ALI, MUHAMMAD ORIGINAL ARTWORK BY IDA LIBBY DENSGROVE (1976-CARTER HEARING)
On June 17, 1966, at about 2:30 AM, two black males entered the Lafayette Bar and Grill in Paterson, NJ, and started shooting. The bartender and one male customer were killed instantly. A badly-wounded female customer died almost a month later, while a third customer survived the attack, despite being shot in the head and losing the sight in one eye. Carter and a companion, John Artis, were brought to the scene and questioned extensively before being released. There was little physical evidence, and no eyewitness identified Carter or Artis as the killers. However, several months later, two petty criminals named Alfred Bello and Dexter Bradley - who had been near the Lafayette that same night identified the two black males that they claimed to have seen carrying weapons outside the bar as Carter and Artis. This, plus the identification of Carter's car by another witness, and the presence in Carter's car of ammunition similar to that used in the murders, convinced an all-white jury that