No Justice, No Pleas: No Rape Charges Against Sharpton Lawyer Cut from Garner Case
Brown, Garner Cases Suggest Accommodation, Not Litigation Against System
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said yesterday that a three-month-long investigation into charges by a female executive of the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network that she was sexually assaulted by the lawyer Sharpton had selected to handle litigation of the Eric Garner chokehold case against the NYPD proved her charges baseless. Sanford Rubenstein, a prominent attorney, said he was pleased that he was “fully cleared.” Sharpton, who cut Rubenstein from the case when the charges were filed against him, has said nothing of Vance’s decision. In 2012, Vance vindicated former IMF chief Dominique Strauss Kahn of sexually assaulting a hotel housekeeper, saying she wasn’t “credible.” Kahn, a presidential hopeful in France, later settled a civil suit by Nafissatou Diallo.
The Rubenstein saga revives questions about the tactics Sharpton and his legal teams have taken in two major cases that are at the root of nationwide justice and anti-police brutality movements—the chokehold death of Eric Garner in Staten Island, N.Y. on July 17 last year, and the shooting death of Michael Brown on Aug. 9 in Ferguson, Missouri, both involving police.
Leid Stories says Sharpton and his legal teams are accommodating with the systems they are supposed to be litigating against. Large settlements, not justice, are what they’re after.
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