The Seventeenth Round

Bob Dylan had been singing for it. Muhammad Ali had given speeches for it. Selwyn Raab, a New York Times reporter, had pushed for it in a series of crusading investigative articles. Finally, last week it came about: the nine-year-old murder conviction of Rubin ("Hurricane") Carter, 38, and also that of his friend John Artis, 30, was unanimously thrown out by the seven justices of the New Jersey Supreme Court. The "defendants' right to a fair trial was substantially prejudiced," said Justice Mark Sullivan, because the prosecution had failed to disclose evidence about the reliability of its two principal witnesses.

White Car. The dry prose of the court opinion could not reflect the long, emotional ordeal that began for Hurricane on a June night in 1966. Two black gunmen had stepped into a bar in Paterson, N.J., and almost immediately opened fire with a 12-gauge shotgun and .32-cal. pistol, killing the bartender and two of three customers. Told that the killers had fled in a white car, police briefly stopped a white Dodge but let the occupants go when they recognized Carter, then a nationally ranked middleweight boxer who lived in Paterson. Later that night the Dodge was identified by a witness, and a search of it turned up one .32-cal. bullet and a 12-gauge shotgun shell. But Carter and Artis, who had also been in the car, were not charged until four months later when two professional thieves suddenly provided identifications.

Alfred Bello and Arthur Dexter Bradley had been trying to break into a factory two blocks from the bar. When they heard the shots, they headed for the tavern in time to see two blacks leaving, and after Bello paused to rifle the bar's cash register, he called the police. But it was months before Bello finally told police that he had recognized the boxer and Artis; at the same time Bradley said he could identify Carter. Though defense witnesses said that Carter and Artis had been in another, nearby bar at about the time of the shootings, they were sentenced to life. In 1969 the New Jersey Supreme Court upheld the convictions, and for a while that seemed to be that.

Then in 1973 Raab was asked to help investigate the case. He and others found Bello and Bradley, each of whom said he had lied in his identification. Carter wrote a hard, seething book, The Sixteenth Round (Viking, $11.95), about his life before and in prison. Soon Dylan, Ali and other celebrities joined the push to free Carter (TIME, Dec. 22). In the end, though, it was a legal misstep that led to last week's victory.

When a hearing was held on Bello's and Bradley's recantations, the prosecution introduced a taped interrogation of Bello and other statements that revealed promises made by police to help the two with various criminal cases against them. The defense had been told during cross-examination of the witnesses that there had been no such deals and so argued that the new information should have been provided at the time of the trial. The state supreme court agreed that the material clearly could have "affected the jury's evaluation of the credibility" of the eyewitnesses and sent the case back for a new trial.