a different form. Apparently a TB “germ” had attached itself to the stitches that prison doctors had left inside the right eye. The vessels in the eye were so fine that antibiotics could not purge the “germ.” Doctors told Carter that he would have to have the infected eye removed and replaced with a glass eye. The procedure relieved the pain but left Carter with another reminder of the long reach of prison. “I have two eyes,” he said. “One sees out, the other sees in.”
To see his own entrapment clearly, Carter needed the help of a former foe.
Wilbert “Skeeter” McClure, an Olympic gold medal champion in 1960, had two prizefights against Carter in 1966. A fluke event before their first match in Chicago cemented McClure’s respect for his opponent. McClure weighed in at 160 pounds—a half pound more than middleweights were allowed. He had to lose it by the opening bell or forfeit the match. McClure went to the locker room to relieve himself. As he stood at the urinal, Carter strolled in and told him that he didn’t care about that half pound and that he wouldn’t want to win by forfeit anyway. McClure lost the weight; he also lost the bout in ten brutal rounds. He left the arena believing that he had been beaten by a relentless puncher and a class act. Their rematch two months later—the penultimate bout of Carter’s career—ended in a draw.
McClure’s path crossed Carter’s again in 1993, at the thirtieth anniversary dinner of the World Boxing Council. The WBC wanted to honor Carter in some way and, initially, proposed giving Carter a plaque. No thanks, Carter said. He had enough plaques. He wanted something else. Denied the opportunity to fight again for the championship, he wanted an honorary championship belt. The WBC had never awarded one before but decided this was the time to break precedent.
On December 16, 1993, at the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas, Carter received a green and gold honorary belt inscribed with the signatures of each member of the WBC. He invited several of his old boxing opponents as his guests, including Skeeter McClure. Carter was accompanied by Lisa, Swinton, and Chaiton. In Carter’s moment of triumph, McClure noticed that something about his friend wasn’t right. For several days, every time McClure saw Carter—in the hotel lobby, in a coffee shop, on the street—he was surrounded by these enigmatic Canadians. They always had smiles on their faces, but the smiles seemed contrived. His observations were grounded in years of professional training, for he was a psychotherapist in Boston and had studied group behavior. Dr. McClure had also noticed Lisa’s control over Carter and the entire group, and he didn’t like it.
The last straw was the night of the black-tie awards ceremony. Carter sat next to McClure at a round table, with the Canadians on either side of them. Carter was drinking vodka, but he kept pushing his glass in front of McClure to make it look as though it wasn’t his drink. McClure realized what was going on.
“We got to talk,” he whispered to Carter. “Alone.”
“I don’t know if I can get away,” Carter said.
“How about up in my room?”
“No, they’ll follow us.”
“Then let’s take a walk outside.”
McClure stood up and told the Canadians that they were going for a walk.
“We’ll come with you,” one of them said.
“No, we’re going alone.”
“We’ll follow along.”
McClure, furious, shot them all a savage look and said that he and Rubin were leaving by themselves. They left the ballroom.
“What the shit is this?” McClure said, still fuming. “You traded one damn prison for another.”
Carter explained his predicament. He didn’t have any money of his own, or credit cards, or his social insurance and health care cards. He also described how much the Canadians had sacrificed on his behalf; they had sold their home to help him. He felt he could not leave until he had paid his debt.
“But when will the debt be paid?” McClure demanded. He said that Carter could move to Boston and stay at his apartment and use his car. But he needed to set a date, a reasonable date, when he would leave the commune. “Then you can be psychologically and emotionally free.”
By the time Carter returned to Toronto, another restriction had been imposed in the house. Lisa had quit smoking and had made everyone else in the commune quit as well. Carter had smoked, with only a few breaks, since his first imprisonment. Plowing through two packs a day, he had no intention of quitting now. The commune’s ban on alcohol had already denied him one of his other pleasures. Under this new edict, Carter had to sneak outside and light up behind the barn. He felt as if he were a child hiding from his mother and father.
The child finally lashed back. Carter went to Chicago in February 1994 to give a speech at a law conference. Chaiton accompanied him. The conference organizers invited them to dinner; toward the end, Carter excused himself to go to the bathroom. There, he had a quick smoke, then headed back out. When he opened the door, Chaiton was waiting for him.
“Were you smoking?” he demanded.
Carter glared. Chaiton then stepped close and began frisking him for a cigarette pack.
“Get your motherfucking hands off of me!” Carter yelled, swatting Chaiton away. “You never put your hands on me!”
Chaiton had violated the very rule that he knew all too well, the rule that Carter would have killed any prison guard over: no one touches him in anger. Chaiton had put himself squarely in the camp of Carter’s former jailers or any other enemy. Carter returned to his hotel room without saying anything else. On their flight back to Toronto, they sat in different rows. When Chaiton tried to change seats with the passenger next to Carter, Rubin told the passenger not to move. At the airport, they were picked up by Kathy Swinton and Paulene McLean, and Chaiton described Carter’s presentation on the way home. Carter said nothing. At the house, he went straight to his room and began packing his bags. Terry Swinton and Chaiton pleaded with him to stay. It was cold and snowy, and night was about to fall; but Carter finished his packing and headed for the front door.
“I love you,” he said, “but I can’t stay here anymore.”
This time he was leaving on his own. He had less than C$100 in his pocket, but by now he had his own bank account and a credit card. He got into his red and black Jeep, pulled out of the King City driveway, and headed for Toronto. He never looked back. And he never gave up his cigarettes.
Since that day, Carter has never denigrated the Canadians. They may have been his new jailers, but he will always be grateful for their help, their charity. In prison he had no reason to begrudge their paternalism and their smugness. They brought him hope and love at a time when virtually everyone else had abandoned him. In the courtroom, they brought energy and savvy against implacable foes. Carter might have won his freedom without them, but his lawyers, already outgunned and exhausted, would have had to work that much harder to succeed. In Lisa, Carter met his equal—in his words: “tough on the outside, beautiful on the inside, and totally fearless.” She did what the New Jersey prison system could not do: she broke him down and forced him to confront himself. Theirs was surely one of the more improbable prison love affairs, but it made Carter a gentler, better person.
To the Canadians, Carter ratified their worldview about corruption and racism in America, about the nobility of blacks, and about their own superiority. They picked up The Sixteenth Round, saw an injustice, and decided to fix it. With both Carter and Lesra Martin, they showed that they were uncommonly gifted at saving African Americans in trouble; but then they were incapable of friendship, of meeting these blacks as peers rather than victims. Their strict rules and desire for total control made any healthy relationship impossible. “The only thing that mattered,” Carter said, “was to be dependent on that house, to learn to never be separated from the group. It’s a process of learned helplessness, but I could not learn to be helpless.”
By the time Carter left King City in February 1994, he had lived in Canada for six years, but he barely knew the roads because he rarely drove; Chaiton and Kathy Swinton were the commune’s designated drivers. But Carter reached Toronto and managed to find the flat he was looking for. He knocked on the door, and Lesra Martin answered.
Martin had graduated with honors from the University of Toronto, diligently sending Carter his essays and report cards and once consulting him on a questionnaire about racism. Martin then earned a master’s degree in anthropology from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Halifax had been a terminus on the Underground Railroad during the Civil War and still had a strong black community. Then he enrolled in law school at the University of Halifax but flushed out after one year. By now, both his parents had died. With no place to go, he returned to Toronto in 1993 and moved back into the house in King City.
He was delighted to reunite with Carter, calling him “Pops.” When he first met Carter in prison, he was reeling with self-doubt and growing frustrations from trying to read. He thought he was stupid. But Carter had inspired him by example: his limited education did not deter him from speaking eloquently or writing passionately—and he didn’t quit. Martin decided that neither would he. Now, back in the commune, they took long walks together, with Carter dispensing advice on everything from schooling to sex. But spending time alone together was difficult under the probing eyes and ears of the Canadians, and Martin had to get on with his life. He moved into a flat in downtown Toronto and returned to the university for doctorate work in sociology. One day when Carter drove into Toronto by himself for a haircut, he called Martin from the barber shop and asked to visit his apartment. He thought that someday he might need Martin’s help.
When Carter showed up at his door on that snowy night, Martin, now thirty, was glad to let him in—even if he didn’t have the space. The apartment had only one room, one bathroom, and no couch. Martin slept on a mattress in a loft while Carter slept on the floor. They quickly found a three-story home to rent in a racially mixed neighborhood west of downtown Toronto. Now they would not only be father and son but also roommates and partners. At the time, Carter was leading the defense committee in the Guy Paul Morin case; without the commune’s support, the committee agreed to pay Carter for six months or until he could find another source of income.
Carter went to work, writing, lecturing, and traveling—often taking Martin with him. Carter had always been poor with details, so Martin booked their flights, held their tickets, reserved hotel rooms, and drove their rental cars as well as editing and typing Carter’s speeches. Carter was a stranger to technology, so Martin used the computer and bought a cell phone, a radio, a stereo, and other gadgets that helped make the house complete. They also double dated, dining out and going to movies and nightclubs.
Their camaraderie, however, belied a certain competitiveness. Martin had a master’s degree and was working on his doctorate—he was far too qualified to be a glorified administrative assistant—while Carter’s formal education had ended in eighth grade. Carter sensed that Martin did not like being in his shadow. When they quibbled over the wording in Carter’s speeches, Martin would glare at his roommate and make it clear that he thought he was better qualified to make the final decision. The rivalry also surfaced in social settings. After Carter asked a woman to dance in a nightclub, Martin would approach the same woman and ask her to dance. “Whatever I was going after,” Carter said, “he wanted to show that he could get it first. I would say, ‘Why are you always competing with me?’”
The rivalry, however, did not interfere with their work, which ultimately took Carter someplace he thought he’d never return to—Death Row.
Rolando Cruz had been on Death Row at Illinois’s Downstate Menard Correctional Center since 1985. A self-described smartass street punk—“I hated the cops and they hated me”—in the ghettos of Aurora, Illinois, Cruz had been convicted of raping and murdering a ten-year-old white girl in preppy Naperville. Like Carter, he always proclaimed his innocence, and, like Carter, his conviction was overturned, leading to a retrial that sent him back to prison. Cruz was also a prison rebel—but he was far more violent than Carter. He once pulled out the sink in his cell and used it as a weapon, he got into some thirty fights with guards over the years, and he spent much of his time in solitary confinement. But his case, enmeshed in state politics, racial tensions, and dubious evidence, was also a lightning rod for criticism and controversy. By the summer of 1994, Cruz’s appeal of his second conviction had been before the Illinois Supreme Court for more than a year, and the long wait was tearing away at him. One of his lawyers, Lawrence Marshall, begged Carter and Martin to visit him.
Cruz typically turned away visitors, dismissing their show of empathy as sentimental pretense, and he wasn’t particularly interested in meeting Carter. For his part, Carter had never been to a Death Row besides Trenton’s, and he wasn’t keen on entering any prison. But, convinced that Cruz was innocent, he agreed, and he, Martin, and Marshall visited Cruz in a special room for the institution’s most dangerous prisoners. The tiny cell had a solid partition down the middle with a three-by-five-foot rectangle knocked out, iron bars in the open space. Cruz sat in a chair wearing handcuffs and leg shackles. Carter, on the other side of the bars, wore a gray blazer and black trousers.
Cruz knew of Carter’s exploits in the boxing ring and in prison, and he wanted to impress him. He bragged about how tough he was on the street and in the pen, how he didn’t take lip from anyone, particularly the wimpy-assed guards. Cruz told Carter that he didn’t eat prison food or wear prison clothes, that he was a political prisoner, that he did not accept his prison number, and that it was not his cell but the state’s cell.
Carter knew the rap. He could have been looking at himself: different shoulder, same chip.
“You can’t bring that attitude out of there,” Carter said. “You’ve got dedicated people out here working for you, and we’re coming to get you. But you can’t leave with that bullshit attitude. You owe it to those people working for you, and you owe it to me.” Carter raised his voice. “When you walk out those doors, you have to walk out clean. You cannot walk out with those chains and shackles.”
Carter was angry. He stood up and grabbed the steel bars with both hands. “You have got to get these walls out of you!” He began shaking the bars with all his strength. His face sweating, his hands moist, he shook the bars again and bellowed, “You have got to get these walls out of you! Out of you! Out of you!” The steel rods shook and the wood trim around them vibrated and the words echoed in the cement chamber. It was like a flashback to his own years of horror; he saw a shackled image of himself through the bars. Tears of anger and frustration welled in Carter’s eye, tears for himself as much as for Cruz. The outburst had everyone else in the cramped room in tears as well. Carter, exhausted, sat down. At the end of the meeting, he and Cruz embraced outside the cell when they said good-bye. A photograph was taken, and Carter gave him his phone number.
“Call me next time you’re tempted to beat the shit out of a guard,” he said.
Several weeks later, the Illinois Supreme Court overturned Cruz’s conviction, and a third trial was ordered.
Carter felt he was making a difference with his work, and he was pleased that Martin was beside him. He rarely saw his own children or, by now, grandchildren, and he had severed all ties with the commune. Lesra was his family, and he envisioned the two expanding their work to include advocacy for education, job training, and other social needs. But on their way home from the airport in Toronto after visiting Cruz, Carter learned that this family too would not stay together.
“Pops, I think I’m going back to law school,” Lesra said.
Carter assumed he intended to go to the University of Toronto.
“I’m thinking about going back to Halifax.”
“What?”
“I’m going to go back to Halifax.”
“When did you decide that?”
“It’s always been my dream.”
Carter was shocked and felt betrayed. He thought Martin was committed to their work. Now, without any warning, his partner would be leaving in less than a week. Like any father, he thought he deserved more consideration, but Martin had other ideas than to follow in his father’s footsteps. Like any son, he wanted to make his own way.
“If that’s your dream,” Carter said, “then go.”
Over the next three years, the two men spoke on the phone cordially but infrequently. Then all ties were bitterly severed in a dispute over money. Some years earlier, Martin had bought the blue Mercedes from a member of the commune, then sold it to Carter. Carter paid the insurance premiums and taxes on the car, but the ownership papers had never been transferred into his name. In 1997 a neighbor of Carter’s borrowed the Mercedes and totaled it. An insurance claim was to be sent to the owner of the car—Lesra Martin. Carter called Martin to say he would be receiving a check for $10,000 from the insurer. He could keep $3,000 for himself—Carter knew Martin was strapped for cash—and should send $7,000 to him. When Carter received his check, it was for $3,000. Carter, outraged, had no recourse. When Martin sent him a wedding invitation in 1998, Carter didn’t attend.
Carter’s involvement with Rolando Cruz did not end when he left the Illinois prison. Several months later Cruz, waiting in the DuPage County Jail for a new trial, was about to tear apart a guard. But, as instructed, he called Carter first.
Carter knew what he was going to say. In talking to Cruz’s lawyer, he had learned that Cruz’s father had died the previous year. He also learned that a baby Cruz had fathered right before his arrest had been put up for adoption, and that Cruz’s mother, sister, and aunt had been hit by a car in Texas and severely injured. Carter used that information to dramatic effect. When he began to speak, Cruz was taken aback by the authority in Carter’s voice.
“You know what your problem is,” Carter said. “Your father died and you didn’t cry. I was the same way. My father died and I didn’t cry. You’re from the street and you’re a bad motherfucker. So was I! But you got to learn how to cry. Your baby was given away and you didn’t cry. I lost my babies and I didn’t cry! You need to turn on that faucet. Your baby sister almost died and you didn’t cry. It’s like a fountain. You got to open up the valves every now and again and let the water pour through. Otherwise all the pipes get rusted. You think you’re a tough ass, but you’ve got to learn how to cry. You need to learn how to live before you’re ready to come home. You’re not ready to live, you need to learn how to cry. The only way you’re going to be ready to live is if you let the water baaare-ly drip out. Eventually, you’ll let the water flooow and then you’ll be able to live again.”
Rolando Cruz did not fight the guard. The following year, on November 3, 1995, he was acquitted in his third trial and freed after ten years of imprisonment. Carter was in the courtroom gallery. In his apartment near Chicago, Cruz keeps the photograph of Rubin and himself embracing in prison. Four years after winning his freedom, he has an unfulfilled dream: he wants to go to his mother’s house, take a hot bath, pour a glass a milk, lay down next to her, and cry.
Rubin Carter had learned how to cry, to suffer, and to live again. But he still had one more prison to overcome—alcohol. His years in the commune kept his drinking under control, but once he was on his own, the demons returned, first gradually but then more destructively than ever. He roamed about Toronto at night, visiting four or five liquor stores to spread out his purchases and conceal the extent of his consumption. The clerks would hardly care, but Carter’s pride prevented him from allowing anyone, even a sales clerk, to know the scope of his addiction. The alcohol took its toll. He missed business appointments, and his speech was slurred. Sober, Carter had testified persuasively before the U.S. Congress on the importance of habeas corpus and had spoken at Harvard and Yale law schools. When drinking, however, he was just another drunk. No one was calling to hear him speak, certainly no one who would pay. He was no longer receiving a salary from the AIDWYC, which was short on funds itself. He was spending up to C$650 a month on Russian vodka. He was alone, and he was broke. Then—yet again—he went blind.
In the summer of 1997, he began losing vision in his left eye. Carter visited eye specialist after eye specialist, but no one could determine the problem. He was caught in a terrible cycle. The darker his vision became, the more housebound he was. The more housebound he was, the more alcohol he drank. The more alcohol he drank, the darker his vision became. Finally Carter visited a specialist who diagnosed the problem as cataracts. An operation in January 1998 repaired the damage, and during his recuperation he stayed off the bottle. At one point he got the shakes, began hallucinating, and ended up back in the hospital. But he remained sober and thought he had conquered his temptations. Then, passing a liquor store one day, he bought one of those miniature vodka bottles served on an airplane. He couldn’t resist, and now the little bottle was just jumping out of his pocket, begging to be drunk. He did just that and was quickly back for more.
Mood swings and lethargy defined Carter’s downward spiral. In March he flew to Atlanta to give a speech at Emory University. Stephen Bright, the director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, met Carter at the airport at 11:30 A.M. and saw that he already had bloodshot eyes. At a noon speaking engagement, Carter rambled and made inappropriate remarks. At the end of the speech, Bright grabbed Carter’s arm and whisked him away before any questions could be asked. The following night Carter gave another sloppy performance at another event. Bright had seen Carter drink excessively at an event in Washington a few years earlier; now his concern deepened.
Five months later, Bright came to Toronto to receive an award, and Carter sat with Bright’s parents. Also at the table was Charles Ogletree, a professor at Harvard Law School and a friend of Carter’s. Again, Rubin had too much to drink. Ogletree and Bright pulled Carter over to one side.
“You may not like what we have to say, but we’re going to try to save your life,” Ogletree told him. “You’re letting these demons destroy you.”
Carter was in denial. “I’m all right,” he said. “Everything’s okay, baby. I love you.”
But this time Carter’s friends would not turn their back. Both Bright and Ogletree knew that Carter was not simply another black man who had been unjustly convicted. His blend of courage and charisma could make him a role model for youngsters and a spokesman for social justice. Vodka was killing a national treasure, they felt, and they were going to do something about it.
The following day, a Sunday, Bright called Carter in the morning and said he wanted to come over to his house at one o’clock. Rubin knew why he was coming. There were few men whom Carter would listen to, but Stephen Bright, whose organization provides assistance to inmates on Death Row, was one of them. As Carter said, “You don’t play with Stephen.”
The two men sat on a marble bench in Carter’s garden. Amid the pansies and petunias and rock paths, Bright got to the point.
“There is something I got to talk to you about.”
“I know what it is,” Carter said.
“This is a real problem and it’s something you’ve got to deal with. It’s apparent to me and it’s apparent to a lot of people.”
“I’m going to take care of it myself,” Carter assured him.
Bright said no, that wasn’t good enough. He said the time had come for Carter to check himself into a detox center. “I’m going to take you myself,” he said.
“I don’t have the time right now,” Carter protested—invoking the same line he had often used to reject any suggestion that he participate in prison activities. But now Carter’s time was running out, and Bright knew it.
“I’m not leaving here until you come with me,” he said. “You can’t put this off.”
This time Carter assented. He packed his bag, and Bright drove him to the hospital that afternoon, where he stayed for several weeks. Carter hasn’t had a drink since. Going cold turkey wasn’t easy, but like other challenges in his life, once he marshaled all the force of his will, he succeeded. Nowadays, Carter’s lifestyle bears little resemblance to that of yesteryear. When he travels, the former night owl stays out of bars and prefers coffee in his room. At home, he no longer keeps any guns; he thinks they’re dangerous. He no longer follows boxing because he believes the sport is barbaric. Gardening is his greatest passion. Carter has sacrificed and suffered to reach this point, but, vindicated of all criminal allegations, liberated from the Canadians, free of booze, he has found his peace.
In prison he found a story in A New Model of the Universe that traced his own journey in life, and years later he would recount the story to friends:
The King of Arabistan had heard about the parting of the Red Sea and the miracle of the Exodus. He then learned that Moses himself was camping in his territory. So he summoned his best painter.
“I want you to go to Moses’ camp and paint the exact portrait of this man,” the king instructed.
The artist followed the instructions, went to Moses’ camp, and returned to the king with the portrait. The king then gave the picture to his sage, who was wise in the science of physiognomy, and told him to describe Moses’ personality based on the physical traits of his face. The sage did just that.
“King,” the sage said on concluding his analysis, “the man in this portrait is a cruel man, he is a conceited man, he is greedy and haughty and filled with a desire for power.”
“That can’t be,” the king said indignantly. “This is Moses, a man of God. Either my painter has made an error in his portrait, or my sage has made an error in his interpretation. Whoever is wrong will have his head lopped off.”
So the king went into the territory himself and found Moses. He showed him the portrait. “My artist says he painted your exact portrait, but my sage says you are a cruel man, a conceited man, greedy and haughty and filled with a desire for power. I know that either my artist is wrong or my sage is wrong, and whoever made the mistake will have his head lopped off.”
“Do not do that,” Moses told the king. “Both men are right. Because in my life I have been all of those things—cruel, conceited, greedy, haughty, and desirous of power. I have been all of those things, and resisting them has been my greatest task in life until now they are my second nature.”
The moral of the story was always understood. Rubin Carter was not a killer; but he too was all of those things, and resisting them has been his greatest task in life until now they are his second nature.
In January 1999, Carter gave a fund-raising speech for the Jewish Community Center in Vancouver. A boxing ring had been set up in the middle of a hotel ballroom. An auction raised money, and a fine dinner was served. Then it was Rubin’s turn. After a film clip highlighting the intertwining stories of Lesra and Rubin, Carter took the podium. In formal attire, he delivered his motivational stump speech with a few well-timed anecdotes about Sonny Liston and Muhammad Ali and the powerful message of going the distance, never giving up, pursuing your dream. “If I can stand before you tonight,” he said, “believe me, miracles can happen.” He spoke for forty-five minutes without a hitch and was given a standing ovation.
Everyone thought the evening was over, but then the emcee proclaimed: “I’m pleased to announce that also joining us tonight is Lesra Martin!”
Martin was now a prosecutor in Kamloop, British Columbia, about three hours from Vancouver. He was no longer anyone’s little boy. He was stocky, he wore an expensive suit, and he was a prosecutor. The audience gave Lesra a hero’s welcome as he walked to the podium and embraced an emotional Carter. The two men hugged as the audience, unaware of their sudden and very public reconciliation, continued to cheer. Like a father who lost his wayward son, Rubin could not let go of the man who had now returned to his arms. The Lesra who had hurt him was not the real Lesra, that was simply a … personality. The youngster who had touched him in New Jersey’s Death House had returned. Finally Lesra took the microphone as Rubin dabbed tears that fell from his one eye. Reading from prepared remarks, he directed his words toward Rubin.
“I want to take the opportunity to tell you how truly inspired you make me feel. You know, in your career as a prizefighter you simply refused to be knocked to the ground or knocked to the mat, and today you are still fighting. But today you fight for the liberty and freedoms that many of us have taken for granted. Your energy and your vitality are nothing short of a miracle. I applaud you for your tireless efforts on behalf of all those in our society who are most in need, who are most in danger of being stripped of life, liberty, and dignity. Those, as you know, are the wrongly accused and wrongly convicted …
“I will always be in your corner. You are beautiful, Rubin.” Lesra looked up. “I can feel your head swelling already. If I don’t stop, there won’t be enough room for both of us.” He paused, then spoke from the heart.
“Rubin, I miss you.”
Carter, standing to his side, responded earnestly, “I miss you too.”
Martin continued. “As you may have gathered, I don’t know much about sports. But I do know about going the distance, and I’d like to say what it means to me … In the video you watched, mention was made of the book Lazarus and the Hurricane. But it has a passage that has special relevance to me. It refers to a struggle that young Lesra had in learning to read and write, a journey filled with fear, anger, and frustration. But the worst part was a voice in the background that said over and over again that you can’t do it. And from time to time I still hear that voice. The difference today is, I am no longer afraid. Have you ever heard such a voice? I can tell you that coming to terms with it, understanding it, that is going the distance … We are who we are because of who we were. So I stand here tonight as a voice of all those young Lesras who can’t. I stand as an example of what access and opportunity can truly mean.
“Thank you, Rubin, for showing me the way.”
Carter swung by the microphone and, above the applause, said, “Those were the kindest words I’ve ever received from a prosecutor.”
The evening was over. Carter and Martin stepped down and stood with their backs against a wall. A small gathering surrounded them. The well-wishers, forming a semicircle, pushed forward and craned their necks to get a better view. Rubin and his friend were pinned in … the white strangers kept looking at them … there was noise and confusion and movement …
The scene was a faint echo of an infamous scene so many years earlier, when Rubin and another friend were pinned against a wall by a semicircle of white strangers, trying to catch a better look at suspected killers outside the Lafayette bar. But now the white strangers came not for blood but for autographs. They stood close and shook Carter’s hand, touched his sleeve, and thanked him for the inspiration of his life.