Protest Greets Sharpton Trial

The Tawana Brawley saga picked up where it left off nine years ago: with street protests and charges of racism. The furor delayed jury selection three hours in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., in a $150-million defamation suit brought by a former prosecutor against the Rev. Al Sharpton and two other advisors to Brawley, who claimed six white law enforcement officers abducted and raped her in 1987. The black teenager’s claims and others--that racial insults were scrawled on her body and she was smeared with feces--were declared a hoax by a grand jury that also exonerated the man at the center of the accusations, then-Assistant Dist. Atty. Steven Pagones. Pagones, 36, and an assistant state attorney general, is also suing Alton Maddox and C. Vernon Mason, saying the three men defamed his character by calling him a rapist more than 30 times. Last month, a judge refused to dismiss Pagones’ suit, saying the trio showed malice when they wrongly accused him.