Many of the key figures involved in Rubin Carter's wrongful conviction are referenced directly in Bob Dylan's "Hurricane," a song which pulls no punches in pointing out the inconsistencies of the police and unreliability of those who would go on to become witnesses for the prosecution in front of the court's all-white jury. As Soundfly notes: "People of Color were routinely harassed by law enforcement on the flimsiest of excuses ... and were often the first to be targeted as well as the last to be believed."
It was learned that two of the key witnesses in the trial, Arthur Dexter Bradley and Alfred Bello, were in the area to commit a criminal act of their own. Bello was keeping watch while Bradley was breaking into a nearby warehouse. As the Financial Times puts it, the pair were "were cajoled and threatened by police into identifying Carter and his co-defendant John Artis," as their own criminality was used to "put the screw" on them, as described in "Hurricane." Bello had originally explained to police that he had discovered the bodies of the victims after entering the bar to buy cigarettes, but later admitted that he had actually emptied the cash register.
Police solicited descriptions of a white getaway vehicle matching that of Carter and Artis, and later claimed to have found ammunition in the car, though this evidence has been disputed, as the bullets did not match those found at the crime scene.
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