Former US professional boxer Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter, who spent nearly 20 years behind bars, wrongly convicted of murder, has died aged 76.<br /><br />Carter, said to have been battling prostate cancer, was considered a folk hero by many and has been immortalised in film and song.<br /><br />Once a middleweight boxer who earned a world title fight, Carter was arrested for killing three white people in New Jersey in 1966. <br /><br />Carter’s case exploded into national consciousness in 1974, when two key witnesses recanted their testimony, sparking a series of stories by the New York Times and making him a cause celebre for the civil rights movement and prompting Bob Dylan to release “Hurricane”.<br /><br />He was retried in 1976 and convicted again.<br /><br />Carter’s arrest, imprisonment, and the ultimately successful battle to free him after racism was deemed to be behind the guilty verdict inspired a film in 1999 starring Denzel Washington.<br /><br />Carter campaigned for the wrongly convicted from his home in Toronto after being released from jail for good in 1985.
