<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Published On 1\/20\/2006 1:20:26 AM
\nBy PARAS D. BHAYANI
\nCrimson Staff Writer<\/p>\n
Rubin Carter, know to many simply as \u201cThe Hurricane,\u201d delivered a stirring speech to a crowd of 150 yesterday at Harvard Law School in which he lambasted the criminal justice systems in the U.S., Canada, and Jamaica for what he claimed was a high incidence of wrongful convictions and a system that is based more often on prejudice and \u201ctunnel vision\u201d than on evidence.<\/p>\n
\u201cWake up!\u201d he implored the crowd. \u201cAnd learn that liberty and the pursuit of happiness are actually the same thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carter recounted the details of his conviction for triple murder in 1966 when he was at the height of his middleweight boxing career. He spoke of how he was saved from the electric chair only because of the quality of his legal representation, and how he still spent nearly twenty years in prison, ten of which were in the pitch dark of solitary confinement.<\/p>\n
Carter also said that when a court granted his 1985 petition for a writ of habeas corpus\u2014one of only three granted that year out of 8,500 filed nationwide\u2014it effectively gave him back his freedom. In overturning Carter\u2019s conviction, the court wrote that \u201cthe trial had been based completely on racism and not on legal evidence.\u201d Carter, who still carries the original writ in his breast pocket, repeatedly referred to habeas corpus as \u201cthe great writ\u201d and said that without it he would have \u201clanguished and died behind bars.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carter also lashed out at the criminal justice system, saying that capital punishment had turned the system into \u201cassembly lines of death,\u201d and pointing to the large numbers of incarcerated minorities\u2014blacks in the U.S., Muslims in France, and Aborigines in Australia\u2014as evidence of its shortcomings.<\/p>\n
Carter ended with a plea for his new group, Innocence International, which he said will expose abuses and wrongful convictions in justice systems across the world.<\/p>\n
Carter was joined at the event by Courtney Kazembe and Kevin Wallen, both of whom work in Jamaican prisons to promote \u201crestorative justice,\u201d and Charles R. Nesson, the Weld professor of law and the co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society.<\/p>\n
Kazembe and Wallen first spoke of their work in rehabilitating Jamaican prison inmates, and how after six years in operation, their program, Students Expressing Truth, has kept every one of its participants from becoming repeat offenders. Kazembe, who addressed the crowd first, outlined the theoretical contours of their program and how \u201ctransformation\u201d can be used to reduce redicivism and to give people a \u201creason to live.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOur program makes people ask, \u2018Why am I getting the results I\u2019m getting in my life?,\u2019\u201d Kazembe said. \u201cIt\u2019s a powerful realization where you cause people to step outside of themselves [and] take and accept responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n
Immediately after Kazembe, Wallen began to fill in the details, starting with an extended anecdote about his path to becoming a teacher and motivational speaker. He told of his first meeting with Carter and how the two were invited to visit a Jamaican prison after inmates attended one of their events.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe prison that was designed to hold 600 inmates was holding 1,800,\u201d Wallen said. \u201cThe prisoners were in 8.5 by 5.5 by 11 foot cells, and there were a minimum of four and a maximum of nine people in each one. The inmates were locked down in their cells at 3 p.m. each day and not released until 9 a.m. the next morning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wallen also spoke of the rampant homophobia in Jamaican prisons, saying that the prisons have sections labeled \u201cBoy\u2019s Towns\u201d where homosexuals are isolated from the other inmates.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf someone calls you gay and you don\u2019t deny it, you have to go to \u2018Boy\u2019s Town,\u2019\u201d Wallen said. \u201cIf a cup hits the floor and you drink from it again, you\u2019re gay. It sounds stupid and it is, but [it\u2019s] something they have to live with.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of his own prison sentence, Carter said, \u201cI sat in that cell feasting on hatred for ten years.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014Staff writer Paras D. Bhayani can be reached at pbhayani@fas.harvard.edu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
News Carter Storms Law School Former boxing champion bashes abuses Published On 1\/20\/2006 1:20:26 AM By PARAS D. BHAYANI Crimson Staff Writer Rubin Carter, know to many simply as \u201cThe Hurricane,\u201d delivered a stirring speech to a crowd of 150 yesterday at Harvard Law School in which he lambasted the criminal justice systems in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":370,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[439,2183,1329,1328,2175,2182],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-harvard","category-jah-cure","category-jamaica","category-kevin-wallen","category-nessons-winter-evidence","category-sset","p1","y2006","m01","d20","h11"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/nesson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/nesson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/nesson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/nesson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/370"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/nesson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/nesson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/nesson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/nesson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/nesson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}