A Union Board Lecture, free and open to the public, will take place at the IU Auditorium at 7:30 p.m. followed by a reception.

Carter, a middleweight boxer, began his professional boxing career in 1961. Five years later, while preparing for a world championship fight, he was arrested as the co-defendant in a triple homicide. Although steadfastly maintaining his innocence, Carter was convicted and sentenced to three life terms, narrowly escaping the electric chair. In 1974, upon the publication of his autobiography, The Sixteenth Round, and the recantations of the state’s two key witnesses, Carter’s case attracted international attention and became a civil rights cause célèbre.

A re-conviction in 1976 followed the second trial. In 1985, a federal court judge overturned the conviction, citing constitutional violations committed by the prosecution and a conviction based on "racism rather than reason and concealment rather than disclosure." In February 1988, a 22-year-old indictment was finally dismissed.