Her clothes were torn and burnt and her hair was
cut short and matted. When her clothes were re-
moved at the hospital, racial slurs were found writ-
ten on her body, prompting the Duchess County
Sheriff’s Department to call in the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) to investigate possible civil rights
violations. Almost immediately, three members of
the district attorney’s office began examining the
case, and within two weeks the New York State Police
had joined the investigation.
The suicide days later of part-time police officer
Harry Crist, Jr., offered investigators a potential lead
in the case, although the connection between
Brawley’s abduction and Crist’s suicide proved to be
tenuous, partly because of an alibi presented to the
grand jury by prosecutor Steven Pagones. Soon, ad-
visers to the Brawley family—attorneys Alton Mad-
dox, Jr., and C. Vernon Mason and the Reverend Al
Sharpton—refused to allow Brawley or her family to
cooperate with the investigation, insisting that jus-
tice was impossible for African Americans in a white-
dominated legal system. Eventually Sharpton, Mad-
dox, and Mason asserted that Pagones was one of the
rapists and accused him in frequent news confer-
ences and speeches of being complicit in a plot to
cover up the crime and protect its perpetrators.
During a seven-month-long hearing, the grand
jury identified numerous inconsistencies between
the evidence and Brawley’s account of the crime and
heard from witnesses whose testimony cast doubt on
Brawley’s motives and the veracity of her story. Even-
tually, they concluded that no crime had actually oc-
curred and that no officials had been involved in any
effort to conceal a crime.Impact The Brawley case raised many of the con-
cerns about race and justice that had become partic-
ularly prominent as mainstream issues in the 1980’s.
The perceived ability of Brawley and her advisers
to manipulate those concerns—and through them,
the media—shaped public attitudes throughout the
remainder of the decade and beyond. Brawley’sThe Eighties in America Brawley, Tawana 141
Protesters led by C. Vernon Mason (second from left), Al Sharpton (center), and Alton Maddox (right) march on New York mayor Ed
Koch’s home to protest Tawana Brawley’s treatment.(AP/Wide World Photos)