They had nothing in common but being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Rubin Carter and John Artis came together by accident, two vague acquaintances who happened to be out on the town in Paterson, N.J., one June night in 1966. Mr. Carter was a professional boxer at the tail end of his career, in and out of trouble with the law for most of his life, a flamboyant local celebrity.
Mr. Artis was 19 years old. He was a good student, a high-school track and football star who had a full athletic scholarship waiting for him. (He'd delayed going to college because his mother had died suddenly.) He had no criminal record.
It was late. The nightclub was emptying out. Mr. Artis, who had spent the evening dancing, needed a ride home. He'd met Mr. Carter just once before, but like everyone in Paterson's tightly-knit black community, he knew who the boxer was. Sure, Mr. Carter, said, when asked for a lift. But you're going to drive.
"That was the beginning," Mr. Artis says, "of a real nightmare."
Many are familiar with that nightmare from three books about Mr. Carter's wrongful conviction and imprisonment and the Hollywood film The Hurricane.
But anyone tempted to believe the police theory of what happened that night also has to believe that John Artis was a cold-blooded executioner -- that he was the one carrying the revolver that fired two of the three fatal shots the night three white men were killed at the Lafayette Bar and Grill.
Because of who he was then, and who he is now, that is very hard to imagine, especially while one is sitting across from this soft-spoken, articulate man in sweater and tan sports jacket. Mr. Artis is visiting Toronto for tonight's Night of the Hurricane boxing card at the Air Canada Centre, where Mr. Carter will be feted.
Naturally introverted, he has spoken only occasionally about his part in the story. As one looks at him in the flesh, another of the suspect points surrounding the wrongful convictions of Mr. Carter and Mr. Artis immediately leaps to mind: Witnesses said the two black men who fled the Lafayette Bar and Grill after the killings were approximately the same height and had the same complexion. But Mr. Artis is several shades lighter than Mr. Carter, and tall enough to make them a Mutt and Jeff combination.
In all these years, he says, "I've never had a physical confrontation with another person on this earth. Never, ever."
And so the night of the killings was a particular shock: pulled over by the police, taken to the hospital where one of the dying victims failed to identify him and Mr. Carter as the gunmen. Then 17 hours of interrogation. Months later, while he was at a variety store, police converged with guns drawn, telling him he was charged with murder. He hollered his father's name as they handcuffed him.
"The last thing I saw was my father at the kitchen window looking out as they pushed me into the car," he says.
Mr. Artis was tried with Mr. Carter and convicted with Mr. Carter. While the jury was out, one of the court clerks offered to buy Mr. Artis a drink, because he was so sure he'd be acquitted. But when the jury came back, Mr. Artis says, "I could see the men looked at me and then looked away, and the women dropped their heads and were crying."
He knew what was coming. Three concurrent life sentences. Mr. Carter received consecutive terms.
Mr. Carter knew prison.
"They rolled out the red carpet for him," Mr. Artis says. He was just a scared kid, but because Mr. Carter vouched for him, and because he had value as an athlete, he gradually learned to fit in.
In 1971, during a prison riot, Mr. Artis stood up to other inmates and helped four white guards escape a hostage-taking. A commendation was added to his record, and he was transferred to a medium-security prison, then to a minimum-security facility, where he could attend college unsupervised during the day. In 1976, he and Mr. Carter were granted a new trial.
Not long before, Mr. Artis had been offered a quick pass to freedom. Officials working for New Jersey's then governor Brendan Byrne presented him with a deal for clemency in return for identifying Mr. Carter as the mastermind behind the killings. Mr. Artis refused, and to this day Mr. Carter refers to him as "my hero."
When the two men were convicted in their second trial, which featured the new, dubious prosecution theory of racial revenge, Mr. Artis was devastated.
"They were sacrificing me," he says. "They were willing to sacrifice me, even to death, as long as they got Rubin." He returned to his life as a model prisoner, serving 15 years before being paroled in 1981. That ended when both men's convictions were thrown out in 1985.
As with Mr. Carter, life after prison has not been easy. Mr. Artis has Buerger's disease, an incurable vascular ailment that necessitated the amputation of some of his fingers and toes. Living in Paterson to be near his father, Mr. Artis was regularly pulled over by police, and every traffic incident was front-page news.
In 1986, he pleaded guilty to possession of cocaine. (He used the drug, he explains, because he had been told it could dull the pain of his illness.) The judge at the trial, citing the 1967 murder conviction even though it was overturned, sentenced Mr. Artis as though he had a previous criminal record, giving him six years in prison. He was in jail in 1988 on the day the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear New Jersey's appeal of the federal court ruling, the final legal action on the murder charges.
In 1988, the state Supreme Court overturned Mr. Artis's sentence for drug possession, ruling that he should have been treated as someone with a clean record. As he was resentenced to five years of probation, the original trial judge refused to make a finding that Mr. Artis "had no history of criminal activity or has led an upstanding life." He also advised him to get out of Paterson.
"I've got to go," Mr. Artis says he told his father. "It's not safe for me here." He returned to his childhood home of Virginia, where he lives with his wife Dolly, a social worker he met during his second murder trial. He has been counselling troubled young people.
Only with the release of the film and the subsequent publicity has Mr. Artis begun to tell his life story. He and Mr. Carter will be together tonight, thanks to fight organizers. As was the case all those years ago, they're very different people. But now they have a shared past.
"I respect Rubin, and he respects me," Mr. Artis says. "And I'm honoured that he says I'm his hero."