Defendant at Brawley Defamation Trial Cites Early Assault Reports
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Testimony in the defamation lawsuit against three former advisers of Tawana Brawley focused today on inconsistencies, idiosyncrasies and enigmas in Ms. Brawley’s medical records from the first hours after she was found in a plastic garbage bag, her skin smeared with feces and marked with racial epithets. Reading from pieces of these documents, one defendant, C. Vernon Mason, provided a litany of indications that something unusual happened to Ms. Brawley in November 1987. ”Possible unarmed assault,” Mr. Mason intoned gravely from the witness stand at one point. At another, he recounted: ”Legs were very red, either from cold or burns.” And at still another: ”Patient did not respond to pain, voice or ammonia.” Finally, Mr. Mason read: ”Possible sexual assault.” He was immediately corrected by his lawyer, Stephen C. Jackson, who said the phrase was ”probable sexual assault.” While these notations were premature, inconclusive jottings — only a small portion of the copious information reviewed by a grand jury that found no evidence of a sexual assault — they accurately reflected the alarm and assumptions that initially attended the Brawley case. More : query.nytimes.com |