ADAMS STREET — The trial is set to begin today for Shamel Bey, a Moorish National with no legal training, who is representing himself in a weapons-possession trial that could land him in the slammer for up to 15 years.

One court watcher called the pretrial hearings and jury selection “addictive” and Bey’s performance as an attorney a “train wreck.”

In court Bey wears a fez, a cylindrical, brimless, burgundy hat with a black tassel, and a white, long-sleeved t-shirt. He carries an oversized brown paper bag stuffed with legal papers and other documents.

Occasionally he shoots a cynical glance (which often includes shaking his head and smiling) to his brother, sitting in the audience’s back row and also wearing a fez.

He seems to believe he’s the victim of a conspiracy and police cover-up, and at one point asked prospective jurors if they would be able to see the truth behind the testimony police will give.

“It’s like they say, ‘What’s done in the dark shall be brought into the light,’” Bey told the jury pool when he had finished interviewing them. “Let’s bring it into the light.”

Bey, 32, was arrested in February 2001 on a Brownsville street, when police spotted him carrying a gun, according to prosecutors. Bey ran from the cops and was shot once in the foot, prosecutors said. He has been in jail without bail since the incident.

The top charge against him is second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, a class-C felony.

The defendant’s brother, Tyryn Bey, described the Moors as a black nationalist organization that seeks to provide African-Americans with the nationalist heritage which was stripped from them when their ancestors were brought here and sold as slaves.

Because Shamel Bey wants to be recognized by the court as a Moor and not a black or African-American man, he believes it is necessary to represent himself, his brother told the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

Showing extreme patience, Justice Abraham Gerges has, on several occasions, taken time to explain the rules of the court to Bey. Nevertheless, in pretrial hearings Bey accused the judge of bias when Gerges told him he would be treated like any other lawyer.

Attorneys will make their opening arguments today, and it is not clear whether Bey will present a case. Bey, his court-appointed legal advisor, Michael Harrison, and Assistant District Attorney Vinoo Varghese selected a jury Thursday. Though Varghese asked most jurors direct questions, Bey relied on largely on his instincts, arguing that one juror should remain on the panel over Varghese’s objections, because “she had more spirit than anyone up there.”

Most of Bey’s meandering and generalized questions to the jury pool as a whole — not as individuals — had to be translated by Gerges into more simple constructions, such as, “Will you remain impartial.”

Bey was frustrated by the fact that he was not allowed to ask jurors about their nationality. He said a jury with no Moors would not represent his peers.

One of his last questions of prospective jurors was, “How many of you have been shot by the police?” None had.

© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2004