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Washington - Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, the boxer whose racially-tinged wrongful murder conviction made him a symbol of injustice, died on Sunday at the age of 76.
Carter, who was convicted twice and imprisoned for 19 years before he was exonerated in 1985, died on Sunday at his home in Toronto, the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted (AIDWYC) confirmed.
From 1993 to 2005, Carter served as the executive director of the Canadian organisation, which said it was "deeply saddened" by the death of "a truly courageous man who fought tirelessly to free others who had suffered the same fate".
US and Canadian media reported that Carter had been battling prostate cancer.
Carter was a middleweight contender before he was convicted in the 1966 murders of three people who were shot and killed at a tavern in Paterson, New Jersey.
A fearsome fighter, Carter scored his biggest win in 1963, when he stopped past and future world champion Emile Griffith in the very first round of a non-title clash.
He lost a 15-round unanimous decision to Joey Giardello in a middleweight world title fight in 1964 - his only world championship bout.
"He could have gone a long way," Griffith said. "I should know. He knocked me down and stopped me."
However, Carter's ring career was abruptly curtailed by his triple murder conviction in 1967.
He denied the crime, and his story caught the attention of boxing great Muhammad Ali and inspired Bob Dylan's 1975 song Hurricane.
Decades later, 1999 flick The Hurricane, earned Denzel Washington an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Carter, although some factual inaccuracies in the film provoked criticism.
Carter was convicted along with his friend John Artis, who was also black, by an all-white jury in the death of two white men and a white woman.
The convictions were gained in part with the testimony of two convicted felons who placed Carter and Artis at the scene, but later recanted.
Carter was given a second trial in 1976 and convicted yet again.
In 1985, however, Carter was exonerated by US district court judge, H Lee Sarokin, who said the conviction had been "based on an appeal to racism rather than reason".
After finally being released, Carter, a native of New Jersey, moved to Toronto.
