However, Carter had been out at another club, the Nite Spot, which he left with a young man named John Artis, who needed a ride home. The two were picked up by police, but at the time, witnesses didn't identify them as the killers. Months later, Paterson officials arrested Carter and Artis again, promising a "mystery witness" -- a petty thief named Alfred Bello, who was acting as a lookout for a robbery in progress near the tavern at the time of the shootings. Bello had changed his story.

Although there was no evidence linking them to the murders; no weapon had been found; the bar had not been dusted for fingerprints; the suspects' hands had not been tested for traces of gunpowder; and there was no motive, an all-white jury convicted Carter and Artis, basing their decision largely on the testimony of two felons who'd received monetary compensation and reduced sentences. The Hurricane was given three life terms, one for each of his alleged victims.

Carter was sent to Trenton State Prison wearing a $5,000 diamond ring and a gold watch, and his refusal to accept prison clothing landed him in "the hole" -- jewelry, shark-skin suit, black patent-leather shoes and all. In 1970 he transferred to Rahway, a prison "easily identifiable by the . . . cursed stench of pigeon shit polluting the air," he says in the book he wrote within its walls a few years later. He cut himself off from his wife during his first prison term, when his children barely knew him, initially to protect them from heartbreak. But he and his family remain estranged to this day.

In 1974, a copy of his autobiography was sent to Bob Dylan, who took Carter's plight to heart, visiting him in jail and writing an anthem on his behalf. Dylan played "Hurricane" on every stop of his Rolling Thunder Revue tour the next year. The Hurricane was a celebrity cause.

Also in 1974, the two key witnesses in Carter's conviction -- Alfred Bello and Arthur Bradley -- recanted their testimony. The New York Times published a front-page article that depicted his prosecution as the work of racist bullies in the Passaic County prosecutor's office. And in March 1976, the New Jersey Supreme Court overturned the convictions of Carter and Artis, and they were freed on bail.

But months later, at a second trial, Bello again reversed his testimony. After a devastatingly brief six months of freedom, Carter and Artis were sent back to prison. Though he had carefully studied the law for years, including every detail of his own case, after his second defeat Carter says he gave away his law books. He began to study literature instead, reading "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl and Hermann Hesse's "Siddhartha."

Around the same time, Carter says he experienced a vision one sweltering summer day while walking in the yard. After crouching down to catch his breath, he saw a pinprick of light through the cement and brick wall of the old prison. Then the hole grew large. Suddenly, Carter says, he briefly "saw through the prison wall, saw the people on the sidewalks, the cars on the street." He resolved to "train my spirit to find that hole in the wall."

In 1982 the state Supreme Court affirmed the convictions with a 4-3 vote. But Carter's reaction exemplified his newly serene nature; in a note to the judges who voted in the minority, he said, "The ancient philosopher Diogenes spent his whole life searching for one honest man. I have found three. Thank you."

Jewison's film is framed by the story of a group of Canadians -- Lisa Peters, Terry Swinton and Sam Chaiton, leaders of an entrepreneurial commune -- who eventually helped Carter gain freedom a decade later by devoting countless hours, resources and nearly expert analysis to his legal team. As it happened, his out-of-print autobiography -- Carter now calls it his "SOS" -- had fallen into the hands of 15-year-old Lesra Martin, whom the Canadians had adopted from his impoverished Brooklyn neighborhood. They educated him and taught him to read. Carter's "Sixteenth Round" was Martin's first book -- he then shared Carter's tale with his adopted family and the rest of the story will soon be playing in cineplexes across the land. (Jewison's film is based largely on Chaiton and Swinton's book, "Lazarus and the Hurricane: The Untold Story of the Freeing of Rubin'Hurricane' Carter.")

When the film was in pre-production, Carter and Washington were having dinner one night. Carter recalls that he found himself expecting the actor to ask him, "What was it like to be in prison all that time?" He never did. But at one point during the meal, Carter says he noticed Washington staring at himself in a mirror in the restaurant's foyer; after that, when Washington talked to him, Carter saw the actor had absorbed his manner and intensity completely. "I realized that he was giving me back to me. That was when I saw how beautiful and extraordinary this was." Carter calls the film "a miracle."

In a federal appeal in 1985, Judge H. Lee Sarokin said Carter's earlier trials had been "based on racism rather than reason and concealment rather than disclosure." Carter was free at last. (Artis had been released a few years earlier.) Carter and the others had become so close that he went to live with them at the commune upon his release. He has remained in Canada ever since. "America looks very different to those of us who don't live in it," he told me.

Now 62, Carter fights for prisoners who he believes are reliving his own nightmarish past, as director of the Toronto-based Association in Defense of the Wrongfully Convicted, which has several successful DNA-based appeals to its credit. Carter now finds boxing "barbaric," though he eagerly accepted an honorary championship title belt from the World Boxing Council in 1993.

In making justice his fight, he has found a fulfilling mission. While he has rejected the sport that once defined him, the bespectacled Carter knows it is part of his legend. He disliked his nickname when he first heard it, almost 40 years ago, but he now embraces it. Immortalized in Dylan's song as the man who "coulda been the champion of the world," Carter says, "The Hurricane lives on."

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