Racist aftermath of Brawley case
Civil rights activists face huge fines
By Pat Chin
Brooklyn, N.Y.
On July 13, the jury in the Tawana Brawley
libel case found civil rights activists Rev. Al Sharpton, C.
Vernon Mason and Alton Maddox guilty of defaming former
Assistant District Attorney Steven Pagones.
It's a legal lynching. Nothing better describes the
so-called judicial process that has been unfolding in upstate
New York's Dutchess County since Tawana Brawley accused six
white men of abducting and raping her in November 1987.
The lawsuit, which seeks $395 million in damages, was
resumed eight months ago from a case first filed on Oct. 31,
1988, by Pagones against Brawley and her three advisers.
Pagones, who is white, picked up the case some ten years
after a grand jury said he was innocent in the abduction and
rape of the young high school student. The Brawley advisers
have branded the jury's report a "fraud."
Brawley had been found semiconscious on Nov. 27, 1987, on
the side of a highway. The 15-year-old African-American was
wrapped in a plastic bag and half frozen. Feces had been
smeared on her face. "KKK" and other racist slurs were marked
on her body.
She later accused Pagones of being one of six white men who
had abducted, raped and tortured her. Another, she said, had
flashed a badge.
Brawley was then demonized in the big-business media,
accused, along with Mason, Maddox and Sharpton, of "upsetting
race relations."
Since local law enforcement officials had been blamed by
Brawley, her three advisers called on then-governor Mario Cuomo
to appoint a special prosecutor. But Cuomo refused. Instead, a
grand jury was convened under Attorney General Robert Abrams.
Abrams had a house in Dutchess County at the time and was
reportedly a close friend of the prosecutor-a central suspect
in the case.
Because of this and other irregularities, Maddox charged
Abrams' office in March 1988 with "attempting a cover-up for
the good-old-boy network." He announced that Brawley's lawyers
and family would not cooperate with the grand jury.
The Brawley charges of rape, abduction and torture
reverberated in the highest pinnacles of state power. This
triggered a firestorm of retribution from the
white-male-dominated capitalist state and its corporate media.
Brawley's resistance to the grand jury intensified the
attacks.
Maddox and Mason were threatened by Cuomo with prosecution.
In June 1988, Tawana's mother, Glenda Brawley, was fined and
sentenced to 30 days in jail for refusing to cooperate. Like a
runaway slave with a bounty on her head, she sought refuge in a
church.
Brawley and her family were chased all over the country.
Mason and Maddox were subsequently barred from practicing law,
and Sharpton has been constantly hounded by the press in
connection with the case.
Some eleven months after Brawley was found on the side of
the highway, the majority-white grand jury dismissed her
accusations as a hoax.
The latest reactionary phase, in a country obsessed with
denying its racism, is now being played out through Pagones'
case against Mason, Maddox and Sharpton.
In a defamation lawsuit involving a public official like
Pagones, the burden of proof falls on the accuser to show that
the defendant deliberately lied, with malice or a "reckless
disregard for the truth."
Legal experts agree that this challenge is extremely
difficult to meet. "The essence of the defense is not whether
or not the statement is true but whether or not the defendant
believed the statement was true," said Herschel P. Fink, a
Detroit libel lawyer quoted in the New York Times of Dec. 30,
1991.
The jury, composed of four whites and two Blacks,
deliberated for four days. They found the three advisers guilty
of ten of 22 statements the prosecution claimed to be
defamatory. One Black juror reportedly refused to sign the
verdict sheet, but in a civil case the jury's vote need not be
unanimous.
Sharpton, whose popularity took the ruling class by surprise
last year when he almost captured the Democratic Party
nomination for mayor of New York, took the biggest hit. He was
charged with defaming Pagones seven times. Maddox faces two
charges and Mason one.
According to attorney Victor Covner, a defamation
specialist, only one of the 22 statements introduced by
prosecution lawyer William E. Stanton meets the defamation
test. And even that one, made by C. Vernon Mason after the
grand jury report, might not stand on appeal. In a discussion
July 15 on WBAI-FM, Covner pointed out that the great majority
of the statements were made before the grand jury had issued
its findings.
To a large degree, it was the grand jury report, which the
defendants deemed a "fraud," that was apparently critical in
the jury's decision, said the July 16-22 Amsterdam News.
At the beginning of the case, Judge S. Barrett Hickman had
instructed the jury that the truth was already established in
the grand jury report. It was the centerpiece of Pagones's
case. But the defendants were barred from introducing portions
of the document and minutes of the 1988 proceeding to refute
the accuracy of its conclusions.
The jury is now considering punitive and compensatory
damages against Sharpton, Mason and Maddox.
"This is a battle that obviously is not over," asserted
Sharpton's lawyer, Michael A. Hardy, after the verdict was
announced. An appeal is planned.
Racism is like a festering sore in the U.S. As this case
shows, you don't have to be a revolutionary to be a target.
Anyone who challenges the self-serving selective system of
bourgeois justice must be prepared to counter the retribution
of the capitalist state.
The Pagones libel case is, in fact, an attempt to chill all
progressive activism, particularly if aimed against the
entrenched racism underpinning the profit-driven economic
system.
Fortunately for the anti-racist struggle in the U.S., not
everyone is being fooled.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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