Freeing David McCallum: The Last Miracle of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter - Softcover

Klonsky, Ken

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1613737939 ISBN 13: 9781613737934

Verlag: Chicago Review Press, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

For ten years before Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter's death, he and his friend and coauthor Ken Klonsky had been working to help free another wrongfully convicted man, David McCallum. McCallum was eventually exonerated and freed after serving twenty-nine years in prison. This is the story of how Carter and Klonsky, along with a group of committed friends and professionals, managed to secure McCallum's release. It details their many struggles, from founding an innocence project to take on the case, finding lawyers willing to work pro bono, and hiring a private detective to sift through old evidence and locate original witnesses, to the most difficult part: convincing members of a deeply flawed criminal justice system to reopen a case that would expose their own mistakes when all they wanted to do was ignore the conflicting evidence. A new district attorney willing to reexamine the case, a documentary film, and an op-ed piece in which Carter, on his deathbed, made a plea for McCallum's release finally turned the tide of justice. 

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ken Klonsky is the coauthor of Eye of the Hurricane with Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter and the author of Life Without and Songs of Aging Children. 

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Freeing David McCallum

The Last Miracle of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter

By Ken Klonsky

Chicago Review Press Incorporated

Copyright © 2018 Ken Klonsky
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-61373-793-4

Contents

Title Page, 
Copyright Page, 
Introduction, 
1 Rubin Carter: The Hurricane, 
2 David McCallum: The Prisoner, 
3 Oscar Michelen: The Lawyer, 
4 Steve Drizin: The False Confessions Expert, 
5 Ray Klonsky: The Brother and the Son, 
6 Chrissie Owens: The Witness, 
7 Laura Cohen: The Parole Resource, 
8 I, Poltergeist, 
9 Mr. DNA: The Suspect, 
10 Marvin Schechter: The Gadfly, 
11 Van Padgett: The PI, 
12 Ken Thompson: The District Attorney, 
Epilogue, 
Acknowledgments, 
Appendix: Contrasting False Confessions, 
Key Figures, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

RUBIN CARTER

The Hurricane

It was a warm, muggy Toronto morning in the summer of 2002. My son, Ray, was at home sleeping off a party that ended after dawn broke. I lay awake the whole night, anticipating how the day would unfold. This summer vacation had a feeling of finality for us both: he was going into his last year of high school, and I was to begin my final year of teaching. I had driven to 155 Delaware Avenue, then the home of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, to interview him for the Sun magazine. I was ridiculously early. Fear and anxiety had me getting caught behind some dump truck or getting a flat tire or losing my way in the city I had lived in for thirty-five years. I got out of the hot car and walked slowly around the block. The interview had been arranged at my home by an intermediary, a dissolute-looking fellow who was to die of alcohol-related illness a few years later. You are going to interview Rubin Carter, I kept telling myself, the famous boxer you hated in your teens; the same Rubin Carter who had been thrown into prison for a triple murder in Paterson, New Jersey, that you were sure he had committed; the same Rubin Carter who was now a legend. I had seen Norman Jewison's searing film The Hurricane, about Carter's wrongful conviction, in which the boxer is brilliantly portrayed by Denzel Washington.

I had actually met Rubin Carter previously when he visited the high school English class I taught. I had taken the class on a field trip to see the The Hurricane, and they were as overwhelmed as I was by Washington's remarkable portrayal. Knowing that Carter lived in Toronto, I suggested to my students that we write to him and invite him to speak to us. It seemed a good life lesson for them to take the risk of rejection while getting a chance to accomplish something of value. Finding his home was easy because the son of my good friends lived across the street from him. The letters from the class moved Carter to call my home. In an act of inexplicable generosity — his speaking engagements in those years earned him minimally ten thousand dollars — he agreed to speak to us for no fee.

What happened that day at school was magical. Carter and I met with the principal in her office, where I first witnessed a part of his repertoire that became familiar to me over the years: glowing charm. He was the most charismatic individual I've ever known. He entered my classroom and spent an hour and a half "running off at the mouth," as he later described it, talking about Og Mandino, spiritual awakenings, and life lessons that neither the students nor I could comprehend. But what he said was secondary to his presence. The fact that he was there made the moment memorable and life changing for those students. He was validating them; they were special that day; they were envied by other students. Many of them went on to become better students and more involved in the school and went on to graduate.

I understood intuitively that his presence was also a gift to me. I wanted to learn where his ideas originated from, what these ideas might mean to others, and what their ultimate meaning might be in my own life. The Sun expressed immediate interest in my interview proposal.

Carter's house was red brick and large, one of thousands of sturdy winter-resistant homes in older Toronto neighborhoods. I climbed up the steps of the covered porch and rang the doorbell. My heart migrated to my throat. I rang again. Nothing. I sat on the railing, thinking he must be doing something that temporarily prevented his coming down. Five minutes later, beset by a different sort of anxiety, I rang again. Still nothing. Maybe the dissolute man had neglected to tell Carter about the appointment or had gotten the day wrong? Excitement slowly ebbed and turned into despair and then to humiliation. Briefcase in hand, I walked back to my car. Had I overreached?

Driving north past his house, I stopped and looked at the front door; seeing no one, I continued on. At that moment, a voice inside me said, You don't spend months setting up an interview and then just go home. So I parked and walked back to a corner where I had spotted a pay telephone. (Yes, they still had those things at the time.) Still resisting the culture of the cell phone, I hadn't bothered to take Carter's number with me. My hand shaking, I called home and, when my groggy son answered, directed him to where he could find the number. He gave it to me, but I immediately forgot it after hanging up. So I had to call back. This time, in a very deliberate and condescending fashion, Ray read out the numbers ... three times.

I couldn't find another quarter, so I went into the corner store for change. Back inside the phone booth, the number eluded me yet again. To stop hyperventilating and to still my mind, I summoned up years of fruitless yoga and meditation. Calling Ray again might make him think that his father was on the verge of dementia. Concentrating fiercely, I heard his patronizing voice: 4 ... 1 ... 6 ... 6 ... 0 ... I dropped in the quarter and punched in the number, and the phone rang at the other end.

A deep and authoritative voice answered: "Rubin Carter speaking. How may I help you?"

A deep breath. "Rubin?"

"Ken?"

"I'm calling from Bloor Street. You didn't answer the door."

He let loose the genuine laugh I was to hear hundreds of times during the course of our friendship. "That was you? I never answer the door. You have to call first."

"But M — — never told me that."

"M — — don't know to say shit. Now come on up, my man."

When I went back to Carter's house, the door was open, but no one was there to greet me, aside from a giant fluffy gray cat that brushed past. I rang the bell again, then ventured inside. Carter came down the stairs smoking a cigarette, dressed in casual dark slacks and a dashiki with a gorgeous African print, his skin a darker shade of black. The house reeked of cigarette smoke and an additional annoyance: a very strong cologne. Whenever I returned home from seeing him, I would open a vial of eucalyptus in my car and throw my clothes in the washing machine.

It didn't occur to me until later why he would splash on such a powerful fragrance, why, as I discovered, he would even bathe in it. For ten years in total, he had been in solitary confinement down in a dark hole at ancient Trenton State Prison. Given that he was only allowed to shower every fourteen days, the smell of his own body was repugnant to him. His preparations for being in public, in addition to the cologne baths, included the insertion of a custom-made glass eye — he had lost one eye after a botched...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Chicago Review Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2017
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1613737939
• ISBN 13: 9781613737934
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 296
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar