True To His Words

Chaiton and Terry Swinton sat in the office surrounded by documents, and they pored through papers and folders. "It was like there were two law firms up there," Steel says. "One was Beldock's and the other was This Thing, across the hall, with the Canadians. You could go in there and ask one of these guys, 'We think in such and such a hearing that such and such was said. Do you know what I mean?' Twenty minutes later, they would come across the hall with a transcript open to the page: 'Is this what you're looking for?' "

The Canadians "heightened our awareness and our ability to handle even small issues, which all got woven into these briefs," Beldock says. Friedman was in charge of writing the legal sections of the briefs, and he recalls a day when he saw an unfamiliar statement in a draft of a brief. "Where did this come from?" Friedman asked Ed Graves, another attorney working on the case.

"The Canadians put it in," said Graves.

"Are you sure it's right?"

"Leon," said Graves, "if the Canadians say it's right, it's right."

What all the parties remember, as they were preparing the papers seeking a writ of habeas corpus from U.S. District Court Judge H. Lee Sarokin, was the crackling energy that went into the work—and the panicky sense that this was Carter's last chance to be freed from prison.

By the fall of 1985, Carter's transformation was so dramatic that he was almost unrecognizable. His cell looked like a yuppie pad. He was growing an amaryllis bulb in a pot, padding around on a Persian rug, listening to Otis Redding on his tape deck, hanging Manet prints on the walls, drying his hands on monogrammed towels and eating everything from crab béchamel to beef Wellington—all offerings from the Canadians, who were determined to grease his transition from prison to the outside world. He was greeting fellow prisoners with a smile and a nod and giving fatherly advice to rookie guards.

Two weeks before Sarokin's decision, convinced he would soon be free, Carter started giving away all of his belongings—his typewriter and clothes, his 125 books, his prints and his copper coil. Terry Swinton visited him in prison and asked him where he had gotten his raggedy haircut. "My hair's falling out in clumps," Carter said. "The tension, I guess."

On Nov. 6, 1985, Beldock called the Canadians' apartment to tell them that Sarokin's decision was coming down the next day. The veteran judge had studied voluminous files—by his own reckoning, Carter's is the most important case he has ever decided. "I have seen some very good briefs," Sarokin recalls, "but this was about the best set of briefs I've ever seen. A remarkably good job."

The next day the Swintons went to Sarokin's chambers and waited; Peters stayed at the New Jersey apartment, waiting for Terry Swinton to call, while she talked by phone with Carter. Chaiton, Lesra and the others were at home in Canada, sitting in silence. At about 11 o'clock, Graves walked out of Sarokin's chambers holding the opinion over his head, a smile wreathing his face. Swinton grabbed the papers and read: