Judge vacates conviction against teen involved in racially charged incident
A state judge in Louisiana has vacated one of two convictions against a teen involved in a violent, racially charged incident at a school in the town of Jena that left another teen hospitalized. Police had arrested Mychall Bell and five other teens—dubbed the "Jena 6"—on attempted murder and conspiracy charges after a December 4, 2006, fight at the local high school. In September 2006, as the school year kicked off, a black Jena High School student asked the vice principal if he and some friends could sit under an oak tree where the white students typically congregated. Told by the vice principal they could sit wherever they pleased, the student and his pals plopped down sprawling branches of a shade tree in the campus courtyard. The next day, students arrived at school to find three nooses hanging from those branches. The school’s principal recommended expulsion for those behind the nooses, according to the local newspaper in nearby Alexandria. Instead, The Town Talk reported, a school district committee overruled the recommendation and suspended three white students for three days for hanging the nooses, a gesture written off as a prank. A series of scuffles ensued over the next three months as racial tension at the school escalated. LaSalle Parish District Attorney J. Reed Walters was summoned to address the student body. Off-campus fights were reported. Robert Bailey, one of the Jena 6, says he had a beer bottle broken over his head in one incident, a shotgun pulled on him in another. On November 30, someone torched the school's main academic building. The arson remains unsolved, but many suspect it's linked to the discord strangling Jena High.
Four days after the arson, several students jumped a white classmate, Justin Barker, knocking him unconscious before stomping and kicking him. Parents of the Jena 6 say they heard Justin was hurling racial epithets. Justin's parents say he did nothing to provoke the beating. Six black teens were arrested and charged with attempted murder. The weapons used, according to the charges—shoes. Mychal Bell wasn't convicted of attempted murder. The charges were diluted to aggravated battery and conspiracy, and the judge has vacated the charge of conspiracy to commit second-degree aggravated battery, agreeing with Mychal’s attorneys that the charge should have been brought against Mychal in juvenile court rather than adult court. Mr. Walters has reduced the charges against two other students to second-degree aggravated battery, the same charge on which Mychal was convicted. Only Mychal remains in jail, on a $90,000 bond, and the judge has refused to lower it, citing Mychal’s criminal record, which includes four juvenile offenses—two simple battery charges among them. The case is getting international media attention—a buzz that has drawn the NAACP and civil rights stalwarts such as the Rev. Al Sharpton and Martin Luther King III—but many in Jena are skeptical the students can get a fair trial. "Jena has been a community that has had self-imposed segregation probably since the '50s. They never got the memo," says radio host Tony Brown, who coined the name Jena 6. Other longtime residents, however, paint a more harmonious portrait of Jena and blame the media for casting their town in a negative light. Advocates for the Jena 6 aren't saying the boys should be let off if they indeed pummeled Justin Barker. Rather, they're saying the charges should match the crime—and that the juvenile court should handle the teens' cases.
CNN By Susan Roesgen & Eliott C. McLaughlin
[Editor’s Note: The Associated Press reports below that school officials at the school have banned students from wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the words "Free the Jena 6." According to LaSalle Parish Schools Superintendent Roy Breithaupt, the reason for the decision was that the shirts caused a disruption on campus. The events in Jena have sparked protests and editorials around the country.]
KATC3 By Associated Press