Big Al's Finest Hour

By Jack E. White

In the end, the trial in Albany never confronted the explosive question that lay at the heart of the case. If the unarmed Amadou Diallo had been a white youth instead of a dark-skinned immigrant from Africa, would he be alive today? "Race didn't become an issue during the trial," says attorney Johnnie Cochran, who got his start prosecuting cases of police misconduct in Los Angeles long before he ever heard of O.J. Simpson and who briefly served as a legal adviser to Diallo's family. "It was like there was a big pink elephant in the room and everyone acted like it wasn't there."

That is why the not-guilty verdict left so many black New Yorkers feeling no justice and no peace. It is also why the Rev. Al Sharpton, for all his flaws, has become the man they turn to when they think they have been victimized by racist cops. Sharpton believes the all-white prosecution team from the Bronx district attorney's office botched the case by failing to offer rebuttal evidence and treating the defendants with kid gloves. "Heck, man, I could have asked better questions than that," Sharpton scoffed after a gingerly cross-examination of one of the accused officers. "The prosecution failed to raise a lot of issues that would have given the jury a better sense of what they were looking at. They never made it clear that many white cops come into the city thinking that they're going into the jungle to tame animals rather than serve the people."

Such bluntness, says the Rev. Floyd Flake, a former New York City Congressman, has so enhanced Sharpton's stature that no Democratic candidate would think of courting the black vote without his endorsement. But Sharpton's flamboyant image and checkered past have made him an easy target for right-wingers to use against their political enemies. For example, after Bill Bradley assailed George W. Bush for hustling votes at South Carolina's Bob Jones University, which still bans interracial dating, conservative pundit George F. Will homed in on Bradley's meetings with Sharpton. Noting that Sharpton "associated with a colossal fraud in the Tawana Brawley case," Will asked Bradley in a TV interview, "Are you comfortable around him? And why?" Bradley ducked the question.

That's one reason I wish Sharpton, 45, had the courage to apologize to Steven Pagones, the white former prosecutor he falsely accused of kidnapping and raping Brawley. Admitting that he did Pagones an injustice--and paying the $65,000 defamation judgment Pagones won against Sharpton last year--is the right thing to do morally. And it would make it harder for Sharpton's critics to deflect his message by harping on lingering doubts about his character. When I made these points to Sharpton, he replied, "You may be right." But he insisted that he won't even consider apologizing unless he loses an appeal of the slander verdict.

It's a big mistake, maybe even a sin, to wait that long because at his best Sharpton has the makings of a moral leader. You could sense that as he stood outside the courthouse in Albany to appeal for calm. "Let not one brick be thrown, not one bottle be thrown," said Sharpton. "Those that believe in Amadou should not betray his memory by acting like those who killed him." That's the kind of talk New York needs to hear as it searches for answers to the questions that were not asked at the trial.