Judge who freed Hurricane Carter now helping six imprisoned men, but only Obama can save them
The judge who freed famed boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter from prison after 19 years, saying his prosecution was based on “an appeal to racism rather than reason,” has taken on another long-shot case with racial overtones: the conviction of six Denver men, five of them black, who launched a software company to help federal, state and local law enforcement agencies communicate with each other after the failures preceding the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
H. Lee Sarokin is now retired from the federal bench and living in California, having gained renown not only for granting the federal appeal of Carter’s murder conviction but also for presiding over the first civil suit to find a tobacco company liable for a smoker’s death. Two years ago he was approached by a group advocating for the “IRP 6,” the six Denver men who were convicted in federal court in 2011 and received sentences of seven to 11 years in prison. Prosecutors argued that their software company, which built up $5 million in debt, was simply a scam. Their appeals are now exhausted, and their last remedy lies with a clemency petition pending before President Barack Obama.
Initially, Sarokin focused on a procedural argument the defendants had with their trial judge, and wrote about that for the Huffington Post. But soon, Sarokin became convinced of their innocence. And so he immersed himself in the facts of the case and in the backgrounds of the six men, who were all members of the same church, several of them military veterans, all with families and no criminal records. And then he wrote a play about the case, titled “The Race Card Face Up,” featuring actors speaking as five of the six defendants, and after it was staged last November at a playhouse outside San Diego, it was performed and filmed again in May and placed on YouTube.
Sarokin’s characters pull no punches. “How many white executives go to prison for 11 years for not paying corporate debt?” one asks. One character notes that the white defendant, David A. Zirpolo, is not on stage with them. Why? “His friends and family believe,” the actor says, “that he wouldn’t have been imprisoned if he hadn’t gone into business with five black brothers. And I suspect they may be right.”