Rubin Carter all over again

The Mohammad Haneef situation is almost a mirror image of Bob Dylan and Jacques Levy's 'Hurricane,' based on the Rubin Carter story and the subject of the Denzel Washington film of the same name. The full lyrics are here. Instead of a black boxer, of world championship potential, we have a successful Indian doctor with a wife and kids.

Pistol shots ring out in the barroom night / Enter Patty Valentine from the upper hall. / She sees the bartender in a pool of blood, / Cries out, "My God, they killed them all!"
Here comes the story of the Hurricane, / The man the authorities came to blame / For somethin' that he never done. / Put in a prison cell, but one time he could-a been / The champion of the world.

Three bodies lyin' there does Patty see / And anotherman named Bello, movin' around mysteriously. / "I didn't do it," he says, and he throws up his hands / "I was only robbin' the register, I hope you understand. / I saw them leavin'," he says, and he stops / "One of us had better call up the cops." / And so Patty calls the cops / And they arrive on the scene with their red lights flashin' / In the hot New Jersey night.

Meanwhile, far away in another part of town / Rubin Carter and a couple of friends are drivin' around. / Number one contender for the middleweight crown / Had no idea what kinda shit was about to go down / When a cop pulled him over to the side of the road / Just like the time before and the time before that. / In Paterson that's just the way things go. / If you're black you might as well not show up on the street / 'Less you wanna draw the heat.

I think you get the idea. This later part has even more resonance:

Rubin could take a man out with just one punch / But he never did like to talk about it all that much. / It's my work, he'd say, and I do it for pay / And when it's over I'd just as soon go on my way / Up to some paradise / Where the trout streams flow and the air is nice / And ride a horse along a trail. / But then they took him to the jailhouse / Where they try to turn a man into a mouse.

All of Rubin's cards were marked in advance / The trial was a pig-circus, he never had a chance. / The judge made Rubin's witnesses drunkards from the slums / To the white folks who watched he was a revolutionary bum /And to the black folks he was just a crazy nigger. / No one doubted that he pulled the trigger. / And though they could not produce the gun, / The D.A. said he was the one who did the deed /
And the all-white jury agreed.

Rubin Carter was falsely tried. / The crime was murder "one," guess who testified? / Bello and Bradley and they both baldly lied / And the newspapers, they all went along for the ride. / How can the life of such a man /
Be in the palm of some fool's hand? / To see him obviously framed / Couldn't help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land / Where justice is a game.

Now all the criminals in their coats and their ties / Are free to drink martinis and watch the sun rise / While Rubin sits like Buddha in a ten-foot cell / An innocent man in a living hell. / That's the story of the Hurricane, / But it won't be over till they clear his name / And give him back the time he's done. / Put in a prison cell, but one time he could-a been / The champion of the world.