H. Lee Sarokin, who as a federal decide in New Jersey overturned the triple-murder conviction of the star boxer Rubin (Hurricane) Carter, voided a public library’s ban in opposition to a homeless man and angered cigarette corporations that claimed he had proven bias in opposition to them, died on Tuesday within the La Jolla part of San Diego, the place he and his spouse, Margie, lived in retirement. He was 94.

His son Jeff Sarokin stated the trigger was pulmonary fibrosis.

Judge Sarokin (pronounced SAR-eh-kin) resigned from the bench in 1996 whereas sitting on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia, the place he had served for rather less than two years.

He had gained huge discover lengthy earlier than that, throughout his 15 years as a United States District Court decide in Newark, the place he was maybe finest recognized for his resolution within the Carter case.

That case started when three white folks have been shot to loss of life in a Paterson, N.J., tavern in 1966. Mr. Carter and an acquaintance, John Artis, each Black, have been convicted of the killings by an all-white jury. Mr. Carter was sentenced to 30 years to life in jail, and Mr. Artis to fifteen years to life.

The prosecution had provided no motive, and a number of other folks had positioned the defendants elsewhere on the time of the killings. But they have been convicted, largely on the testimony of two males with lengthy legal information, one in all whom stated he had seen Mr. Carter and Mr. Artis depart the tavern with weapons of their fingers.

In 1976, the State Supreme Court overturned the convictions after these witnesses recanted their testimony and proof of prosecutorial misconduct emerged. In a retrial, the prosecution maintained that the murders had been revenge for the killing of a Black tavern proprietor, and the witness who had initially positioned an armed Mr. Carter on the scene recanted his recantation. Mr. Carter and Mr. Artis have been once more discovered responsible.

When state courtroom appeals failed, protection legal professionals introduced the case to the federal courtroom in Newark, arguing earlier than Judge Sarokin in 1985 that the convictions needs to be overturned due to constitutional violations. The judge agreed, holding that the prosecutors had based mostly their case on “an appeal to racism rather than reason, concealment rather than disclosure.”

Judge Sarokin stated that the prosecution had “fatally infected the trial” by invoking the racial revenge idea with out ample proof to assist it, and that it had improperly withheld info that would have aided the protection. Mr. Carter was freed after almost twenty years in jail. (Mr. Artis had already been launched on parole.)

Shortly earlier than he died in 2014, Mr. Carter wrote in The New York Daily News that he had been “freed from a living hell by the brave Judge H. Lee Sarokin.”

After Mr. Carter’s loss of life, the long-retired Judge Sarokin revealed that yearly, on the anniversary of his ruling, Mr. Carter had telephoned him to speak. “His calls touched me deeply,” he advised The San Diego Union-Tribune.

In “The Hurricane,” a 1999 movie starring Denzel Washington as Mr. Carter, the a part of Judge Sarokin was performed by Rod Steiger.

In one other high-profile case, Judge Sarokin dominated in 1991 {that a} homeless man couldn’t be barred from the Morristown, N.J., library due to his odor. He stated that whereas public libraries might implement rules governing their patrons, the rules utilized by the Morristown library violated the person’s rights as a result of they have been too broad.

“The policy neither contains nor refers to identifiable standards” of hygiene that represent a nuisance to others, he stated, and “affords the library staff and police excessive discretion in its enforcement.”

He added, “If we wish to shield our eyes and noses from the homeless, we should revoke their condition, not their library cards.”

Librarians whose buildings have been being more and more used as refuges by homeless folks expressed concern over the ruling. An appeals courtroom overturned it, saying that the regulation was legitimate as a result of “it would be impossible to list all the various factual predicates” of a hygiene nuisance.

Although he was genial within the courtroom, Judge Sarokin might write harshly crucial selections. In the tobacco circumstances, through which corporations have been the targets of lawsuits accusing them of hiding the risks of smoking, the businesses charged that he needs to be eliminated as a result of the language in a few of his rulings confirmed a pro-plaintiff bias.

In 1992, the tobacco corporations succeeded in having him ousted from one case after he started a ruling by flatly stating that amongst these “who believe that illness and death of consumers is an appropriate cost of their own prosperity,” the tobacco business “may be the king of concealment and disinformation.”

An appeals courtroom dominated that, since whether or not the businesses had hidden the hurt of smoking was to be determined by a jury, Judge Sarokin needed to step down as a result of he had violated requirements on the “appearance of impartiality.”

Two years later, when Judge Sarokin was nominated to serve on the identical appeals courtroom, he acknowledged at a Senate listening to that his language in that ruling might need been “unduly strong.” He added, “I accept that I have been irrepressible at times.”

Long after he retired, he returned to the topic as digital cigarette corporations fought the scrutiny of the Food and Drug Administration. “Not much has changed,” he wrote in a letter to The New York Times in 2016.

”I presided over the primary tobacco litigation for about 10 years,” he continued. “At my Senate hearing for elevation to the Court of Appeals, I conceded quite reluctantly that my language may not have been appropriate for a judicial opinion. I now wish to retract that concession and declare that it wasn’t harsh enough.”

Haddon Lee Sarokin was born in Perth Amboy, N.J., on Nov. 25, 1928, to Samuel and Reebe Sarokin. His father printed small native newspapers and a state industrial listing, and his mom labored for the newspapers.

He graduated from Dartmouth College and, in 1953, from Harvard Law School. He was a lawyer for Union County, N.J., within the Nineteen Sixties however was primarily in personal observe till, appointed by President Jimmy Carter, he joined the federal courtroom in Newark in 1979.

His nomination to the Court of Appeals in 1994, by President Bill Clinton, had a tricky time within the Senate, with Republicans accusing him of being an irresponsible, soft-on-crime liberal, but it surely was in the end authorized. Those criticisms surfaced once more in 1996, when Judge Sarokin was amongst a number of judges who turned marketing campaign fodder for Republicans when Mr. Clinton ran for a second time period.

He introduced that June that he was resigning from the bench. “I see my life’s work and reputation being disparaged on an almost daily basis,” he stated on the time, “and I find myself unable to ignore it.”

He denied judicial colleagues’ hypothesis that his resolution was additionally associated to their rejection of what a courtroom administrator referred to as his “extremely unusual” request that he be allowed to maneuver to California, the place his kids and grandchildren lived, and to commute to the Philadelphia courtroom as wanted.

Settling within the San Diego space, Judge Sarokin turned a non-public mediator and arbitrator and wrote commentary on authorized and political issues for his personal weblog and later for HuffPost. He additionally wrote a number of performs, staged by an area repertory theater. which addressed problems with social justice and civil rights.

In addition to his spouse and his son Jeff, Judge Sarokin is survived by one other son, Jim; a daughter, Abby Mantini; two stepchildren, Ted Schlein and Kathy Schlein; and 11 grandchildren.

In a 1989 interview on the general public tv program “The Open Mind,” Judge Sarokin advised the host, Richard D. Heffner, that when a decide was referred to as an activist, as conservative critics typically labeled him, “it means that somebody does not agree” with a call. “If they agree,” he added, “you’re a supporter of the Constitution.”

Remy Tumin contributed reporting.