From newpaper reporting...
On the night of June 16 and the early morning of June 17, 1966, while his wife and their 2-year-old daughter, Theodora, were at home, Mr. Carter visited several bars in Paterson, winding up at one called the Night Spot.
A half-mile away, about 2:30 a.m., two black men entered the Lafayette Grill and killed two white men and a white woman in a barrage of shotgun and pistol blasts. The police immediately suspected that the shootings were in retaliation for the shotgun murder that night in Paterson of a black tavern owner by the former owner, who was white.
Mr. Carter had encountered John Artis, a casual acquaintance, that night and was giving him a lift home when they were stopped by the police. They said Mr. Carter’s leased white Dodge sedan resembled the murderers’ getaway car. Except for being black, neither Mr. Carter nor Mr. Artis matched the original descriptions of the killers. They were released after both passed lie detector tests and a patron who had been wounded in the Lafayette Grill failed to identify them. But they remained under suspicion.
At their trial in 1967, three alibi witnesses placed them elsewhere at the time of the killings. They were nonetheless convicted, primarily on the evidence of Alfred P. Bello and Arthur D. Bradley, two white prosecution witnesses with long criminal records. Mr. Bello testified that he saw both defendants leave the tavern with guns in their hands; Mr. Bradley identified only Mr. Carter.
Both witnesses admitted that they were in the vicinity of the Lafayette Grill at the time of the murders because they were trying to burglarize a factory nearby.
The prosecution offered no motive for the slayings. Facing the possibility of death sentences, Mr. Carter received 30 years to life and Mr. Artis 15 years to life. Their appeals were denied unanimously by the New Jersey Supreme Court.
By 1974, Mr. Carter’s prospects for a new trial seemed hopeless. But that summer the New Jersey Public Defender’s Office and The New York Times independently obtained recantations from Mr. Bello and Mr. Bradley. Both men asserted that detectives had pressured them into falsely identifying Mr. Carter and Mr. Artis.
Moreover, it was revealed that the prosecution had secretly promised leniency to the two witnesses regarding their own crimes in exchange for their cooperation in the Carter case.