He was the judge in the eye of the storm that overturned the murder conviction of boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter.

H. Lee Sarokin spent 15 years on the U-S District Court in Newark, New Jersey and also ruled on high-profile cases involving the tobacco industry and the rights of homeless people.

Carter was a middleweight boxer, wrongfully convicted of murder until Sarokin ordered him freed after almost 20-years in prison.  Once freed, Carter moved to Canada, and from 1993 to 2005, served as executive director of what became “Innocence Canada.”  Carter died in Toronto in 2014 at the age of 76.

Judge Sarokin has died at his retirement home in San Diego.  He was 94.