Jury Acquits Sharpton of Looting Charity : Courts: The black activist had been charged with fraud, falsifying records and larceny. The defense said prosecutors were on a vendetta.

After deliberating a day, a jury cleared the Rev. Al Sharpton on Monday of criminal charges that he looted the charity he founded 19 years ago.

The controversial civil rights activist was charged in a 67-count indictment with fraud, falsifying business records and stealing more than $250,000 in contributions from the National Youth Movement. He also was accused of illegally calling the group a nonprofit, tax exempt organization.

Defense lawyers had argued the indictment was part of a vendetta against Sharpton by New York state Atty. Gen. Robert Abrams.

Sharpton was indicted last year--seven months after a grand jury, following an exhaustive investigation, concluded that Tawana Brawley, a black teen-ager, had lied when she claimed she was kidnaped and raped by a group of white men in Dutchess County, north of New York City. Sharpton, a 36-year-old Pentecostal preacher without a pulpit, acted as one of Brawley’s closest advisers and successfully urged her to refuse to testify before the grand jury. Abrams had led the probe of Brawley’s claims.

In his opening argument, New York state Assistant Atty. Gen. Victor Genecin told the predominately black jury that Sharpton used his charity to generate cash by soliciting money from businesses, particularly entertainment and record companies. In some instances, the prosecutor said, Sharpton attacked the record companies for racism then asked them for contributions for anti-drug celebrity dinners at Manhattan hotels and for advertisements in “Think,” an anti-drug magazine, which was never published.

A prosecution witness testified that Sharpton paid people $5 apiece to attend anti-drug demonstrations because he had no following of his own, and the National Youth Movement, which claimed 30,000 members and branches in 16 cities, really consisted of only a tiny staff working out of a small office in a Brooklyn hospital.

The witness, Kevin Watkins, who worked as an administrator for the National Youth Movement in 1986, said that Sharpton didn’t deposit the proceeds from a celebrity dinner he sponsored that year into the movement’s bank account. When he asked Sharpton where the money went, Watkins testified the minister replied: “That’s my money, and I’ll do what I want with it.”

Lawyers for Sharpton argued he was being framed by Abrams for siding with Brawley, that New York’s attorney general really was interested in silencing a sympathetic voice of the downtrodden. Alton H. Maddox Jr., Sharpton’s lawyer, insisted the minister never took any money from the National Youth Movement.

Sharpton still faces charges of evading $35,000 in New York state income taxes. That case also is being prosecuted by Abrams’ office.