Rethinking the Use of Race in Suspect Descriptions

• Author: David M. Tanovich
• Pages: 151-169

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Rethinking the Use

of Race in Suspect

Descriptions

narratives of abuse

The “Hurricane”

In 1999 Norman Jewison’s f‌ilm, The Hurricane, enjoyed tre-

mendous box-off‌ice success, garnering a number of Golden Globe

and Academy Award nominations. The movie chronicled the

wrongful conviction and journey of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter.

In the fall of 1966 Carter was arrested in the shooting of four

individuals in the Lafayette Bar & Gri ll in Patterson, New Jer-

sey. Three of the victims died. The fourth survived but was par-

tially blinded. Carter, who was thirty years old at the time, was

an accomplished professional boxer who was a contender for the

middleweight crown. 1 He was convicted and sentenced to life im-

prisonment on June 29, 1967. Carter served nineteen years in a

New Jersey pr ison before he w as f‌inal ly released on November 7,

1985. 2 In setting aside his convictions, Judge H. Lee Sarokin con-

cluded that Carter had been the victim of racial prof‌iling by the

prosecutor and, ultimately, the jury:

part three: moving forward

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The ex tensive record clearly demonstrates t hat petitioner ’s con-

victions were predicated upon an appea l to racism rather th an

reason.… In essence, the prosecution was permit ted to argue

to the jury that t he defendants who were black were motivated

to murder total strangers solely because they were white.

… For the state to contend that an accused has a motive to

commit murder solely because of his membership in a racial

group is an argument which should never be perm itted to

sway a jury or provide the basis of a conviction.3

In February 1988 the charges against Carter were dismissed. A

week later, Carter came to live in Woodbridge, Ontario, with the

group of Canadians, including his wife, who were instrumental

in his legal victory.4 However, his e xperience with the colour of

justice was not over.

On April 11, 1996, Carter was enjoying dinner with his friends

at a restaurant in Toronto. After dinner, he went to get his car in

the parking lot. Suddenly, four unmarked cruisers surrounded

him. The police were looking for a drug suspect described as

Black, “thirty-ish,” without glasses, and wearing a brown and

white jacket. Other than the fact that he was Black and wearing a

similarly coloured jacket , Carter looked nothin g like the suspect.

He was in his sixties and wearing glasses. Carter was handcuf fed,

arrested, and put in the back of the police cruiser. As one of the

off‌icers put it, “It was a drug buy in a dark area and he resembled

the suspect.”5 Carter was understandably shaken by the incident

and, as he put it, “It was like a nightmare … the last time I was told

I was under arrest I didn’t see the light of day for 20 years.”6

J.J. Harper

On April 13, 1988, the Manitoba government called the Aborig-

inal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba to examine the circumst ances

surrounding the deaths of two Aboriginals in Manitoba: the po-

lice shooting of John Joseph (J.J.) Harper in 1988 and the killing

of Helen Betty Osborne in 1971. The inquiry was given a broad