True To His Words

"The extensive record clearly demonstrates that [the] petitioners' convictions were predicated upon an appeal to racism rather than reason, and concealment rather than disclosure.... To permit convictions to stand which have as their foundation appeals to racial prejudice and the withholding of evidence critical to the defense, is to commit a violation of the Constitution as heinous as the crimes for which these petitioners were tried and convicted."

Terry Swinton called Peters. She and Carter heard the click of call waiting. Peters hit the button. "We did it!" screamed Swinton. She hit the button again. "We won!" she told Carter.

Stunned, Carter raised his eyes. Then he shouted: "We won! We won!"

Paulene McLean, a friend of Lesra's, called Canada. "A complete silence fell over the house," says Lesra. "We were stunned. It was as if, after holding our breaths all those years, we finally could exhale."

In minutes, word had swept around the prison, and then radios were carrying the news. Prisoners flocked around Carter, patting him on the back, while others came running.

"Rube, you've won!"

"Rube, you're on the radio!"

"Way to go, Rube!"

Sarokin ordered Carter released the next day. The state appealed the judge's decision for 26 long months, right up to the U.S. Supreme Court, but it lost at every level. Finally, on Feb. 26, 1988, a Passaic County judge formally dismissed the 1966 indictments. The 22-year odyssey of Rubin Carter and John Artis had ended. It had touched many people in many ways, and it had left the two defendants changed beyond their memories.

For Artis, an only child raised by doting parents to be respectful and live responsibly, prison was a long nightmare that robbed him of his freedom, his wish to raise a family, his dreams of a career as a professional football player. He says it is not easy to confront a prospective employer, who always gets around to asking him what crime he was convicted for. "Ah, triple murder. But...." It's a stigma to this day. And given the tortuous history of the case, it's difficult to explain away.