The Passaic County Jail is located in the downtown district of Paterson, on Marshall Street. As jails go, it was no different from the other million-and-one sewertraps like it that are breeding criminals in this country like big mother alligators in a swamp. And since the state was going to ask for the death penalty in our case, John and I were being held there without bail. I sat alone in my little tin cubicle twenty-four hours a day, waiting for my moment in court —which wasn’t to come for another seven months. The fare was a jelly sandwich in the morning, a bowl of vegetables in the afternoon, and two bologna sandwiches at night.
During the first few days of my confinement, I felt totally lost. My acclimation came hard and slow, as I was still laboring under the delusion that what was happening to me was merely an example of law-and-order at its usual creepy norm. I still believed that the paragons of justice around me would never actually bring me to trial on their trumped-up charges. How could they serve as anything more than political fodder for the elections coming up that November, good platform rhetoric for the candidates to lure back to sleep a gullible community that had been only temporarily aroused by the recent rash of bloody murders in its midst? But I had little idea of the traps that were then being laid for me, or of all the underlying political elements involved. I did know that locking up black people in the morning was like bacon and eggs on toast to some of these cops, and icing one at night was equivalent to their drinking sherry in front of a warm fireplace. Still, I just could not believe that anyone would go to such extremes to frame me.
But the jailhouse grapevine believed it. In fact, everybody else in the motherfucking joint knew it, except me. One morning about three days after my arrest, as I lay in my cell watching a squad of bedbugs stomp mudholes in a team of roaches and worrying about the welfare of my family, a trusty in charge of the sandwiches for that day slipped a sealed envelope into my cell and hurried away before I could stop him. The note related the how, what, and why of my being in jail, and also reported the method that the state intended to use to make sure I never got out again. The more I read, the more incredulous I became, because the letter unfolded a tale straight from a horror movie.
The message had been sent to me by Arthur Dexter Bradley, who was one of the supporting actors in the scheme and was being held in protective custody on the third floor of the jail. He had already testified before two grand juries, but he had not told the truth and everyone in the jail knew it, and knew he was partly responsible for my being there. Now fearing for his life, he wrote me that the conspiracy to charge me with murder had materialized in August, while I was in South America. He claimed not to be implicated in any way, although he was being held as a material witness to the crime. He also explained that all indications clearly pointed to the fact that nobody living in Paterson, as far as the cops were concerned, could possibly have committed this crime and still have remained in the city. There were too many paid informers, free-lance stool pigeons, dope fiends, and numbers runners out on the streets for the police not to have heard something concrete long before—especially since there was that enticing $12,500 reward being offered.
Then I remembered that in the four months that had passed since the murders, the only thing the police had managed to come up with was a false alarm turned in by a greedy Negro woman who was stranded in Florida, and who prompted the arrest of two brothers in the Paterson area. However, the cops fooled her dumb treacherous ass and locked her up too, as a material witness, they claimed. Thus they made her suffer the same fate as the two people she had caused to be arrested. Two months later, after living behind bars like the outcast scrag that she was, she couldn’t take it anymore and finally admitted that the reward money had been her motive all along and that the brothers were innocent. So the police ran her black ass out of town on a rail. The two brothers were released. But that meant the police still needed somebody to hang the real shit on.
Bradley’s letter said that suddenly, out of the clear blue sky, like a beam of golden fortune blazing down on Paterson’s finest, a woman who lived above the Lafayette Bar and Grill remembered a few events that she had failed to mention to the police on the night of the crime. Her name was Mrs. Patricia Graham Valentine. She had already revealed seeing two well-dressed Negro men fleeing the Lafayette right after the shooting. Now she remembered seeing still another person, who, she said, had been hurrying behind the bar toward the cash register while the first two men sped away in the white car.
The man she saw was Alfred Bello, an ex-convict and a known thief. When Mrs. Valentine informed the police of this refreshed recollection, Bello was arrested. Then being the half-assed punk that he was, he immediately ratted on his partner, Arthur Dexter Bradley, who then turned in his two partners, Kenny Kellogg and Hector Martinez, the latter having been in with Bradley on some unrelated crimes. It’s a good thing for the state there were no more partners around, or the already overcrowded Passaic County Jail would have been bursting at the seams.
Anyway, Bello, Bradley, and Martinez were wanted in various parts of New Jersey for armed robbery, and had acquired quite a reputation as the “motel bandits” who ran up and down the Jersey Shore terrorizing hotels and motels. Bello and Bradley admitted to being at the scene of the Lafayette crime to break into a factory around the corner, and to driving a car that seemed to fit the description of the one that the police had been looking for. By the time the caravan of patrol cars escorting John Artis and me arrived at the scene of the crime on June 17, Bello and Bradley had mixed in with the crowd. However, knowing that the woman who lived upstairs had seen them (they’d seen her), they stayed within earshot of her at all times, listening closely to what she told the police. When she didn’t mention them, Bello stepped forward and, in an effort to account for his presence at the bar (see news article on page 249), said the two killers had chased him down the street. He later gave the same description of the two killers that Mrs. Valentine had given, and again as she had, at first told the police that John Artis and I were not the men who had chased him. (Mrs. Valentine later admitted at my trial that she had seen no one chasing Bello at all.) Everyone else in the crowd with any knowledge of the crime had twice on that night also made statements to the same effect—that John and I were not the men.
But after having probed the Lafayette Bar and Grill massacre for four long fruitless months, the police had ended up with nothing more than the “motel bandits,” and an endless list of their stickups. Now Bradley didn’t say this in his letter, but he and Bello changed their original statements from the night of the crime, and in October, just before we were arrested, they positively identified John and me as the killers. In my opinion, the only thing that had saved them from being charged with the crime themselves was the fact that they were white, while William Marins, the lone survivor, still claimed the killers were black.
I know these two slobs agreed to perjure themselves in open court in return for immunity from further prosecution, and I believe I can prove it, because the prosecutor not only went along with the deal but also apparently promised to dismiss all outstanding charges against them, and to pay them the reward money as well, if a conviction resulted. Bello and Bradley evidently grabbed at the deal, but Hector Martinez, who, I have reason to believe, was offered the same arrangement, was having no part of it; later he came to testify in my behalf. Or tried to, anyway.
So the state’s case against me looked good, but the circle of duplicity was yet to be completed, as a grand jury in June and another entirely new grand jury in October refused to indict us, even after Bello and Bradley had been dragged before them to give their rehearsed testimonies. But the grand juries dismissed their stories as being ridiculous lies having no foundation.
That left the prosecutor with his nuts in the sand, so to speak, and with only one other alternative: if he didn’t want to risk getting sued for false arrest and imprisonment, he would have to take his case to the Kavanaugh Grand Jury, which had been previously empaneled for the sole purpose of investigating the death of a young housewife named Judy Kavanaugh.
When I finished reading of all this treachery in Bradley’s letter, I started thinking about finding myself a lawyer. The first name that popped into my mind was F. Lee Bailey’s. No question about it, F. Lee was a legal wizard, but he was white, and so were the county prosecutors, the victims, the state’s witnesses, and probably so would be the judge and jury. With John and I being the only two flies in the buttermilk, I figured I had best try and find me a black attorney, someone who would at least have some idea of the raw deal that was going down.
There was only one black man who I thought would be capable of bailing me out of this frame-up. He was Raymond A. Brown, one of the finest lawyers in the United States, black or white—if he really wants to go to work for you.
The same night that I received the letter from Bradley, which was my third day in jail, Mae Thelma came to see me and I told her to get in touch with Ray Brown. Two days later she returned with the message that he would take the case for $20,000—$10,000 for me, and $10,000 for John Artis, whose lawyer would be an associate of Raymond Brown’s law firm. (He couldn’t handle us both at once due to the conflict of interest.)
The first thing Brown did was to tell the prosecutor either to indict us or turn us aloose. Then, on November 30, a month and a half later, as I listened to the news on the radio being piped in over the jail loudspeakers, I knew sho ’nuff I was going to need that lawyer. The newscaster reported the results of the Kavanaugh Grand Jury investigation: they had just indicted six people for murder, he said, and then added that they had also handed down indictments against John and me, charging us with the triple slaying at the Lafayette Bar and Grill.
I didn’t actually see Raymond Brown until four months after my wife had retained him. It was February 1967. He didn’t appear very spectacular as he ambled into the consultation room wearing a dumpy brown suit. He was tall, and high yellow in complexion—what most black people refer to as a redbone. His hair was short and kinky, dust colored, and he walked with a slouch, like he was ready to sit down after every step. I learned later that his appearance was deceptive and that there was nothing slouchy about his mind. He was sharp, and I felt that I was in good hands.
One thing did bother me though: I had been writing him regularly (as well as everybody else in the world, it seemed), explaining in full detail everything that Arthur Dexter Bradley had been telling me, but this was the first time I had seen or heard from him—only one month before my trial was due to begin. Somehow, this just didn’t grab me right. It didn’t feel good at all.
Jury selection began on April 7, 1967, at the Passaic County Courthouse in Paterson. An ambitious lawyer named Samuel A. Lamer, who had been appointed to the Superior Court less than a month before John and I were arrested and had been shipped over from Essex County to fill in for a vacationing judge, assigned himself to our case. He appeared very irritable and in a hurry to get the mess over with.
The prosecuting attorney was Vincent E. Hull, Jr., the son of a New Jersey state senator, who was trying to earn his spurs, so to speak, at my expense. At his side sat Lieutenant DeSimone, the bulldog, whose face was one that only a mother could love (provided she wore blinders).
The only thing I knew about the law at that time was that it was a violation to feed razor blades to hogs in Arkansas, to dance with less than an inch of daylight showing between couples in Missouri, and attend church services on Sunday in South Carolina without toting a pistol. These silly outmoded laws aside, I soon learned of yet another outdated judicial practice: that in New Jersey it’s against the law to give a black man a fair trial—and especially one who’s been in trouble before.
Every day for three weeks we tried to select an impartial jury, but most of the prospective jurors were from the immediate area. Because of the way the local news media were reporting the case, it was extremely difficult to find people who had no knowledge of the crime.
The papers had said at first that John Artis was my sparring partner. When that turned out to be false, he suddenly became my cousin. Then I was a Black Muslim who was religiously bent on killing all blue-eyed devils. The papers said that a white man had shotgunned to death my uncle in a tavern earlier on the night of the seventeenth and that I had gone to the Lafayette Bar and Grill and killed everyone in it for revenge. (A motive was never even established at the trial.)
Everyone seemed to know more about the crime than I did. Moreover, of the four hundred potential jurors that came to the bar, only eight were black, and if the prosecutor didn’t get rid of them with his peremptory challenges, the judge dismissed them, I suppose because they didn’t soft-shoe into the courtroom looking like Uncle Remus and acting like Amos‘n’ Andy.
It was during the third week that Judge Larner showed clearly what frame of mind he was in. Thirteen jurors had been accepted by both sides—reluctantly, on our part—and only one more was needed to start the trial. (In New Jersey, fourteen people sit on the jury during the trial, and when both sides have rested, two alternates are chosen by lot and the other twelve go off to reach a verdict.) We had used up all of our peremptory challenges in an effort to prevent the prosecutor from empaneling an all-white, death-penalty-prone jury, and the judge had just dismissed a black woman because her formal education went only to grade six. Next under cross-examination on the witness stand sat a white man who, we felt, was definitely prejudiced against us. He had recently been mugged by a black and openly admitted that he didn’t particularly dig black people, period. So Ray Brown challenged him, and said something like, “I respectfully submit that this juror be excused from duty inasmuch as he has been the victim of a past crime committed on his person by a Negro. [We weren’t Black then, you see, we were Negroes, or niggers.] This fact has obviously influenced his judgment against the defense.”
But Judge Lamer decided the man was competent. He leaned back in the traditional style of those pious representatives of the blind lady of justice, who seems to have dollar signs for eyeballs, and looked out a nearby window. “We need one more juror and we’ve haggled enough, Mr. Brown,” I remember him saying. “Of course, you may continue to interrogate him, if you so choose. That’s up to you.”
Ray Brown then took a shot in the dark and asked the man to tell the court the extent of his formal education.
“I completed the fifth grade in school,” he answered. But his voice really said, “The nerve of you, nigger, to question me!”
“Your Honor,” Brown said, turning to the bench, “I respectfully request that this juror be excused at this time for cause, inasmuch as Your Honor has seen fit to disqualify a black juror for having a sixth-grade education. This man has had only fifth-grade schooling.”
Judge Larner would have none of it. The man was empaneled. The jury selection was completed, and the panel duly sworn.
Somewhere in the United States Constitution it says that a defendant must be tried by a jury of his peers; that an accused man shall not suffer death or imprisonment when convicted by those who are not his equals. Well, I had fourteen jurors here who were definitely not my equals: four white women, nine white men and one black man—a West Indian. My peers? Shit! Aside from being a different color than all but one of them, I probably had more education than any person sitting on the jury, and even I didn’t understand a damn thing that was going on. So how could they? My God! All I could do was sit there and glare at what was happening around me, unblinking and disgusted.
My trial began Tuesday, May 9, 1967. The courtroom quickly filled up with plainclothes detectives and court attendants wearing guns. The cops knew they were fucking me with a dry dick, and knew that I knew it, too. So not many spectators were allowed in. The cops were waiting for me to explode, knowing that the Hurricane wasn’t going for this shit passively, and they were right. I sat there while the surge and countersurge of emotions played across my mind, watching my white “peers” file into the jury box and sit down. I knew that trying to convince them of my innocence would be about as effective as a handful of snow on a forest fire. And I could hear the electric chair laughing at me again.6
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the judge addressed the jury from the bench. “I want to welcome you back to the courtroom. I am sure you had a tough time waiting, but everything comes to an end and we are finally going to start this trial. There are a few words I wish to convey to you before the trial starts.” The judge then advised the jurors of the legal trial procedures involved in the case, and cautioned them against drawing any conclusions or holding any discussions about the evidence until the trial was over. He told them that they would be sequestered and would occasionally be excused from the courtroom while he heard legal arguments on questions of law, which, he told them, were not for them to decide, and were not to influence their ultimate deliberations. Finally, he wanted Vincent Hull, the prosecutor, to open.
Hull rose from his table to his full six-foot height. He was young and slim and conservatively dressed, and his prematurely gray hair gave him the appearance of a man much older than he was. He approached the jury box with dignity, and gravely read into the record the indictment charging John Artis and me with the three murders.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” he said. “In this case the state will prove to you beyond a reasonable doubt that on Friday, June 17, 1966, there was located at the intersection of Lafayette and East 18th Street in Paterson, a tavern by the name of the Lafayette Grill.
“The state will further prove to you beyond a reasonable doubt that at about two thirty on that morning, Friday, June 17, 1966, there were four individuals in that tavern, James Oliver, the bartender; Fred Nauyaks, a patron; and Hazel Tanis, a patron; and William Marins, another patron.
“The state will prove to you beyond a reasonable doubt that about 2:30 a.m.... while the four people were in that bar, the defendants, Rubin Carter and John Artis, after circling this intersection in Mr. Carter’s car, a 1966 Dodge with New York license plates, circled the block and parked the car on the Lafayette Street side of the tavern several feet away from the curb. The state will prove to you that the defendants, Rubin Carter and John Artis, got out of that vehicle. Mr. Carter was armed with a shotgun and Mr. Artis with a revolver. They entered the tavern. Without uttering one word they came towards the patrons and the bartender, and that Mr. Carter premeditatedly, deliberately, and willfully fired a shotgun blast into the left side of the back of the bartender, James Oliver. : .. Mr. Oliver fell to the floor behind the bar near the cash register, dead.
“The state will further prove to you beyond a reasonable doubt that Mi. Artis, armed with a revolver, fired a bullet into the head and brain of Mr. Nauyaks, who was seated at the bar. And Mr. Artis, when he did this, did this premeditatedly, deliberately, and willfully. Mr. Nauyaks died seated on his bar stool. His head was slumped over the bar.
“The state will prove to you beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant John Artis fired a bullet through the head of William Marins, who was seated at the bar.... This bullet entered into the left side of Mr. Marins’ head. Mr. Marins lived, but he lost his sight of his left eye because of the shooting.
“The state will prove to you beyond a reasonable doubt that Mrs. Hazel Tanis, ,seated in the corner of the bottom of [the L-shaped bar] was fired upon ... by both defendants. Mr. Carter fired a shotgun blast at Mrs. Hazel Tanis, part of which struck her in the left arm, the bulk of which wound up in the wall to the rear of where Mrs: Tanis was seated.
“The state will prove to you beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant John Artis fired five shots at Mrs. Tanis, one of which missed the mark and went through the window to the rear of where Mrs. Tanis was seated. Four of these shots met their mark....Mrs. Tanis fell to the floor in front of the air conditioner of the tavern. She was removed to the Paterson General Hospital: >.
“She lived until July 14, 1966. At-that time she expired
“The state will further prove to you that after these defendants, premeditatedly, and deliberately, and willfully fired these shots into these four people, they left the tavern, and appeared on Lafayette Street laughing. And they got into Mr. Carter’s car and ... fled from the scene in the car down Lafayette Street away from East 18th, Street.... The police were summoned, and the state will prove to you beyond a reasonable doubt that at 2:40 a.m. on this same morning, June 17, 1966, two Paterson police officers with certain information stopped Mr. Carter’s car at the intersection of 14th Avenue and East 28th Street in Paterson. At this time there was in that vehicle Mr. Artis driving the car. Mr. Carter was in the back seat. There was an individual by the name of John Royster in the front passenger seat. Sergeant Capter and Officer DeChellis, two members of the Paterson Police Department, checked the license and registration and let the car go. They went to the scene and there they had a discussion [with Alfred Bello], and got more information, and left the Lafayette Grill and went out, and at 2:55 a.m. on June 17, 1966, this Friday morning, some fifteen minutes after they stopped Mr. Carter’s car, they again stopped the car at Broadway and East 18th Street. In the car at that time were the defendants, John Artis and Rubin Carter.
“Sergeant Capter and Officer DeChellis got assistance from other police officers, and the car was escorted to the scene of the Lafayette Grill. At that point Mr. Carter and Mr. Artis were taken into custody, placed in a police van and taken to the Paterson Police Headquarters.” (At this point the prosecutor conveniently forgot to tell the jury that we were taken not to police headquarters immediately, but to the hospital, where William Marins told the cops that we weren’t the ones who had shot him.)
“Mr. Carter’s car,” the prosecutor continued, “the 1966 Dodge with the New York license plates, was impounded by the Paterson police and taken into the police garage, and at 3:45 a.m. on Friday morning, June 17, 1966, Detective Emil DeRobbio of the Paterson Police Department searched Mr. Carter’s car.”
Both defense lawyers jumped to their feet. Because the cops had never been able to find the murder weapons, a 12-gauge shotgun and a .32-caliber pistol, the state was going to claim to have found two live shells in my car on the morning of the crime, one shell belonging to each weapon.
“Your Honor, at this time I must object,” Brown called. “It is quite obvious from pretrial motions that this may or may not be admissible. There is only one issue that has been settled with reference to it, and I urge Your Honor to restrict mention of it. It cannot be stricken once it is advanced in this fashion, and either admitted or denied as Your Honor rules.” ,
Judge Lamer was sitting in a swivel chair behind a tall impressive desk. Upon it--rested a black Bible with its red-edged pages facing out toward the audience. The American flag stood right beside it, its white robe hanging down. as a strangling tribute to all black people. He had kept his back to the courtroom when the prosecutor began his opening remarks, but now he swung back around to face us
“As you know, I assume you wish to join in the application?” the judge jauntily asked John’s lawyer, Arnold Stein. A white man of medium height, with sandy hair and glasses, he reminded me vaguely of television’s “Mr. Peepers,” and appeared :as if he would be much more comfortable inside a classroom than a court of law.
“Yes, sir,” Mr. Stein said. “That is why I got on my feet immediately.”
A thick-coated silence had now settled over the gloomy, high-ceilinged courtroom. Everybody was waiting to hear how the judge would rule oil this important legal question—to see how the remainder of the trial would be conducted. Samuel Lamer squinted his eyes up into a faraway, thoughtful expression. Then he pinched his lips together with forefinger and thump.
“This issue was determined on pretrial application as far,as I know,” the judge finally said, “and counsel can refer to that which he intends to prove. If he doesn’t prove it, :it is up ,to the jury to disregard it. I will not limit him [the prosecutor] in that connec- tion.” So the tenor was set. The defense was in for big, big trouble.
“Thank_ you, Your Honor,” Hull said with an air of relief. He knew now that the door of impropriety was left open to him, and he took up his story from where he had left off.
“The state will further prove to you beyond a reasonable doubt that at 3:45 a.m., Friday morning,. June 17, 1966, Detective Emil DeRobbio...searched Mr. Carter’s car.... In the trunk ... amid certain boxing equipment, Detective DeRobbio found a Western live 12-gauge shotgun shell. A further search of the car by Detective DeRobbio revealed . on the floor of the front seat underneath the right passenger seat a live .32 S&W long bullet.
“The state, will prove to you beyond a reasonable doubt that the shotgun shells used by Mr. Carter when he blasted Mr. Oliver [came from] a 12-gauge shotgun shell. The state will prove. to you beyond a reasonable doubt that the bullet removed from the brain of Mr. Nauyaks was a .32 S&W long bullet. The state will prove ... that the two bullets removed from Mrs. Tanis on July 14, 1966, after she died, during the autopsy ... were .32 S&W long bullets....”
Hull was really sweating now.
“The state will prove to you,” he said, wiping his face with his handkerchief, “that all of these bullets recovered by the police in the tavern, from the bodies of the victims, and the one found in the house across the street were all fired from the same gun....
“The state will further prove to you in this case that on this morning, June 17, 1966, there were money, bills, taken from the cash register of the Lafayette Grill. This money was not taken from this cash register by either defendant, Rubin Carter or John Artis.
“The state will prove to you beyond a reasonable doubt that this money was taken from the cash register by one Alfred Bello, who entered the tavern after the shooting.
“The state will further prove to you beyond a reasonable doubt that in this area before and at the time of the shooting were Alfred Bello and Arthur Dexter Bradley. The two of them were up to no good on this morning. They were down on East 16th Street attempting to break into a factory by the name of Ace Sheet Metal Company, on East 16th Street. The state will prove to you that they were up to no good. These two individuals are the individuals that I spoke to you about on the voir dire. They are individuals who have criminal records....”
The prosecutor then finished and thanked the jury. In the silence that followed, the judge turned to the defense table.
“Mr. Brown,” he said simply.
Raymond Brown was dressed in a charcoal-gray suit that morning, and it was just as badly wrinkled as his brown one had been when I first saw him back in February. He had Ben Franklin-type spectacles precariously perched on the tip of his nose. He rose from the table and slouched over to the jury box, a legal document held disdainfully in his hand.
“... I am certain that as you sat and listened to Mr. Hull, your mind must have analyzed the position that the state has taken, and realized that there are certain grave errors of reason ... in this entire indictment,” he said. “It is always interesting to hear the state as it comes in its full majesty, after a long period of preparation, investigation, and culmination ... get, up and in. a very few minutes tell you briefly what they will prove beyond a reasonable doubt, and precisely what the results should be, and precisely what is going to happen, without, of course, having, the time or perhaps the will to tell you of the many areas where you will have the very real questions. which they will be unable to answer.
“In this case as it develops, you are going to find so many areas of human doubt. By that I mean areas which will not require proof, either side, because Mr. Hull won’t be able to fill them, and I shall not be able to present proof to fill them. At the end of this case there will be so many unanswered questions in your mind that I know that reasonable doubt on top of reasonable doubt will exist.”
Then he gave them our side of the story, the details of which I have already related: that we, didn’t know what happened in the bar; that I had been riding in a rented car with John Artis and Bucks Royster; how the police had stopped us just after chasing another car out of town and then let us go; how they stopped us again, when there were only two of us in the car, and brought us to the scene of the crime in front of but not into the bar; and then how they took us to the hospital. Brown reminded them that we had not been arrested or charged with anything until four months later, and told them that since I had not been permitted to observe the search of my car on the day of the crime, the state could claim to have found a cannon in my trunk and there was absolutely nothing that I could do about it. He said that I had consistently denied knowing anything about the shooting or the people who were shot, and further pointed out that no guns had ever been found. Also, he asked, why wasn’t John “Bucks” Royster sitting in the courtroom today as a defendant, too, inasmuch as he was identified by the prosecutor as being in the car when the police first stopped us, shortly after the crime occurred? To wind it up, Brown called into question the credibility of Bello and Bradley as witnesses, and informed the jury of our own complete cooperation with the police. He concluded:
“The proof in this case will be the answer to the complete vindication of this man. I don’t think it can be forgotten in this case that as an outstanding athlete and in a sense a person [in] whom the public would have a greater interest than ordinarily, because that is our culture, sports figures are sometimes—well, they are just sometimes people in whom the general public is so interested that they have a strange position when something begins to embroil them, in a sense.
“This is a disadvantage to any person. He suffers when he is a little out of the ordinary, whether he is an athlete or a workman of outstanding skill. It is all the same. You just become kind of a center of attention that you wouldn’t normally have directed at you....
“I think you will find that without question the state will not be able to prove a case against Rubin Carter, not because he is clever and not because he had a grand design, and not because he committed a perfect crime, but because Rubin Carter was singled out on that morning of June 17 for two reasons. One reason was because he was a Negro. Why do I say that? I say that because you will find that some of the broad identification, and when I say broad identification, ‘All I could see was the back of his neck. I knew he was colored.’ So, any Negro on the street that night would be a suspect. That the second reason [was] he drove a white 1966 Dodge. The only reason in the world why he was brought to the scene at Lafayette and 18th Street, the only reason known to the police or to the defense, and you will find no deviation from this, was the car and the color. Had he been white, every white man would have been a suspect. But, someone said the back of the neck, colored. Every Negro became a suspect. Someone said a white Dodge of a certain kind with certain kinds of lights in the back. Every Dodge to that kind became a suspect....
“Maybe there is an answer. I don’t know. Why? Why, when this car was searched with Rubin Carter in the police station, feet away on the other side of the wall, was he not taken back and that trunk lifted and asked, ‘Bud, is this your stuff? Here. Look what I found?’ No. That isn’t what happened.
“Well, why, when the shotgun shell that Mr. Hull talks about is found and the .32-caliber he makes much of, why weren’t they arrested? Because oddly enough you will find in this case that had they been charged instead of played with like human beings on a string, they would have certain rights, certain protections, and certain privileges which immediately rests when an American citizen is put into custody.7 But no. This did not happen in this case....
“Some of you talked about what you read in the newspapers. That I tell you is part of the calculated development of an atmo-sphere as dangerous as poison to gas. The very fact that some of you had to wait three weeks before a jury could be selected in this community was because of the publicity, and some of you described it very aptly at the time. Every man has a right to demand to be accused rather than played with by the state, rather than to have his nerves shredded and his guts torn out without a direct charge.”
“Mr. Brown!” the judge exploded, “I don’t want to interrupt you, but I think it is time that you limited yourself to the facts to be shown, and let’s get beyond the speeches on philosophy.”
“That is not philosophy, Your Honor,” Brown responded. His face was drawn, and quietly angry. “This is a fact.”
“I am sorry,” the judge snapped again. “I think you are going beyond it.”
“If you consider it to be,” Brown said agreeably, cooling down somewhat, “I will desist immediately. I will only say this. These are facts as real as any others and that is all I will say about it.” And he slouched back to the table and changed his glasses.
“... This has been a long opening,” he said, leveling his words directly at the West Indian on the jury, “because it is not a simple case. I think you are going to find it one of the most engrossing that you have ever read about.... But, the one thing I beg of you ... please view as facts the effect on people of time and attitude, because none of us lives as a mechanical thing.
“Some of you have had that special training, analytic discipline, but please view Rubin Carter as a person. Please view the witnesses as persons, and please deal with this in the name of American justice as that which effects persons.
“Thank you,” he said, and dropped like a tired old man.
The judge then invited Arnold Stein to take the floor. He reviewed the events already outlined in Brown’s opening statement and also questioned the credibility of the state’s two star witnesses, Bello and Bradley.
“I can only reiterate, restate, and emphasize to you, ladies and gentlemen, one fact,” he said. “John Artis was not in that tavern. He didn’t do this act. He does not belong in this courtroom today as a criminal defendant. You people are going to determine that when this whole case is over, and you have an opportunity to listen and carefully weigh all of the evidence in this case. You have to consider another factor in this particular case. Mr. Hull says Artis didn’t rob the place. He wasn’t there for a robbery. His witness was in there for a robbery. John Artis didn’t know any of the people in this tavern who are the unfortunate victims of what we all have to admit was a senseless and tragic slaying.
“So, you should explore this whole case when you listen to it in the context of what conceivable reason this young man ... would have to be in that tavern shooting down four innocent people with whom he had had no contact at all.” And that ended the first morning session of our trial.
In the afternoon the action proceeded with amazing swiftness. The first four witnesses called were police officers and engineers, bringing in charts and designs, laying out the groundwork with maps which designated the inside proper of the Lafayette Bar, and photographs of the victims as they were situated inside. No fingerprints had ever been taken. (I wonder why?) No paraffin tests had been given to anybody to determine whether or not they had fired a weapon that day. Our names were never mentioned in the development of this evidence.
The next day of the trial, the first witness to be called to the stand was William Marins himself, the lone survivor of the tragedy. He was a man in his middle forties, stocky, round-faced, completely bald, and definitely hostile to our case. He told the court that on the morning of the crime he was sitting inside the tavern with Jim Oliver, the bartender, Fred Nauyaks, and Hazel Tanis, talking, when two colored men came in between two-thirty and three o’clock and shot everybody. One of them, he said, had a shotgun, and a pencil-thin mustache. The other, standing directly behind him, had a pistol. He said that they were both the same height. Then, he said, he felt a sharp pain in the left side of his head, noticed smoke curling out of the barrel of the shotgun, and passed out on the bar. He regained consciousness before the police arrived, and remembered them taking him to St. Joseph’s Hospital. He didn’t say that John Artis and I were the guilty parties, but he wouldn’t say in court that we weren’t, either.
Throughout his examination, Marins kept stressing that he was in a complete state of shock on the morning following the shooting and couldn’t possibly have known what he was saying when he was being questioned at the hospital by the police. He was very adamant on that point. When Raymond Brown began his cross-examination, it was clear that he had his work cut out for him.
“Do you feel up to testifying some more, Mr. Marins?” he asked, “or would you like a glass of water?”
“No,” Marins snapped. He was completely unfriendly.
“You gave a statement to the police about what happened in this place, did you not?”
“Yes,” Marins said, again very sharply. “But I was in a state—” Of shock, he started to say, before Brown broke in on him.
“I didn’t ask you, sir—” Ray Brown began to snap back at him.
At this point Judge Larner interrupted the proceedings. The courtroom was quiet as a rat pissing on cotton. “Just answer the particular question, Mr. Marins,” the judge advised him. But Athe man had gotten Ray Brown’s dander up, and Brown was now preparing to have at him full tilt. He slouched back to the table and changed glasses again, putting on his Ben Franklins, and then he stood up erect.
“You also testified before the grand jury, is that correct?”
“True,” Marins said.
“If Your Honor please,” Brown said in a clear crisp voice that rang throughout the courtroom “On the basis [of this testimony], I ask the Court for the statements, all of them, and for the grand jury testimony of this witness.”
“Yes;” the judge answered, very sadly it seemed.
As with the other state witnesses to come, there were six written statements taken from Marins all told, all testifying to the same facts, and all of which proved to be of a different nature than what he was trying to testify to in court. It appeared that all the witnesses who testified were now changing the substance of their original statements of June 17, 1966, to conform with the prosecutor’s theories.
“Now, Mr. Marins,” Ray Brown said, “you talked with the police, on several occasions, didn’t you, about this case? As a matter of fact, while you were in the hospital the police talked to you, is that right?” , ,
‘ “True.”
“When you were in the hospital the police came and asked you about the people who you say came in the tavern; that is correct, isn’t it?”
“True,” Marins said again.
“And at that time,” Brown went on, “you were able to talk to them? The doctor okayed it and allowed the police to talk to you, isn’t that right?”
“True.”
. “And several of the officers came in, not just on the morning of the seventeenth or eighteenth, but later on. In fact, you gave one statement to Lieutenant DeSimone as late as October 20, 1966. Do you remember that?”
“True.”
“Now, you repeatedly told these officers, did you not, that they were thin, tall, light-skinned Negroes, didn’t you?”
“I said they were colored!” Marins snapped.
Brown just shook his head, shuffled back to the defense table to pick up a batch of statements, and shuffled back up to the witness stand again.
“Now,” he said, facing the jury, especially the West Indian, “I show you, Mr. Marins, D-2, which purports to be a copy of statements given to Detective Callahan in the emergency room at St. Joseph’s Hospital.... This was not signed by you at all.”
“No, sir.”
“But Detective Callahan had set down what purports to be a conversation with you in the emergency room at St. Joseph’s Hospital and he states: ‘He told me the same story as Hazel Tanis, stating both men were Negroes and the one with the shotgun about six feet, slim build, light complexion, and pencil-line mustache.’ Is that correct?”
“No!” Marins shouted. “I told him the man had a dark mustache, or, well, it was a mustache. I didn’t look at him that long,” he said. But Ray Brown didn’t let that outburst disturb him.
“I show you what purports to be a typewritten report of detectives, said report indicating that on the morning of the seventeenth, you told the police officers at the hospital: ‘He describes the two male Negroes as follows: one, five feet ten inches, thin build, light-skinned, wearing a hat. The man armed with rifle.’ Does that represent correctly what you told the police officers?”
Marins, now glaring at my black attorney, wouldn’t even answer the question. He turned away from Brown and haughtily asked the judge, “Do I have to say this or do I have to—because at that present time I was in a state of shock.”
“Mr. Marins, that will all be brought out,” Judge Lamer told him. “The question is, is that what you said to the police officers or not, if you know,” he said, giving him his clue to fake amnesia.
“I don’t remember,” replied the witness, now speaking to Brown.
“You don’t remember that,” Brown said. “Do you remember that Dr. Dwyer, the attending surgeon, was present and allowed the officer to question you? Do you remember that
“A lot of people were there.”
“Do you recall telling the police officer as follows: ‘He turned around and saw two colored men in the tavern. One of the men held a rifle The second was behind the first man and he was unable to see what this. man held, if anything. Without saying anything he heard at least four shots. He doesn’t remember anything else except there was a woman on the floor. That she was screaming and he describes the two fellows as—.’ I just read that. That is what you told that officer?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Because you were in shock, is that right?”
“True,” the witness replied, very smugly.
He was really hostile now, sullen, short-tempered and vicious. It was a frightening thing to watch. He knew the killers were supposed to have been black, and he seemed willing to send us to the electric chair just because John and I happened to be black, not because he thought we were guilty of the crime. He knew that the jury would be more sympathetic to him and his lost eye, and to those three dead people, than to anything that we had to say. And Brown knew it, too. He didn’t want to push this man around, but he had to. Otherwise the witness just might change up completely, and claim that John and I were definitely the ones who shot those people. So Brown turned to the judge.
“Your Honor, please,” he said gravely, “at this time I ask that Your Honor unseal depositions given by this man in a civil suit brought by him in January of 1967.”
The prosecuting attorney, Lieutenant DeSimone, and the entire courtroom leaned forward in their seats at this new development. A deposition? I thought. What kind of deposition? What is he talking about? ,
“Mr. Marins, do you know that you are the plaintiff in an action against Elizabeth Paraglia [owner of the Lafayette] trading at the Lafayette Bar and Grill?” Brown asked, opening up a sealed envelope, and taking out its contents.
“True.”
“Do you recall having testified in depositions taken before a notary public ... on December 16, 1966?”
“True.”
“Do you recall signing these depositions and stating under oath they were true?”
“True.”
Raymond Brown then took off his glasses and wiped his eyes. Then he began to shatter the state’s grand scheme with indisputable facts. “Now, Mr. Marins,” he began. “I call your attention to page 13 of the depositions, which you gave on December 16, 1966; is that correct?”
“Yes,” Marins answered cautiously, looking very uncomfortable now.
“You were out of the hospital?”
“True.”
“You had been discharged?”
“True.”
“Your health then permitted you to go to a lawyer’s office and give depositions, is that correct?”
“True.”
“Your lawyer was present?”
“True.”
Brown then reared back and socked it to him. “... Is it not a fact, sir, that you told Officer Callahan on June 17, ‘He told the same story as Hazel Tanis stating both men were Negroes. The one with the shotgun being about six feet, slim build, light complexion, and pencil-line mustache.’ Did you not here state in December, 1966, they were light colored and one in particular, the first one
... ‘with a shotgun had a mustache that I just happened to see and the man in back of him was about the same height.’ Is that correct? That is true, isn’t it, Mr. Marins?”
“Yes,” he replied dejectedly, giving up the ghost. There was nothing else he could do.
I sat there in amazement and watched the courtroom strategy bear fruit, and in my mind, I sort of chalked that round up as one for our side. Because if there was anyone in the world who should have known what the people who committed this crime looked like, it would have to be William Marins—and Hazel Tanis before she died—and I knew damn well that the cops had shown her our pictures a thousand times before then. But, still, as the record clearly showed, she and. Marins clung to their original identifications given on the night of the crime. Which definitely excluded John Artis and me.
The next witness for the state was Mrs. Patricia Graham Valentine, the woman who lived over the tavern. She was a thin, mousy brunette, nervous, and wanting to be helpful—to the state. On di- rect examination she testified that at about two thirty on the, night of the crime, she was asleep on her living room couch in front of the television. She was awakened. suddenly by a loud noise. She got up from the couch and went over to the front window, where she heard two more noises, which she said sounded like the tavern doors slamming. She said she thought it was Jim Oliver closing up. But she noticed the neon bar sign was still lit. Then she heard an excited woman’s voice from downstairs saying, “Oh, no!” So Mrs. Valentine ran over to her bedroom window. From there she saw two colored men running to a white car parked in the street. (She said later that she knew they were colored because she saw the back of one of their necks.) Both of them were wearing sport jackets. The one who got into the passenger side of the car wore a hat. The taillights were shaped “like triangles” or butterflies, wider at the outside. The license plate, she said, was dark blue with yellow and gold lettering. When the car pulled away, she threw her raincoat over her pajamas and went downstairs. When she walked into the side door of the bar there was a fellow standing by the front door and he told her to stay by the door. This fellow was Alfred Bello.
All the people who were shot were friends of Mrs. Valentine’s. She said she saw Marins holding onto a pole, though he had testified he had not been. Then she saw Hazel Tanis lying out on the floor, and Fred Nauyaks sitting on a bar stool. She screamed and ran back upstairs and called the police. As she was, going out the side door, she saw Bello run back behind the bar. After she had gone upstairs and phoned, she came back downstairs and saw Bello running back up Lafayette Street toward the tavern. Then the police arrived.
“Was this on the morning of June 17,” the prosecutor asked, “that you gave this statement to the police?”
“Yes,” she answered, nervously fidgeting around in her chair.
“I have no further questions of this witness,” Hull said, and sat down, relinquishing the floor to the defense.
From the outset of Ray Brown’s cross-examination, there were several flare-ups and interruptions from the judge. Lamer seemed unmindful of the fact that the state was seeking the death penalty, and the only thing this witness was really used for was to introduce Alfred Bello into the scheme of things, and to pin down the time of the crime.
“The fact is that before you heard the doors slam you were sound asleep?” Brown asked, looking steadily at Mrs. Valentine.
“Yes.”
“You had been watching TV?”
“Yes.”
“And fell asleep?”
“Yes,” she said again.
“Do you know what time it was when you heard the slamming of the doors?” Brown asked. “Or what you took to be the slamming of doors?”
“About two thirty,” Mrs. Valentine stated positively.
“How do you gauge that time?”
“Because when I woke up there was no more picture on my television,” the woman answered, and then realized that wasn’t any gauge at all.
“And that is the only reason you say that it was two thirty? Seriously,” Brown asked, “do you say that the reason you say it is two thirty was because there was no picture?”
“The picture that I had been watching was off and there was nothing left on.”
“So the fact is that all you know is that you had a blank television screen? You didn’t check the time at all?”
“No.” Irritably.
“Could it have been two, two forty-five as far as you know?”
“Yes.” Very irritably.
Then Brown wheeled away from the witness stand and heavily strode back to the defense table, his eyes narrowed in thought. He started shuffling through a bunch of pictures of my car on the table. When he found what he was looking for, he returned to Mrs. Valentine, slouching again, like a cunning old rooster about to pounce on a hen. In his hands were two photographs showing the outside of the building in which she lived, and the street directly in front where she allegedly had seen the two killers escape in their getaway car. He wanted to know how far she could see down the street from her window. She had testified that she couldn’t see as far as the next building because of a tree that obscured her vision. But the photographs contradicted that testimony.
“Your Honor”—Brown turned to the bench with obvious annoyance—“ may I show these pictures to the jury and let them judge?” he asked.
“What!” the judge exploded, glaring down at the attorney, leaning forward over his desk. His eyes were snapping.
“And let them judge?” Brown repeated, simply. It was clear to everybody that you could see almost halfway down the block.
“Please leave the remarks off, Mr. Brown,” the judge snapped. “Just act as an attorney without the remarks!”
“Are you suggesting that I am not acting as an attorney?” Brown snapped right back at him. I didn’t know if I was really on trial, or if this was just a private war between the two of them. But it seemed like every time the defense would, attempt to send an important point home to the jury, the judge would interfere: and effectively neutralize the evidence with unwarranted aggression designed to divert the jury’s attention, and to let them know exactly where he stood—for the state.
“I am suggesting that your remarks, ‘let them judge,’ be stricken,” Judge Larner told Brown.
“I object to Your Honor’s remarks and ask for a mistrial.”
“Your application is’ denied,” the judge stated flatly. “You are not to comment in handing out photographs to the jury.”
“Do they not judge, Your Honor?” asked Mr. Brown.
“Don’t argue with me!” Judge Lamer shouted down. “I have ruled on it.”
“I have heard you, sir!” Brown responded. “And I shall not argue with you.”
Both defending attorneys had- been forced to work around this kind of autocratic behavior all during the pretrial motions and the discovery of evidence, and again when they submitted legal documents to the court. There was a definite hands-off attitude surrounding the entire case. Had it not been for the reliable grapevine in the county jail, I knew, we would have come into this courtroom totally blind—and the state would have led us right into the electric chair—still blinded and dumbfounded, looking for justice. The whole family of the trusty who had been the letter-carrier between Arthur Dexter Bradley and myself were on friendly terms with this Patricia Graham Valentine, and he had given me another good tip. So Brown eventually went to work in that vein.
“Do you know a family named Van Blocken,” he asked the witness, “one of whom is Joseph Van Blocken?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Valentine answered.
“Did you have a conversation with them after this case had occurred?” he asked.
Mrs. Valentine began to get the drift of it. “That is my husband’s ex-wife’s family,” she said, evading the question—but not for long.
“My question is,” Brown repeated, “did you have a conversation with them about this case?”
“We talked,” Mrs. Valentine snapped. Clearly, she didn’t like where this interrogation was heading.
“... Did you tell the Van Blocken family, and Joseph Van Blocken, that you saw these defendants and could not identify them as the men at the scene?”
“I told them I couldn’t identify them,” she said.
“You told them that,” Mr. Brown said, slouching past the jury box and over to the defense table. “And that’s exactly what you said, is that right?”
“Yes,” the witness admitted, defeated.
“Then I have no further questions, Your Honor,” Brown said. As he sat down, I chalked up that round for us, too. To my mind, though, the question should have been: “Did you tell the Van Blocken family that you were positive that Carter and Artis were not the two men whom you saw running to the white car at the scene of the crime?” Because that’s what Joseph Van Blocken had told me she had said to his family after returning home from making her statement to the police. So I couldn’t understand why Brown didn’t ask her exactly that.
Then Ronald Francis Ruggierio, a white prize fighter, came to the stand, and proved to be just another stage-setter for Alfred Bello’s grand entrance. The state needed to prove Bello had been at the scene of the crime robbing the dead bodies and breaking into the factory around the corner in order to validate his testimony. I was anxious to hear his story myself, because if he was capable of sitting up there on that witness stand and, looking straight at me, still be able to lie, then I was going to be capable of tearing that courtroom down with his motherfucking ass! But Ruggiero’s testimony did bring to light one very important fact that had not been touched on before: he said that, in his estimation, it was a Chevy that had sped away from the scene of the crime and not my Dodge. He knew my car when he saw it, because he had been a passenger in it before.
When the state finally called Alfred Bello to the stand, a hush came over the courtroom, and everybody leaned forward—the spectators, and the fourteen members of the jury. Ray Brown leaned against me, warning me to take it easy and not give the jury any reason to convict me because of my actions. He said he would take care of Bello up on the witness stand. The cops crept up closer to me, leaning, crouching. Then the doors swung open and in sauntered Mr. Alfred Bello, elaborately nonchalant, wearing high-heeled shoes (though they weren’t in style at that time). He was twenty-three, Italian, short and fat—too much pasta vazula—with black hair pasted down on his head with greasy kid stuff. He strutted past the jurors with an air of extreme arrogance, knowing that he was the star of this well-rehearsed show.
“Mr. Bello,” the prosecutor began, parading up and down in front of the jury, “would you tell this court where you live, sir?”
“138 Redwood Avenue,” was his instant reply. “Paterson, New Jersey.”
“How long have you lived there?” the prosecutor asked.
“For two years, sir,” answered Bello.
The preliminaries over now, the prosecutor continued with the following: “On or about June 15, 1962, were you convicted of robbery in the Passaic County Court and sentenced to an indeterminate term at Annandale?”
“Yes, sir,” answered Bello very loudly.
“On or about June 15, 1962, were you convicted of assault with intent to rob in Passaic County Court and given an indeterminate sentence at Annandale, to run concurrent with the first conviction that I mentioned?”
“Yes, sir.”
“On or about June 15, 1962, were you convicted of breaking and entering with intent to steal, and larceny, and sentenced to Annandale for an indeterminate term to run concurrent with the first charge I mentioned?”
“Yes, sir.”
“On or about January 22, 1963, were you convicted of larceny in the Bergen County Court and sentenced to Annandale ... ?”
“Yes, sir.”
“On or about October 9, 1964, were you convicted of larceny ... in the Passaic County Court and sentenced to an indeterminate term at Bordentown?”
“Yes, sir,” Bello answered again. He seemed to be enjoying himself!
“With reference to that last charge,” Hull asked, “were you paroled in February of 1966?”
“Yes,” was the same old tired answer.
Then Bello went on to testify that he was in the area of the Lafayette Bar and Grill with Arthur Dexter Bradley and Kenny Kellogg to pull a breaking and entering job on the Ace Sheet Metal Company. They were driving a Chevy Malibu convertible, blue, with a white top. He was playing “chickie” while Bradley was breaking into the factory. Kellogg went down the street in the direction of the Lafayette Bar and Grill, where Bello had told him to wait. (It came out later that Bello had actually told Kellogg to wait in the car.) While Bello was waiting for Bradley, he said he saw a white car driving around the block. It had two colored people in it. He thought he saw something sticking up between one of their legs that looked like a rifle barrel. The car was a white Dodge. He was certain of that. He said he thought at first they were black detectives cruising the area.
Then Bello had decided he wanted a cigarette. But he had only one left in his pack. So he walked down to the Lafayette Bar and Grill to buy another pack. As he started down the street, he said, he heard two shots coming from the tavern. He kept walking. Then he heard two more shots. But he still kept on walking towards the bar. Then, he said, he saw two colored fellows walking around the corner, talking loud and laughing. One had a shotgun, and the other had a pistol in his hand. He was fourteen feet away from them at this time—very close. The two men were Carter and Artis, he said. They saw him at the same time as he saw them. So he turned around and ran. They chased him for a block, he said. But he was too fast and got away. They drove off in a white car.
Bello then returned to the bar, ostensibly to call the police. That was when Mrs. Valentine came in. She screamed, he said, and ran back out.
Bello walked around behind the bar and found a dead man back there. Money was lying around on the floor. He went to the open cash register for a dime to call the police (he said he had no change), and instead took all the money in the register. He left the bar and met up with Bradley, gave him the money, and told him that he had to go back because a woman had seen him inside. When he returned to the bar, the police were there. Not very long after that, the cops brought Artis and me up in my Dodge. (Bello identified us in court, but he didn’t at the scene of the crime.) Then the cops took him down to the police station to make a statement. And he still didn’t identify us. In October he gave another statement to Lieutenant DeSimone, which contradicted his first statement. The prosecutor asked him if he had ever been indicted or charged for the breaking and entering, or for the robbery of the bar.
“I object to that, Your Honor!” Brown leaped to his feet. “This is a deliberate attempt to preclude the defense from asking questions which relate to this man’s credibility and not within the province of the state, if Your Honor please,” he said.
“The basis for your objection is inappropriate,” Judge Larner announced. “It doesn’t preclude you at all from anything. However, I sustain the objection on other grounds.”
“Of course,” Brown added, “it goes to the impeachment of the witness.”
“I have ruled already,” Larner told him. “You can use whatever you see fit for purposes of impeachment if it is proper at that time.” Irritation seemed to be this man’s trademark.
The prosecutor then had Bello confirm that he was wearing high-heeled shoes on the night of the crime, and ended his examination. He returned to his seat with a jaunty bounce.
When Ray Brown began his cross-examination of that dirty stinking lying sonofabitch, he had to do it from behind my chair to keep me there, because I was a mad motherfucker. My God! How could anyone who knew me believe this stupid shit? Had I been the killer and walked outside that bar to find Alfred Bello, Jesus Christ, or anyone else there, I would have run him down like the foul scab that he was and beaten him to a pulp. He not only had the audacity to say that we were there, which was the biggest lie he could have ever told, but that we had also chased him down the street and couldn’t catch him because he was too fast. Goddamn the greasy fat bastard! Running was my long suit, and John Artis had several scholarships for speed. No, I thought, these people can’t believe that. Why would I let the police bring me over to that place if I knew somebody had seen me? Shit! I wouldn’t have lost anything by killing them, too. If I’d been the killer.
With the first question that Brown put to Bello, he caught the punk in a lie. It turned out that Bello had not lived where he had told the prosecutor he did for the length of time he had stated.
“Where did you live in August of 1966? This being May of 1967,” Brown asked him.
“Well”—the witness hesitated—“in a reformatory, an institution.”
“In August of 1966?” Brown asked, peering over his Ben Franklins. “You were in Bordentown at that time?”
“No,” the witness answered, flippantly, changing his mind.
“Didn’t you just say you were?” asked Mr. Brown.
“No. You said I was!” snapped the witness.
“All right,” Judge Larner cut in, annoyed. “Let us stop arguing and let us find out.”
Raymond Brown just stood there for a moment with his hands on his hips, shaking his head. Little muscles began bunching up in his jawbone and then they relaxed. “Where were you living in August of 1966?” he asked again.
“August?” Bello was playing stupid now.
“Pardon?”
“1966?”
“Yes!” the judge cut in, sharply. “Two months after these events.”
“I was out on the streets,” the witness mumbled sullenly now. “The same Redwood Avenue [address],” he said.
“Where were you living in June of 1966?” asked Brown, now that the fool was talking again.
“138 Redwood Avenue,” he answered.
Brown turned away from that lying sonofabitch and spoke to the judge. “This has already been marked as state’s exhibit 40 for identification, Your Honor,” he said, holding up Bello’s statement for him to see. Then he turned back to the witness.
“Did you tell the police on June 17, 1966, where you lived?” asked Brown.
“Yes,” Bello answered, real surly.
“Where did you tell them you lived?”
“It had to be on Redwood Avenue,” he said.
“Would you look at this, please,” Brown showed him the statement now. “I show you S-40 for identification. Is there a date in the upper left-hand corner?” he asked.
“June 17, 1966,” Bello replied.
“Nineteen sixty-six, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Is that your signature?”
“Yes.”
“What does it say with respect to your full name, age, and address?” Brown asked him again.
“Maple Avenue,” the witness answered, meekly.
“Where did you live in June of 1966?” Brown started all over again.
“On Maple Avenue,” the witness replied.
“You lived in Clifton?”
“Yes.”
“You have difficulty recalling where you lived less than a year ago?”
“I’m not very good on dates,” the witness smirked.
“You are not very good on memory either, are you?” Brown snapped right back at him, and slouched over to the table to pick up some more papers. He had shown the jury that they were dealing with a pathological liar. He then read Bello’s indictments for his previous crimes to the jury. Bello affirmed he had pleaded guilty to all of them, but his memory was a little hazy as to his convictions and time served. He did state, however, that he had not been charged with larceny from the night of the crime. He claimed that the job at the Ace Sheet Metal Company was the first he had pulled since his release from Bordentown Reformatory the February before. He said he had known Patricia Graham Valentine for a long time, though she had testified to the contrary. He said he had refused to testify about these murders before the grand jury, invoking his rights against self-incrimination.
“You said that when the two men came down the street laughing, they just kept walking towards you, is that right?” Brown asked. “They didn’t say anything to you, did they?”
“I didn’t stop to ask,” the witness smirked again, as if he had just made a funny. He had just turned and run. No one chased him, though he had told Ruggierio, a newspaper reporter, and the police that the two men had. He admitted this was untrue.
I could feel his vicious lies burning holes straight through my guts. This fat jitterbug was really a nasty bastard. He wouldn’t give the people the courtesy of even acting like he was telling the truth. He knew that all they wanted was me. But if my freedom had depended on the jury’s coming to a verdict that day, I’ll bet I would have been sitting at home with my wife and daughter that night. The four women jurors were cutting him eyes of pure disgust; the men, too. Bello even told them, “Basically, I am a thief.”
Brown continued with the charade: “Did you tell Sergeant Capter of the Paterson Police that whomever you had seen had chased you up the street?”
“Yes,” Bello stated, now back on solid ground.
“Now that is not true, is it?” Brown gave him a pitying look.
“Well,” Bello then decided, “not actually.” Brown had shifted gears on him and come up with some more information. The point was the two killers hadn’t paid him any attention at all—and he hadn’t gotten a good look at them at all. They simply got in the car and drove past him. (I wonder if even that was the truth.)
“You told the police on the very morning that this happened that you didn’t see the faces of the men walking down the street from the bar, is that correct or not?”
“Well,” the witness hedged, “it is possible.”
“Well, it is a fact, isn’t it?” Ray Brown was getting warm now, I could see.
“I had a reason why I didn’t,” the witness rapped back defiantly.
“I didn’t ask you, mister, anything about your reasons,” Brown returned. “I asked you one question and that alone. Is it not a fact that you told the police on the morning of June 17, 1966, that, ‘I didn’t see their faces.’ Is that correct?”
“Yes, sir.” The room was quiet.
“It is a fact, is it not, that the statement which I have just shown you given on June 17, 1966, to a lieutenant of the police, was given after you saw a car occupied by Mr. Rubin Carter returned to the vicinity of the tavern, under escort of the police?”
“Yes.” The quiet courtroom seemed even quieter now.
“Speak up!” my cagey old lawyer roared. “Did you tell [the Lieutenant] that Mr. Carter and Mr. Artis were the men whom you had seen coming around that corner?”
“I don’t recall,” Bello said. But Ray Brown was pushing him now for the truth.
“... Sir, I show you a statement . . . in which you deny knowing these people; isn’t that clear?”
“If it is on the statement,” Bello answered nastily.
“Don’t you know what you told them?”
“Sure I know what I told them.”
“Did you tell them that you didn’t know them?”
“At that point,” Bello said, “yes.”
“Yes?” Brown repeated.
“Yes, sir,” Bello said with disdain, the “sir” dripping off his tongue with pure venom.
“We are not in the Army right now,” the judge broke in, as if he too were disgusted with a white witness “yes-sirring” a black man who was defending two other black men against the charges of killing three white people. “So, the question is, you said yes to what? That you did know them or did not know them at that time?”
“I didn’t identify those men at that time,” Bello told him.
“You did not?” Larner said. “All right.”
Bello, as a state’s witness, was a hard customer to tear down completely, because he really didn’t know the shades of difference between the truth and his fiction. That $12,500 reward made a cash register out of his mind. He knew that if he got me convicted at this trial, not only would he get the reward and be relieved of prosecution for his own crimes, but what the state would be doing was tantamount to issuing him a license to steal, because he would never be sent to prison in New Jersey again. (And he hasn’t been. Even though his criminal activities have not ceased a bit, the farthest he’s gotten so far is the county jail.)
Bello was on the witness stand for two days, relentlessly pummeled by the defending attorneys. He denied he had been promised any favors for giving these statements, even though he had never been charged with any crime. He also denied ever hearing about any reward. Then Brown turned Perry Mason on the punk.
“Mr. Bello,” he said, with all the outraged indignation he could muster. “When you stole that money from the cash register sitting behind the bar, did you not have to pass by Mrs. Hazel Tanis lying there on the floor begging for help?”
“Yes,” the witness answered.
“And Mr. William Marins slumped on a bar stool shot in the head?”
“Yes.”
“And Fred Nauyaks lying dead at the bar?”
“Yes, Mr. Brown.” Bello was getting the drift of it now.
“Then you stepped over Jim Oliver lying dead behind the bar to get to the cash register. When did you do all of this, mister?”
“Do what?” the judge exploded, almost busting his gullet.
Brown’s eyes whipped around and fastened on Judge Larner’s. “Slay the bartender,” he said.
“What?” The judge couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“When did he slay the bartender?” Brown repeated. “That is addressed to him,” he said, pointing to Bello.
“Objection!” the prosecutor shouted, frantically.
“Answer that,” the judge ordered the witness, ignoring the state’s opposition. His face showed fury.
“It is not to my knowledge,” the witness smirked.
“No further questions, Your Honor,” Brown snarled in disgust, and stalked away stiff-legged. “Not to his knowledge,” he said derisively as he passed the jury.
Judge Larner was fit to be tied. “The jury will disregard the question, ‘When did you slay the bartender?’ There is nothing to support it thus far in my opinion.”
“If Your Honor please”—Ray Brown was immediately back on his feet—“there is a great deal to support it. The question was not objected to and I ask Your Honor to respectfully review your rules and let it stand for whatever weight it may have.”
“I have instructed the jury as I see it,” Larner replied, angrily. “I think it should be stricken in due justice to all parties.” But he really meant in the state’s interest.
“Perhaps Your Honor may reconsider it at a later time,” Brown suggested, and hurried on. “Your Honor, here is this man who was in there—”
“Please don’t argue that question now!” the judge quickly interrupted him. He definitely didn’t want the jury even to think about it again. So Bello was excused.
Arthur Dexter Bradley was the next witness on the stand. He was a skinny, red-haired, acne-faced twenty-three-year-old boy who whispered when he talked and picked his fingernails the whole time he was up testifying. The first thing the prosecutor did, of course, was to bring out his criminal record. It included convictions for larceny, breaking and entering with intent to steal, and time served.
“Mr. Bradley,” asked the prosecutor. “Where are you at the present time?”
“Morris County Jail.”
Bradley then testified that between 2:00 and 2:30 a.m. on June 17, 1966, he and Bello were in the vicinity of the Lafayette Bar and Grill to burglarize the Ace Sheet Metal Company. After he had removed a tire iron from under the seat of Kenny Kellogg’s car, he and Bello went out to pull the job (while Kenny went to the Lafayette to wait for them). Bradley tried to force open the front door of the factory with a tire iron, while Bello played “chickie” for him. Suddenly he heard a car coming by and threw the tire iron into some weeds and walked up to the corner. He returned and began to look for the tire iron, then became worried about being seen. He walked back to Lafayette Street. There he saw a white car with four Negroes in it. He said he thought it was a 1964 Ford. The passenger on the far side had something sticking up between his legs, which he could only identify as being long and thin. He didn’t know me personally, but he said he knew my face and recognized me in the driver’s seat. He didn’t know the others.
He went back to work on the factory door, and while he was struggling with it, he heard something that sounded like backfiring or gunshots. He went back out to Lafayette Street toward the bar. There was somebody walking in front of him. From an earlier conversation, he knew Bello was going to the bar and thought that he could reach Bello before he got there. So he started running after the guy in front of him. He said he wasn’t yet sure it was Bello. Then he heard some more backfiring noises. He looked down the street past Bello and saw two Negroes. One had a shotgun in his hand. The other had something in his hand too, but he wasn’t sure what it was. One was short and the other was tall. He described their clothing as being dark.
“Is the man who was wearing [sic] the shotgun or rifle in this courtroom?” Hull asked him.
“Yes,” Bradley replied.
“Where is he?” asked the prosecutor. “Point him out, please.”
“He is right there,” Bradley said, pointing at me.
“Pointing where?” asked the judge, getting his two cents’ worth of credibility in. “Tell us again,” he said.
“That Negro, right there!” Bradley bellowed. He wanted to say “nigger” so bad that his lips were trembling.
“He said, ‘That Negro right there’?” Brown asked the judge indignantly. “Is that what he said?”
“Yes,” Judge Larner said, beaming down from the bench, a satisfied note in his authoritarian voice. “That is what he said, pointing to Rubin Carter. The record will indicate that he has pointed to the defendant Carter.”
Bradley continued testifying to the fact that he couldn’t recognize the other Negro. He had turned and run back to the Ace Sheet Metal Company. A minute later Bello joined him and gave him some money he had stolen. Then Bradley went back to their car, but it was no longer there. He kept going and came out on another street, saw nothing, and turned around again. Then he saw Kellogg’s car going down the street. He went to another street, waited fifteen minutes, and eventually wound up across from the bar. The police had already arrived. He walked to the bar, met Bello, and then went downtown with Detective Lawless and Ronnie Ruggiero. But they dropped Bradley off before they reached headquarters, and he took a taxicab to a girl’s apartment and met Kennie Kellogg there. All three of them drove back to Ace Sheet Metal, and broke in. He looked for money, found a safe he couldn’t open, and gave up. The area was crawling with cops conducting a house-to-house investigation. So he went home.
“I have no further questions of this witness,” the prosecutor said. He sat down, satisfied that his case was won. It wasn’t a question of law and truth, of course, it was simply black against white. And in that, he definitely had the upper hand.
This was the third day of the trial, and though the courtroom had been noticeably barren of civilian spectators during the earlier stages of the proceedings—with the exception of my wife and daughter and John Artis’s family—black folks started trickling in. The word had been passed by somebody who knew, that we were downtown getting shafted by two cracker convicts, while they were sitting home on their black asses doing absolutely nothing. So the people started coming to court, and the police were up on the rooftops brandishing their shotguns and trying to scare them away. The cops didn’t want too much exposure of this thing that they were doing. They had already threatened some of my witnesses, and driven some others away. Because there should have been a truckload of people coming down here to testify for me, but there wasn’t. They were all scared.
However, when Ray Brown rose to cross-examine Arthur Dexter Bradley, he was no longer working in a totally hostile atmosphere. There were plenty of black people behind him now, though silent in their support. Even my father and some of his preacher friends had shown up.
Brown started off his interrogation by obtaining from the prosecutor all relevant information that proved, without exception, that Bradley, just like all the other state witnesses, had given the police three or four previous statements, all of which were taken in October and November—after my arrest—and which differed from his court testimony. The defense attorneys also brought to light that unlike Bello, who had simply refused to testify before the grand jury about this crime, Bradley did testify, and had committed perjury, but he had never been charged with that offense. (Before the trial was quite over, Brown did establish that in October, when Bradley had first given his statement to the police, he was up on charges of having committed four armed robberies, two breaking and entering and larceny jobs, and one car theft, of escape from police, and of possession of stolen property. All of these charges were still pending against him at the time of my trial.)
Now Raymond Brown, oak-tree-tall with brown snapping eyes, stood there and looked at Bradley for a long while, as if he was sizing him up. Then he went to work on him. “Mr. Bello—I beg your pardon,” he apologized. “Your partner is Mr. Bello and you are Mr. Bradley. . . .
“Mr. Bradley, the first time that you told the police anything about this was in October 1966; is that right?”
“Yes,” the witness whispered.
“And they came down to Bordentown and talked to you about it?”
“Yes.”
“... Now,” Brown said, “one [of these two Negroes] you said you recognized?”
“Yes,” Bradley answered.
“... How long prior to this night on the seventeenth of June had you seen Mr. Carter?”
Bradley started fidgeting around in his seat, wrinkling up his forehead in what was supposed to pass for deep concentration. He thought about it for a minute or two. “About in February,” he said. “I saw him in a magazine.”
“You saw him in a magazine in February?”
“Yes.”
“As far as in person, when did you see him?”
“I saw him that same night,” Bradley said. But he was talking about when the police brought me to the Lafayette Bar.
“My question is,” Brown repeated, “prior means before. How long before June 17 had you seen Mr. Carter in the flesh?”
“In ’64,” the witness answered.
“... In 1964!” Brown exclaimed. “That would be two years prior to this event?”
“Yes.”
“And that was the occasion when you passed him in a car with a friend who said, ‘That’s Rubin Carter,’ and the other time was in February when you read about him in a magazine?”
“Yes.”
“Incredible!” Brown seemed to snort, and slouched back to our table, shaking his head. A low rumble of disgust quickly built up behind us into a loud crescendo of dissent from the audience. The judge banged his gavel for silence. He warned the spectators that he would clear the courtroom immediately upon any further demonstrations of this nature. His frosty-looking features dispelled any further commotion.
Meanwhile, Raymond Brown, as if he had heard none of this at all, was leafing through a pile of papers strewn carelessly over the table, and when he seemed to find what he was looking for, he straightened back up. “... Now, as I understand it, sir,” he asked Bradley, “there was a man about twenty feet in front of you, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“And you couldn’t identify that man as Bello, right?” he asked.
“No,” the witness told him. “I wasn’t really sure.”
“Although you had been with him since early evening,” Brown stated, and then inquired, “You had known him for how long?”
“A few hours,” Bradley decided.
“You only knew Bello for a few hours?” Brown turned in surprise.
“No,” the witness quickly changed his mind. “I have known him a long time.” That’s what Brown thought.
“You have known him a long time,” Brown repeated, “but although you couldn’t recognize the man twenty feet in front of you, a man coming around the corner whom you had seen in a magazine and once in 1964 you recognized in a flash, is that right?”
“... Yes,” Bradley said.
“Incredible!” Brown whispered to me when he came dragging back to our table.
The remainder of Bradley’s testimony was so warped with more such incredible utterances as to displace all human logic in a person who was thought to be sane, unless that person was prejudiced beyond belief. Ray Brown did bring out, however, that it wasn’t until October 14, the day that John and I were arrested, that Lieutenant DeSimone went down to Bordentown to ask Bradley, in effect, to change his statements into one that would incriminate John Artis and me. DeSimone had even brought our pictures down there to show Bradley who we were and what my car had looked like.
To offset this testimony we intended to bring from Bordentown Hector Martinez, Bradley’s partner on all of his armed robberies, to testify that he too had been offered the same deal by DeSimone. But Bradley denied that he was offered any deal at all. So Ray Brown let him go. We were going to sock it to him with the testimony of his partner, Martinez. The only trouble was, Brown hadn’t asked Bradley the proper questions necessary to permit Martinez’s rebuttal in court—which we didn’t realize until it was too late.
When Officer Alexander Greenough—the first cop to arrive at the scene of the crime—came to the stand, he testified that at 2:34 a.m. he had received a call to go to the Lafayette Bar, and that he had reached the place at 2:35. His partner, Officer George Unger, went into the tavern while he spoke to Bello outside. Bello told him that people had been shot. Greenough escorted a very excited Patricia Valentine upstairs to her apartment. She described the getaway car as white with a dark license plate. Two Negroes. She even drew a sketch of the taillight on his scratch pad. Greenough took a statement from Bello shortly after coming back downstairs with Mrs. Valentine. Bello was standing with them when the police brought John and me to the scene. But nobody then could identify us as the guilty parties.
“Officer Greenough,” Brown began his cross-examination. “[When you arrived at the scene] Bello told you what the people whom he said he had seen looked like, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Each five eleven.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thin build, fedora, and sports jackets, right?”
“Yes, sir. That’s what I have on my—”
“And that’s what he told you, right?” Brown interrupted.
“Yes, sir,” the cop admitted.
“He also told you that those people chased him up into the alley, didn’t he?” Brown asked.
“Yes, sir.”
Greenough hadn’t asked Bello what he had done after he ran up the alley, nor did he bother to search for any weapons. He had simply gone upstairs with Mrs. Valentine to try to get a description of the getaway car from her. When he brought her back down to the street, my car was there, and the sight of it made her hysterical, he said. Had the cops taken us straight down to headquarters instead, we probably would never have been involved at all. It could have happened to any two black men riding the streets that night.
Brown wanted Greenough to tell him how Mrs. Valentine had described the car, the taillights of which she had sketched for him in his notebook.
“Now, did you preserve this piece of paper for any length of time, Officer? You say it was in your notebook.”
“No,” Greenough answered. “It was a page torn from my notebook to use for this purpose.”
“And you discarded it, do you know, or did you lose it or did you just—”
“I can’t really say what happened to it,” Greenough said. Then Brown took a shot in the dark, because all the evidence was falling that way.
“There was nothing about this drawing,” Brown said, “just two tapered lights, and that’s it; is that all; just two triangles?” he asked.
“They weren’t triangles at all actually,” the witness stated. “She was trying to describe the taillights with these drawings to me.”
“... It didn’t help [you] at all,” Brown said. “There are many lights like that you’ve seen in your experience, haven’t you?”
“That was the problem,” Greenough decided. “They looked like nothing I had seen. That was it. I couldn’t think—I was thinking in the line of Chevy and this type of car that has the lights across the back....” Bello and Bradley and Kellogg had come there in a Chevy.
“The Chevy has them?” Brown asked, hammering home his shot.
“But they’re square,” the officer said, so he figured it to be a sports model Chevy. Brown had proven his point: Kellogg’s car was a Malibu, a sports model.
“All right, that’s all, Your Honor,” he said, and sat down.
Sergeant Theodore Capter soon came up to the witness stand to testify. He was a nineteen-year veteran. He and his partner, DeChellis, had received a call at 2:34 that there was trouble over at the Lafayette Bar and Grill.
“We were going to the scene of the trouble,” the sergeant said, “when we saw a white car shoot across in front of us going in an easterly direction on 12th Avenue. The first car that arrived at the scene [of the crime] threw out a description over the air to be on the lookout for a white car with two colored male occupants. So when we saw this car go by, we shot across 10th Avenue ... because ... I noticed that it had a foreign plate on it,” Capter said, “an out-of-state plate.” So he called over the radio to block off the highway. He and DeChellis took off into East Paterson to go after it. But they lost the car, and they never found out what really happened to it.
On the way back into town they saw a white car—my car—come across Broadway and go south. They stopped the car a few blocks away, he said. John Artis was behind the wheel. Another man was sitting next to him. Rubin Carter was seated in the back, Capter said. After checking the registration, he let us go. Then he and DeChellis went to the Lafayette Bar and Grill, talked to Bello, and went back out on the streets, where they saw my Dodge—this time with “two colored males”—in front of them waiting for a traffic light to change. He called over the radio for some help. Then he pulled up alongside, and told us to make a right turn and stop. Which we did, most agreeably. Then they had us follow them back to the scene of the crime, where there was an “enormous” crowd gathered.
On cross-examination, Brown had Sergeant Capter retrace the route he had taken on the morning of the seventeenth while chasing the first white car out of the city and onto the highway, where he and his partner had lost it. The retracing was done on a large chart in the courtroom that was scaled down to represent the entire area. It proved conclusively that it couldn’t have been the same car he had stopped on his way back to the city—which was my car. Brown was nothing if not thorough in his cross-examination.
“. . . Now, Officer, on the occasion when you stopped the car in which Artis, Carter, and Bucks were riding at about 2:40 a.m. or thereabouts, you allowed them to proceed. Is that correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“... The second time you stopped the car at Broadway and East 18th,” Brown asked, “did you have to stop them? Were they being run down?”
“They were stopped [while] waiting for a traffic light,” Capter answered.
“Nothing unusual?”
“No,” the sergeant answered. “The only thing [with two colored males in it now], it fit the description that I received at the scene of the crime.”
“... Sergeant,” Brown asked, seriously, “why did you bring these men to the scene where this big crowd was milling about as opposed to taking them to headquarters or a precinct?”
“I had no reason actually to take them to headquarters,” answered the veteran sergeant. “I figured I’d bring them to the scene of the crime because they’re only suspects,” he said.
And that’s what put us in jail—bringing us to the scene.
Following Capter’s testimony, there was a long line of cop witnesses coming and going, all testifying to some small detail of what they had performed in their lines of duty. But none ever mentioned John Artis or me, except, indirectly, the detective who had interrogated Hazel Tanis before she died and William Marins while he was still on the critical list.
“And Mr. Marins told you that he couldn’t identify these men, is that correct?” Brown asked him.
“That’s correct.”
“And he had a full chance to look at them there?”
“Yes, sir,” the detective answered.
“And he told you it was the tall man with the shotgun, is that right ... about six feet, slim built, light complexion, pencil-line mustache?”
“He said he may have had a small mustache.”
“I’m reading your report,” Brown said. “I’m not making this up.”
“I know,” the witness said quietly.
“I’m reading,” ‘Six feet, slim built, light complexion, pencil-line mustache,’” Brown said. “And you put that down.”
“Yes.”
“And he looked at these two defendants and he could not identify them?”
“That’s right,” the detective said, and added that his report of Hazel Tanis’s description was nearly identical to Marins’.
At this point the prosecution seemed to get really desperate. They began throwing all kinds of legal obstacles in front of us: Lt. DeSimone got up on the witness, stand and claimed to have recorded the dying declaration of Hazel Tanis’s just a few days before she died. But all the hospital records showed just the contrary
—that she had died suddenly and, up until that time, had been on the road to a complete recovery. Then the state tried to introduce a composite drawing into evidence that only showed the face of a clean-shaven Negro who could have resembled anybody, so both defense attorneys fought vigorously against its being offered into evidence. That was one of the few legal rounds that we won—or did we?
Ray Brown was steady on the move trying to outthink their next moves, but then they threw a real dickhead at us: the police had never found the weapons that had been used to kill all those people, so they did the next best thing—they brought in a cop to testify that he found in my car one shell belonging to each gun the police claimed had been the murder weapons. This detective, Di-Robbio, said that at 3:45 a.m. he had gone downstairs at headquarters into the police garage and searched my car (without a warrant). He opened the front door and found a .32-caliber lead bullet on the floor under the right front seat. Then he opened up the trunk of the car and found a Super X Wesson 12-gauge shotgun shell under some boxing equipment. He put these items in his pocket and turned them in to the police property clerk the next morning. That was his testimony.
That afternoon, the prosecutor brought two ballistics experts into court. They testified that the bullets in all of the people who were shot and the shells found on the Lafayette Bar’s floor were all .32 S&W long copper-coated bullets and Remington Express plastic shells, as opposed to the lead bullets and riot-type Super X Wesson shell the police allegedly found in my car. The two trooper firearms experts testified that there were absolutely no similarities to the ones used in the killings and the ones allegedly found in my car other than the gauges and calibers. So Judge Larner excluded the shotgun shell from evidence as simply being too remote from those found at the scene of the crime, but he allowed the lead bullet into evidence because, as he said, it could have been fired from a .32-caliber pistol. Well, hell! The 12-gauge shell could have been fired from a 12-gauge shotgun, too! I couldn’t understand the logic being used here.
After three more weeks and fifty witnesses, of whom only Bello and Bradley ever specifically mentioned John Artis and myself in connection with the crime, the prosecution rested. Lieutenant DeSimone had been to the witness stand four or five times to help boost the state’s case with his lies—vicious, legal lies, which would soon become the legal block to regaining my freedom. For example, he told the court that on the morning of the crime, he had properly given John and me our Miranda warnings.
The Miranda decision had been handed down by the United States Supreme Court on June 13, just four days before the murders had been committed. Not even the state and federal judges, let alone the lawyers, had yet deciphered exactly what the decision meant. But DeSimone claimed to have already had, on the morning that he questioned us, a card made up giving the exact Miranda warnings. And it was from this card that he said he had read us our rights.
This part of DeSimone’s testimony was not supported by any written notes, but came entirely from his memory—a full year later—which he acknowledged was hazy at best. He claimed to have destroyed his original records on the same morning he conducted our interrogations, but that was a lie. He still had those original records when we appeared before the grand jury on June 29, 1966, so he couldn’t have destroyed them when he said he had. As it was, I remembered him saying at the time he questioned me only that my statement could be used against me in court later, but nothing about my being entitled to a lawyer, as per Miranda. Another thing, I had told him then that I had driven Mrs. Mapes and Mrs. McGuire home from the Nite Spot on the morning of June 17th, not the 18th—a fact he was able to conceal in court by saying he no longer had the records. It became a crucial point of contention later on in the trial, as we’ll soon see.
Though both the statements John and I had given DeSimone on that fateful morning could in no way be construed as incriminating evidence, they were inconsistent in terms of certain times, because we hadn’t always been together throughout that previous night. But since DeSimone was now claiming to have destroyed his original written records—and we could not effectively cross-examine his recollections—his unimpeachable testimony was of the most insidious nature. After having listened to the damaging discrepancies recited by this man—one statement following the other in rapid-fire succession—the jury could draw only one of three conclusions: that John Artis was lying, that I was lying, or that both of us were liars. It also meant that I was forced to take the witness stand and reveal my criminal past.
The defense case began with Ray Brown asking Judge Larner, for a direct verdict of acquittal, but Brown knew the judge really wouldn’t go for it, of course not. It was just a matter of form. So he went ahead and began calling up our defense witnesses.
This was where Larner emerged in all his horrifying majesty. From the very outset of our portion of the trial, he judiciously helped snatch away, with snip remarks and slurs against their characters, the credibility of my most important witnesses. It was for that reason—what I sensed to be Lamer’s attitude toward my defense—that I refused to let my wife testify in my behalf. It was an effort to maintain what little bit of cool I had throughout this farce; if the judge had shown Mae Thelma the disrespect that he inflicted upon the others, I don’t know what I would have done.
So I was the first witness Brown called to the stand, where I repeated the story I had given to Lieutenant DeSimone and to the grand jury investigating the case in June 1966. Cathy McGuire, a young and beautiful black woman and the proud mother of three children, followed me.
She had gone to the Nite Spot on the evening in question, accompanied by her mother, Mrs. Anna Mapes. She testified that at about 2:15 a.m. the three of us had gotten into the front seat of my car, and that I had driven them home from the bar. She said she knew what time it was because her mother had to go to work the next day and kept checking her watch to see how late it was.
The trouble was that her court testimony conflicted with her statement to Lieutenant DeSimone, who had tried to get her to say that she had not been with me on Thursday night the sixteenth going into the seventeenth, but Friday night going into the eighteenth. She said in court that DeSimone had succeeded in confusing her to the point where she signed a statement saying that it was June 18 when I had given her and her mother the ride home. But she said she was sure it was the seventeenth. She pointed out that when she went to the Nite Spot it was usually on Thursdays, because that was Ladies Night.
“What day of the week did you tell Lieutenant DeSimone it was?” Brown asked Cathy, trying to clear up the discrepancy.
“I told him it was the seventeenth,” she said, and seemed like she wanted to add something more.
“Go ahead,” Brown told her. But the judge interrupted her.
“The question is,” Larner snarled down at the woman, “what day of the week did you tell him?”
“He didn’t ask me the day,” Cathy replied, frightened. “He asked me the date.”
“Oh, he didn’t ask you the day at all, is that your testimony?” the judge ridiculed in disbelief.
“I don’t think so,” Cathy murmured.
“You don’t think so?” Larner slammed home his advantage.
“I don’t remember,” Cathy replied, falling right into his trap.
“Before you said, ‘I don’t think so.’ All right,” he said. Then he swung around to face the jury. “... Incidentally,” he started right back in on Cathy again, “do you go to the Nite Spot quite often?”
“Yes, I do,” she replied.
“Regularly?”
“Yes.”
“What night of the week usually?” Larner wanted to know.
“Well, Thursday night is Ladies Night.”
“Thursday night is Ladies Night?”
“Yes.”
“Did you go there on Friday night?” the judge asked.
“Well, I didn’t go there every night in a row,” Cathy replied. “On weekends I went maybe other nights.”
“Weekends include Friday?” questioned the prosecutor—I mean, the judge.
“Friday and Saturday.”
“All right,” the judge swung back around, dismissing the witness. He had done his duty by creating doubt. Goddamn!
Nine other defense witnesses followed: Mrs. Mapes, Peter Rush, Hector Martinez, Nathan Sermond, and Elwood Tuck, among others. Tuck exemplified the naked fear with which the prosecutor’s office had dissuaded all prospective witnesses in the black community away from testifying for our case. Wild Bill Hardney, my chief sparring partner, was another example. As soon as his name appeared on my list as a witness, the cops started hunting him down so hot and heavy that he got scared and left town before he ever got near the stand. Which was what the cops wanted in the first place.
Lieutenant DeSimone’s methods of interrogating black people were more than obvious throughout the defense case. Every witness who did take the stand had in some way been pressured and coerced into signing statements they insisted in court could not be true. For instance, Cathy McGuire testified that DeSimone (who of course denied it) had called her a liar and warned her that if she was not telling the truth, he would tear her limb to limb when she got up on the witness stand. But she was telling the truth, and she stuck to it, insisting she had been with me on the night of the crime and not the following night, as the prosecutor was pressing her to say.
John “Bucks” Royster was another case. He was so scared that he hid out in his attic during most of the trial to stay out of the hands of the police, who, he was sure, would arrest him. He had been identified throughout the state’s case as being the third person in my car, so the jury would have to be more than anxious to learn what he would have to say about his presence in my car at just about the time the shootings had occurred. It seemed very obvious that anybody with just a little bit of sense would expect that if John Artis and Rubin Carter were sitting there as defendants against these murder charges, then John “Bucks” Royster should have been sitting there as a defendant, too. He said as much in court himself.
Toward the end of his testimony, the judge suddenly wheeled around and lashed out at him, “How many drinks did you have this morning?”
“Who, me?” Bucks said, stunned.
“Yes, yes!” Larner growled down at him, glaring, red-faced.
“I don’t know,” he answered meekly.
“You don’t know,” Judge Larner snorted with contempt, then shook his head and looked over at the jury. “All right,” he said, satisfied. He had just snatched the credibility away from another of my witnesses. Under this type of tyrannical questioning, even Jesus Christ couldn’t have walked away from that courtroom as a free man.
The pattern of judicial interference was soon to make its presence felt by the brevity of the jury’s deliberations. Our entire case had been specifically directed at the West Indian sitting in the box, because this had clearly been a case of white law being meted out to black defendants, and nobody had attempted to show it off as anything else.
At the end of the trial, Ray Brown was still wearing his Ben Franklins and his wrinkled-up suits, and after Arnold Stein had spoken for John, he slouched up in front of the jury box to deliver his summation. Would the verdict be life imprisonment, or death? Acquittal now seemed out of the question, and conviction for murder in the first degree meant the electric chair at that time. But the state had a built-in conscience-soother to pacify the jury of my “peers.” If the panel could believe us guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, but considered other, extenuating circumstances—such as the judge’s obvious disbelief in our innocence—they could recommend mercy, and life imprisonment, instead of letting us go free as the evidence, or the lack of it, demanded. This luxury would allow them to sleep at night, and still get along with their neighbors during the day.
“In all the instructions to the jury, and in all the attitudes that are determined to be properly that of the jury, reason is always the issue,” Brown told them in his summation, “not passion, not prejudice, not bias. Reason—reason—reason—reason.
“There wasn’t a person who appeared for the defense who did not come in voluntarily, including the defendant. There wasn’t a person who appeared for the defense who didn’t tell you flatly—even though there were contradictions from prior statements, very expertly and capably handled by Mr. Hull—who said, ‘Between two and two thirty I was around Rubin Carter.’ Two ladies said he took them home, Mrs. McGuire, Mrs. Mapes. Consider that with reason, because you must determine the life or death of two persons here....
“I would not try to apply reason to a Bello. I would not try to apply reason to a Bradley, because that alone will not answer it. How can one ... believe them? Who can determine why a Bradley at this tender age already has six, six convictions? Who can determine why a Bello, who is on parole and knows that his maximum is 1969, will deliberately go to break in when he says he is working ... why he will go down and admittedly commit two acts of thievery?... A very patronizing young man, quite confident, suave in dress and very self-assured. How does one account for that? I don’t know.
“Well, tell me, can you believe him? Can you believe him when police officers who had no interest in this ... come in and testify that on the morning of the event he described the persons, and ... the car. One officer says he told them it was a white car with a blue plate. He also told them that it was one, not Negro, one colored male. I suppose that is police department shorthand. One C.M., one colored male, was wearing a fedora, was wearing a jacket, thin build, five eleven. The second C.M., colored male, five eleven. Well, that is what he told them, and then of course he has reason for changing this, because he realized that this description does not fit either one of these men, and most assuredly not Carter, but he had a reason, and let me read for the record what his reason was, if you will....
“He was asked by Mr. Hull and permitted by the Court to answer... the following: ‘Why did you not identify Mr. Carter and Mr. Artis at that time?’ And His Honor permitted the answer.... ‘Because I recognized the fact that I was down in the area and I was on a conspiracy to break and enter and helping to break and enter, and later on as I walked up the street I got involved in a murder, and I also realized that I had recognized the two men that had come around the corner, and I realized if I had recognized them, they had recognized myself’ ... and he went on: ‘Knowing that I am a parolee and this was a violation and I didn’t want the repercussion to fall on my family, and I ... realized that if I ever would take a fall for my crime and go back to a reformatory, and be incarcerated—’ and then there was another objection, and then he continued: ‘Yes, I realized that I committed a crime. There is a seriouser one committed and I should just tell my crime,’ and then the Court said, ‘Proceed,’ and the witness said, ‘I don’t have anything else to say.’ ...
“Now, it appears to me that if the rules of law, the rule of reason, which the Court will instruct you is to be applied, that there are two attitudes permissible where his testimony was concerned. One is, of course, the past offenses to go to his credibility, but, secondly, to consider whether or not with the parole and other things hanging over him, and the crime which he knew he committed, he is not testifying for favor, for hope. This is a very real issue, and I submit to you that you must consider that in deciding whether you believe him or not, in trying to decide why he changed his testimony....
“What about the white car that went streaking out of town? What about the car that was first seen by Sergeant Capter and his driver after getting the signal at two thirty? What about the people that he chased around this place and made all these loops out at Route 20, whatever that is, and all the rest of it, and then came rushing back? What about that car? It couldn’t have been the same Carter car, but you wouldn’t think that that would be important if you were a police officer who was determined to solve what he had already solved....
“But I know that when Mr. Hull sums up and when you consider this case you are going to say that there is evidence here, there is evidence of a white car, there is evidence of a bullet. That is what you are going to say. That is true, it is in evidence, but speaking of the white car, the manager of the Citgo station [from whom I had rented my car] said very clearly that this was not the only one of its kind in the area. But, let’s go beyond that. Ronnie Ruggiero, who ... saw some of this, had ridden in Rubin Carter’s car and knew it, and said he could not identify it as Rubin Carter’s car....
“Suppose you had learned that three people had been mown down by some fiend who walked in that door and one of you police officers had to go back and stop the car with these people in it—would you search them? Capter didn’t bother, nor did anyone else; but they did something which I tell you helped to set the stage. They brought them to where there were seventy-five to a hundred people milling around, and most significant, most significant, it would appear to me, would be Bello standing next to Sergeant Capter while these two defendants were taken out of their car and held against the building, and at this time, why did he not say, ‘These are the men’? ...
“He says, to return to his answer ... he knew that he was in a conspiracy, and that he had committed a crime. Well, wouldn’t it have been safer if he said, ‘Those are the two birds that did all of this,’ if he knew them? What better way to get rid of them if you are afraid of them, to get them off the streets. But to have a man he was afraid of to walk the streets for months, literally months—Rubin Carter walked these streets where you walked, ladies and gentlemen, from June 17th he walked out of the station house; they gave him his automobile in which they had already found this ‘damning’ bullet; they gave him his automobile and said, ‘Drive away.’...
“On cross-examination it was developed that Bello was either a pathological liar or otherwise couldn’t even give his own correct address. And then I asked him this scintillating question, ladies and gentlemen—it sounds so ridiculous as I read it back: ‘You have difficulty recalling where you lived less than a year ago?’ And he said, ‘I am not very good on dates.’
“Well, I then said, ‘You are not very good on memory, are you?’ And he said, ‘Well, I wouldn’t say that.’ And then I asked him about his service record in the Armed Forces and his undesirable discharge, and so forth. But these are small things, you say. Well, let’s go on to things a little bigger. Let’s see how good his memory is....
“I said ... ‘Let me ask you if you did in fact tell Officer Greenough that one colored, C.M., was wearing a fedora and sport jacket, thin built, five eleven; number-two colored man, thin build, five eleven—did you tell Officer Greenough that?’ And his answer: ‘Yes, I might have. I don’t recall exactly. I can’t recall the exact words.’...
“Now, that is the kind of memory on which you are asked to rely and condemn somebody. That is the kind of man who made other statements, such as this.... Question: Is it not a fact that you told the police on the morning of the seventeenth of June 1966, ‘I didn’t see their faces,’ isn’t that correct? And his answer: ‘Yes, sir.’...
“The Bench has stopped me once or twice in this case from implying, perhaps, these witnesses, Bello and Bradley, had something to do with this ... but I will imply with all my might that there is something more to the story of Bello, Bradley, and Kellogg than has been brought forth in this courtroom, and that somebody knows it....
“Remember what [Bradley] said. It will remain with me forever for a special reason. I remember ... he said, ‘That Negro over there.’ What is that, an animal? Well, I will tell you, in his voice, it was there, and everything around this case revolves around that simple fact. They were Negro. Does it matter if the eyewitness, the man alive, said they were light-skinned and five feet eleven? No. They were Negroes. What difference does it make? Somebody is going to go, and the only description we have is Negro.... I tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that if in this case you don’t recognize this thread of the fact that these men would not be here if they weren’t black, and if it weren’t a white car, and those two things alone—talk about your butterfly stoplights. Butterfly stoplights, my foot. Three of the witnesses talked about Chevrolets. Who paid any attention to that? Does anybody care? We have another animal in tow.
“Well, let me tell you something, ladies and gentlemen, the issue here is more than life and death. The issue here is dignity. The issue here is evaluating another person. The issue here is who counts, a man because he is white and wears a uniform, or because he is black and is forthright? And I challenge you, in all this testimony, in all this case, to find one instance where this man didn’t come forward. He came forward and faced you. He came forward and faced you wearing the same jacket, the same beard, the same attitude he has had all his life....
“Mrs. Valentine testified, not only did she tell the police that she couldn’t identify the men, but she told the local family related to her in some way by marriage, ‘I couldn’t identify these people.’
“Well, just look at Rubin Carter, ladies and gentlemen. Here is a man who carries himself differently, a man who looks differently, whose appearance is not ... perhaps as easily forgotten or overlooked as yours or mine. You have seen it. There he sits. That is the way he was that night. [I was wearing the same clothes—a light beige, candy-striped jacket, a black vest, and black pants; bald head and a beard.] ... If you had just seen somebody who had slain somebody ... you had seen this terror, you had seen this defendant, you mean you wouldn’t remember he had a derby and a white coat or a black coat on, and the other had a sweater on... ?
“Inconceivable. Inconceivable. These had to be people who were not as striking as they. These had to be people who were somewhat different, and let me tell you if it were not for the steady insistence of Negroes, it would be improper.
“That’s all you have here—Negro, Negro, Negro. I have heard it until I am—I have heard it from Bradley and from Bello and heard it from every living soul here. Apparently that means you are either suspect or more guilty. I don’t know what it means, but in this case, ladies and gentlemen, if we are to reach the high plateau this court demands, it can’t mean anything. It can’t! ...
“When the story was being told by Mr. Hull [in his opening remarks], I was shattered because I thought surely there, was either a movie camera or a witness, because he told how the persons walked in from this door. He told specifically how Artis had a pistol, specifically how Carter had a gun, a pump shotgun—he didn’t say, but it was later said—-and how they walked in and one shot the other and the other shot the other and then turned and walked out. This seemed to me so remarkable and so bizarre; I said, ‘Nobody appearing for the state would make that kind of statement unless he could prove it.’ Tell me, ladies and gentlemen, if you can recall anybody demonstrating that. I will tell you what was demonstrated conclusively and beyond peradventure, that the people who were seen by the jackals Bello and Bradley were supposedly coming around the corner, and not out of either door as was stated by each of these ghouls when they were interrogated on June 17. That is for sure. Nobody saw any one of these men anywhere. That is for sure. Nobody thereafter found any weapons. That is for sure, although catch basins were searched, everything around the area was searched: Nobody found a single weapon. Did they stop the right persons? Is this the issue? You must decide. I say, no. Not a question of whether they stopped the right persons or not, the question: is, Have they proved beyond a reasonable doubt that these are the right persons and that they committed the acts?
“I don’t know how you can discount [the testimony of all the defense witnesses]. All of these people just exuded truth, and under pressure. You can bet they were under pressure. This is not a proper case to be a witness. No murder trial is, because somehow you become allied with the defendant.... But there was one little witness nobody wants to talk about. I think they just wish he would go away, a little man who came in here early this week ... named Hector Martinez. Hector came from Bordentown, and he went back to Bordentown, not in protective custody, not expecting any hope. . . .
“I asked Mr. Bradley one question about this: ‘Did you ever tell, were you in the same jail with Hector Martinez in August?’ ‘Yes, I was.’ ‘Did you tell Hector Martinez that you were going to play off this Carter case against the other things pending against you?’ He said, ‘No.’ Hector. Martinez from Bordentown. One question: ‘Were you in jail with him?’ ‘Yes, I was.’ Uncontroverted.... ‘Did this man tell you he was going to play off the Carter case against the other matters pending against him?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ And then the last question which is in the record: ‘And did he tell you that on that night he did not see these defendants?’ Answer: ‘Yes, sir.’
“That was the end of that. Mr. Martinez departed. No extensive cross. No rebuttal. Would you say then; in terms of human behavior, that a young man like Martinez, who is still in custody, he went back to Bordentown, who told the story unfavorable to the state, with all the pressures, would be more likely to do what Peter Rush did and say, ‘I will tell the truth regardless of the consequences,’ or a Bradley with five armed robberies, breaking and entries, escape from the police, no charges pending against him. The price may be high; ladies and gentlemen, but the state is willing to pay.
“I can’t leave you without this last note,” Ray Brown said, pointing to me. “This man is a human being who has lived since 1957 without blemish. This man’s record is available to you for only one purpose. That is to assess it against his credibility. In other words, to determine whether you would believe him, believe what he says, all or part of it, because he has had a charge, pleaded to it and served time. The distinction between Bradley and Bello is that they have pending charges, and, therefore, you may not only consider what they have said in terms of their believability, but consider what is hanging over them, in terms of whether they are doing what they did and testified as they have wanting favor and reward and expecting it.
“This is a human being standing in fear of his life. These two young men, Bello and Bradley, have only to gain.... This man’s life is not bound up in automobiles, but this is one of the reasons he is here. He is bound up in his skin though, and that is the other reason he is here. Can you believe that this man who did not run, who did not hide, did this, did these things? How can one believe this? These are terrible photographs. This is a stark tragedy. Could this man have done this?
“But, that is not the question, is it? The question is, did the state prove it beyond a reasonable doubt; and, of course, you have to answer, ‘No.’ And what do you say about the Patricia Graham Valentine? [sic] She couldn’t identify them within feet. What do you say of the William Marins’ five feet eleven, light-skinned? What do you say of the Bello’s five feet eleven, light-skinned? Do you write all that off? Do you discount that, although it is testimony in this case, and do you say that this is so terrible that a sacrifice must be made? ...
“This is probably the last place in the entire world where a trial like this could go on. Where else would they tolerate three weeks of picking a jury? Where else would they tolerate lawyers sometimes bumbling, sometimes stumbling, but each time trying to prove or disprove? Where else do they tolerate this in the world, where else but here? Why then must this man suffer because he rode the streets of Paterson, minding his own business, a black man driving a white car? I know you won’t stand for it.”
Tears were now trickling from Brown’s eyes. “Thank you,” he said, and staggered back to the defense table. The six long weeks of strain had taken its toll, and the longest wait was yet to begin. The courtroom was suddenly astir—a confused mixture of muffled sniffling and angry voices. Everybody seemed to be affected by Brown’s passionate plea, with the exception of the ones who counted the most: thirteen members of the jury, and me. Only the West Indian displayed a little emotion, though he tried to appear casual when he brushed a hand across his red-rimmed eyes. But the others’ faces were pure granite. The judge was affected, too, but in a different manner. When Brown started saying that he Was tired of hearing the word “Negro, Negro, Negro” so much, Judge Larner’s jaws seemed to swell up and actually turn purple. For a minute there I thought His Honor was going to jump down off his bench and kick Ray Brown dead in his ass, screaming, “The nerve of you, nigger, to put our prejudices right out in the open!” But he must have figured that that would have been too raw, so he just rolled his eyes up at the ceiling and let his breath out in a silent “Whooose.”
At the direction of the judge, the prosecutor began his summation right after the lunch recess. “Thank you, Your Honor,” he said as he rose to face the jury. The courtroom was deathly quiet again. Heavy tension, like thousand-pound weights, pressed downward from the rafters.
Vincent E. Hull, Jr., was not nearly as voluble as Ray Brown. In fact, he was very blunt, almost to the point of being brutal, and got right to the issues at hand. He explained to the jury why Bello and Bradley could not have been lying for gain or favor—because, he said, the state had not promised them anything, and their statements were not tailor-made to identify the both of us.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Hull said, “when you retire to the jury room, all of the exhibits in this case that have been admitted in evidence will be in there with you, including this bullet, this .32 S&W long Remington Peters. That will be one of the items that goes into the jury room with you, and after you deliberate upon the facts in this case, and weigh all of them carefully, that bullet, small in size, will get larger and larger and larger, and that bullet will call out to you and say to you, Bello and Bradley told the truth. That bullet will call out to you and say to you Carter and Artis lied, and that bullet will get louder and larger and it will cry out to you like three voices from the dead, and it will say to you Rubin Carter and John Artis are guilty of murder in the first degree, and then it will come your function to determine the question of penalty. You know from all the questions posed to you on the voir dire that under the law of the State of New Jersey that the penalty for first-degree murder in this state is either the death penalty or life imprisonment, and each and every one of you, before you were selected as jurors here, stated under oath that you could bring in one of the alternatives, either the death penalty or life imprisonment, based upon whatever the facts of this case might be, and the facts of this case speak for themselves.”
The prosecutor then emptied out three bags of bloody clothes on a table situated directly in front of the jury, each bag in a separate pile. Beside each heap he placed the picture of the deceased person whose clothes they were, and in the pictures the deceased were laid out on slabs in the morgue.
“There once was a man,” Hull continued gravely, “a human being by the name of James Oliver, a bartender at the Lafayette Grill, and he wore this shirt, and he looked like this when he was placed into eternity by a 12-gauge shotgun shell.
“There once was a man, a fellow human being by the name of Fred Nauyaks who lived in Cedar Grove, and he had the misfortune of going to the Lafayette Grill on June 16—17, 1966, and this is how his life ended when he was murdered in cold blood with a .32-caliber bullet through his brain.
“And there once was a human being, a woman by the name of Hazel Tanis, and she wore these clothes, these bullet-riddled clothes, when she was shot, not once, not twice, not three times—four times; two of the bullets which passed through her and two remained in her body, and she clung to life for nearly one month, and on July 14 of 1966 she passed away, and this is what became of this fellow human being.
“Ladies and gentlemen, on the question of punishment, the facts of this case clearly indicate that on the morning of June the seventeenth of 1966, the defendants, Rubin Carter and John Artis, forfeited their right to live, and the state asks that you extend to them the same measure of mercy that they extended to James Oliver, Fred Nauyaks, and Hazel Tanis, and that you return verdicts of Murder in the First Degree on all the charges without a recommendation.
“Thank you,” Hull said, and sat down.
The court recessed then, and Judge Lamer made his charge to the jury on the following day, May 26, 1967. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” he began, “You have sat through a long and arduous trial. You have heard a lot of testimony. You have heard the arguments of counsel for the respective parties, and now the trial in chief is completed, except for the instructions of the Court, which I am about to give you.”
Learner went on then to define “reasonable doubt” as “simply an honest and reasonable uncertainty as to the guilt of the defendant or defendants which may exist in your minds after you have given full and impartial consideration to all of the evidence.”
He pointed out that the evidence on which the state had relied was primarily circumstantial, and not direct.
He told the jurors that one of their prime functions was to judge the credibility of the witnesses, as well as whether anyone’s testimony had been affected by any hope of reward or favor.
He called their attention to Bello’s and Bradley’s criminal records, as well as to my own, saying that it was up to them (the jury) to determine whether or not these records affected our respective credibility. He added that my previous convictions were not to be thought of as evidence.
He spoke of the conflict over the state’s claim that John and I had been properly and fully warned of our rights before we were interrogated by the police, and defined what was meant by first and second degree murder. “It is apparent,” he continued, “that among other factual issues, the most important one for your consideration which is involved in this case is whether the defendants were present in the Lafayette Grill at the time and place of the shooting. The state contends that the defendants were the individuals in the bar who committed the murder on the night in question, and has sought to prove that fact through a chain of circumstantial evidence. The defendants, on the other hand, deny the commission of the crime and say that they were not in the bar or on the street outside the bar at the time involved, and that the identification by the state’s witness is false and erroneous. These respective contentions have created conflicts in the testimony which must be resolved by you in order to determine whether the state has proved guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Before he finished speaking, Judge Lamer added one other small note which I thought was the real dickhead of all: he tried to clear the court of all the vicious racism that was shown to us throughout this trial, and which Ray Brown had finally brought out into the open.
“It goes without saying,” Lamer said, his voice trembling, and his eyes burning directly into Raymond Brown’s at the defense table, “that the race of the defendants is of no significance in this case except as it may be pertinent to the problem of identification. The defendants are entitled to full justice under the law whatever their color. The state has not and does not bring this proceeding against them simply because they are Negroes. Such an issue is not in this case, and any suggestion to the contrary is wholly improper. This issue should not enter your minds in any respect in determining the guilt or innocence of these defendants. Your decision must be based upon the evidence, and you should perform your sworn duty with favor and without fear and without consideration of any extraneous matters or influences, in toto, with justice and fairness to the state and to the defendants.”
Then, after advising the jurors that they had to return a unanimous verdict, he allowed time for some legal arguments out of their presence. When they returned to the courtroom, Lamer turned to a woman who had been seated at a desk beside him throughout the trial. “All right. You may proceed, Miss Clerk,” he said.
When this woman got up and started to spin the lottery box that was supposedly holding the names of the fourteen jurors still sitting on the panel, I pulled Ray Brown’s coat sleeve. I suspected that the state was getting ready to play another one of its wild jokers, and I wanted Brown to stop it before it happened.
“Hey! What the hell is she doing?” I hissed into his ear. “Get her away from that damn box!”
“Shhh, Rubin,” he hissed right back. “She’s only going to pick the twelve jurors who will have to decide the verdict. Two of the fourteen will have to go,” he said.
And with the first stroke of the woman’s hand, the West Indian was snatched off the jury panel. That left us with a totally white jury to decide if two black men had killed three white people—with the accusation coming from two white convicts, a white prosecutor, and a white judge who did just about everything but to tell the jury straightout not to believe the black witnesses. What a kick in the ass that was. Our whole case had been directed at the only black man on the panel; pointing up to him the fallacy of the identification, the lies, the inducements, the coercion, the conspiracy of the state. But now he was gone. Removed by a slip of paper in a spinning box. The electric chair was staring me dead in the face, and the futility of it all made me so angry that all I could do was just sit there and shake my head.
At about noon, the jury went out to begin its deliberations. They had an hour off for lunch, another hour to smoke and get comfortable in the jury room. It took them about an hour and a half more to reach a verdict. Six whole weeks of legal arguments, crying, pleading, tearing, picking, digging, demanding some motherfucking justice, and these crackers had their shit together within two hours. Goddamn! The four women on the jury returned to the courtroom crying; the men were stonefaced. Their verdict was guilty as charged on all three counts, but with a recommendation of mercy, or life imprisonment.
Life? That only proved to me that they still had doubts. If they had truly thought us guilty of triple murder, how in the world could they have twisted their mouths up to give us life? What life? Being abused in jail forever? It would have been more merciful to shoot me down on the spot. Mercy, my black ass! I would rather they had swung me from the courtroom rafters than for them to come in with that mercy shit. That was only a sham, and everybody had to know it. But the worst part of it was my wife: she fell out in the courtroom when the verdict was announced, and that hurt. Goddammit, that hurt. In a sense, they killed me right then. It tore my heart apart to see my beautiful woman like that. Inside, I wept for death.