Charges Reduced in 'Jena 6' Attack

[ariesgem]

Source: Associated Press

ENA, La. (AP) — Prosecutors on Tuesday reduced the attempted murder charges against two more teenagers among the "Jena Six," a group of black high school students who were arrested following an attack on a white schoolmate.

Five of the teens were originally charged with attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder, carrying sentences of up to 80 years in prison. The sixth faces undisclosed juvenile charges. Civil rights advocates have decried the charges as unfairly harsh.

On Tuesday, charges against Carwin Jones and Theo Shaw were reduced to aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy. That same reduction was made earlier for Mychal Bell, who was tried and found guilty and could be sentenced to 22 1/2 years at a hearing Sept. 20. Also awaiting trial are Robert Bailey Jr. and Bryant Purvis, who still face attempted murder charges, and the unidentified juvenile.

The attack on Justin Barker, 18, came amid tense race relations in Jena, a mostly white town of 3,000 in north-central Louisiana where racial tensions have grown since incidents that started last school year at Jena High. After a black student sat under a tree on the school campus where white students traditionally congregated, three nooses were hung in the tree.

Read more: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hEDGACsk9ZRgdFmzTA-FtR5-3LdQ

[ThomCat]

1. This entire case is total bullshit.

Blatant racism from beginning to end.

After being threatened with a noose hanging from a tree, the white boys are supposedly the victims and the black boys go to jail for most of the rest of their lives.
x(

How is it possible that people can look the other way while this still happens?

[Pavulon]

2. A random kid was beaten unconscious

by a group of people. This is a crime. Removing race makes this pretty easy. Who cares if they were motivated because they were pissed about some event that happened days ago, or they were motivated by a happy urge to beat someone. Irrelevant. Cant put someone in the hospital without consequence.

A many on one beating is a serious crime here, justifies use of deadly force in this state.

[Maribelle]

4. Three nooses hanging in the tree was terrorism, was racism, and was a crime.

Had that crime been taken care of properly by the white racists, the second crime would never have happened. I blame the parents, the school staff, and the DA for the second crime.

[Pavulon]

5. I blame the people

who committed the crimes. I could blame god and the weatherman, but I will settle for the peckerwood who put up a noose (not sure if it is a crime, but is horribly stupid) and the people who beak a person unconscious paying for their actions.

We make choices every day, we are not robots. So when we make bad choices we pay the price.

[Maribelle]

7. You don't know if it was a crime?

Perhaps you didn't bother to read about the numerous hangings of innocent blacks in places such as Alabama or Mississippi.

By putting up those nooses, the racist white kids playing their widdle KKK game, threatened the lives of the three black students. It is against the law to threaten someone's life. The widdle KKK players should be in jail.

[Pavulon]

10. I am from the south

not the one you may have seen on tv.. Placing a symbol up to piss people off or be a racist asshole (noose, swastika, or the words fuck you) is not the same as physically putting someone in the hospital. It is a terrible thing and I am not attempting to condone it.

However,
This is duke lacrosse all over. Mix up race and people get all worked up and pissed, forget how to use proper reasoning.

The person who put up the noose should be expelled and subject to any criminal code that applies to their behavior. The people who beat a person unconscious and put them in the hospital, a person who is not connected to the first event, should be punished as well. If they said they intended to beat him and hurt, assault with intent. Very simple.

Here is a bit of information. If you come home from from work and find 4 people hanging a swastika on your mailbox you can not remove a weapon and kill them all legally.

If you come home from work and are attacked by 4 men you can remove a weapon and kill them all, legally. You will be acting legally in the state of NC, providing you were reasonably in fear for your life. Many on one beatings are quite serious.

I assume you understand the significance of that.

Take all the racial crap out and address the crime, not the hype.

[Maribelle]

14. I come from a place where when the KKK hung a noose a black person's neck was promptly encased.

Not too far from where I lived when I was young, the KKK blew up a church and killed four young girls.


Generation KKK: Passing the Torch Aug 10, 2002 Petal, Mississippi.




Above: The son of a Klansman is pictured with a doll hanging from a noose at the home of South Mississippi Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard Jimmie Maxey during a memorial rally following Maxey's death.

A noose has a significant meaning to racists in Jena LA

[Pavulon]

26. People can try to keep that alive

if they want but the reality is that the south is not tolerant of those people. They are remnants of a dead mindset. Their time has past. The sooner people begin to set race aside and pay attention to what matters the sooner we move forward. I grew up never seeing what you describe, and view people who promote it with disgust.

Hopefully common sense and law will prevail here.

[Sequoia]

6. He wasn't a random kid.

He went to the same school as far as I know. And he was released from the hospital that day and went to some school function that night.

[Pavulon]

12. 3000 kids

went to my school. I am sure at least hundreds go to this one. Unless he hung a noose he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Even if he did do something it does not warrant mob justice.

Common sense and the law should be used here (du and against the attackers)

[Maribelle]

17. The law should have been applied against the racists long before the poor student was beaten.

In September 2006, a black student at Jena high school asked permission from school administrators to sit under the “white tree.” School officials advised them to sit wherever they wanted. They did.

The next day, three nooses, in the school colors, were hanging from the “white tree.” The message was clear. “Those nooses meant the KKK, they meant ‘Niggers, we’re going to kill you, we’re going to hang you till you die,’” Casteptla Bailey, mom of one of the students, told the London Observer.

The Jena high school principal found that three white students were responsible and recommended expulsion. The white superintendent of schools over-ruled the principal and gave the students a three day suspension saying that the nooses were just a youthful stunt. “Adolescents play pranks,” the superintendent told the Chicago Tribune, “I don’t think it was a threat against anybody.”

The African-American community was hurt and upset. “Hanging those nooses was a hate crime, plain and simple,” according to Tracy Bowens, mother of students at Jena High.

But blacks in this area of Louisiana have little political power. The ten person all-male government of the parish has one African-American member. The nine member all-male school board has one African American member. (A phone caller to the local school board trying to find out the racial makeup of the school board was told there was one “colored” member of the board). There is one black police officer in Jena and two black public school teachers.

Jena, with a population of less than 3000, is the largest town in and parish (county) seat of LaSalle Parish, Louisiana. There are about 350 African Americans in the town. LaSalle has a population of just over 14,000 people - 12% African-American.

This is solid Bush and David Duke Country - GWB won LaSalle Parish 4 to 1 in the last two elections; Duke carried a majority of the white vote when he ran for Governor of Louisiana. Families earn about 60% of the national average. The Census Bureau reports that less than 10% of the businesses in LaSalle Parish are black owned.

Jena is the site of the infamous Juvenile Correctional Center for Youth that was forced to close its doors in 2000, only two years after opening, due to widespread brutality and racism including the choking of juveniles by guards after the youth met with a lawyer. The U.S. Department of Justice sued the private prison amid complaints that guards paid inmates to fight each other and laughed when teens tried to commit suicide.

Black students decided to resist and organized a sit-in under the “white tree” at the school to protest the light suspensions given to the noose-hanging white students.

The white District Attorney then came to Jena High with law enforcement officers to address a school assembly. According to testimony in a later motion in court, the DA reportedly threatened the black protesting students saying that if they didn’t stop making a fuss about this “innocent prank… I can be your best friend or your worst enemy. I can take away your lives with a stroke of my pen.” The school was put on lockdown for the rest of the week.

Racial tensions remained high throughout the fall.

On the night of Thursday November 30, 2006, a still unsolved fire burned down the main academic building of Jena High School.

On Friday night, December 1, a black student who showed up at a white party was beaten by whites. On Saturday, December 2, a young white man pulled out a shotgun in a confrontation with young black men at the Gotta Go convenience store outside Jena before the men wrestled it away from him. The black men who took the shotgun away were later arrested, no charges were filed against the white man.

On Monday, December 4, at Jena High, a white student - who allegedly had been making racial taunts, including calling African American students “niggers” while supporting the students who hung the nooses and who beat up the black student at the off-campus party - was knocked down, punched and kicked by black students. The white victim was taken to the hospital treated and released. He attended a social function that evening.

Six black Jena students were arrested and charged with attempted second degree murder. All six were expelled from school.



http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/03/2260/

[kdmorris]

9. Whoa

people keep saying "put someone in the hospital". The white student that was beaten was treated and RELEASED.

The problem is that when the same beating happened to a black student by white students, they were all let off, except one, who was charged with misdemeanor assault and given probation. Doesn't Robert Bailey deserve the same justice as Justin Barker?

How is that not racism?

http://www.rwor.org/a/095/free-jena-six-en.html

[Pavulon]

11. They should all be charged under the same

criminal code. Based on their intent and the damage they did. race should only come into the picture when judging intent of the attackers.

That logic is fair to anyone, no matter what their skin color.

[kdmorris]

15. Well, I agree with that.

But, the fact is, that's not what happened. The black kid, Robert Bailey, was beaten unconscious, but they white kids that did it were not charges. Incidentally, Robert Bailey is one of the young men that was charged with attempted murder against the white guy, who was not unconscious.

[superconnected]

18. All kids who did the beatings should be charged.

Some shouldn't be let off because others got away.

Hopefully they will come back and arrest them *all*.

Violence should never be accepted. Not because someone hung up nooses, not because someone else got beat up another time, never.

[Kingshakabobo]

21. I think you have your unconscious people mixed up.

The white kid was knocked out on the first punch and kicked in the head while he was down. I haven't seen anything claiming Bailey was knocked unconscious.

[kdmorris]

23. I've been looking

and for the life of me, I can't find it either. I could swear I had read that Bailey was knocked out.

So, maybe I am confusing them, but I still find it biased to charge one kid (not even all of them) who was white with a misdemeanor and then charging the black kids with a felony attempted murder charge. The fact remains that Barker was not "put in the hospital" which was what I was responding to.

[Kingshakabobo]

25. I have no stomach to argue this case on behalf of the state......

.......but.....If the facts ARE as I have read them, I can see the logic of a more serious charge when someone is kicked in the head while unconscious. Most jurisdictions enhance charges when there is a head-kick. There hasn't been much description of the AA kid's incident or injuries -if any - but if it was a simple fight, the lesser charges of battery/assault might make sense.

For the record, the white kid DID go to the hospital. I would think it would be considered pretty serious if someone loses consciousness in a fight.

The noose incident should have been treated as a hate crime. This case is a perfect example of why hate crime legislation makes sense. Deny justice to a segment of society and you WILL have vigilantism and revenge crimes.

[kdmorris]

28. I think that the aggravated battery

was an attempt at fairness. It does appear from the truthout.org site that adults may have broken up the assault on the black student before there was any serious damage.

I did know that the white kid went to the hospital. He was there for several hours and released. He did attend a school function that night, which is when I kind of wondered how you charged someone with attempted murder for that.

I believe that you and I probably agree on this. It should have been handled differently from the beginning, but it wasn't.

[NOLALady]

31. A bottle broken on one's head

sounds like more than a simple fight to me. There doesn't seem to be much difference between the two incidents.
Somehow, it reminds me of the looting vs finding food picture.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

13. A random kid?

Why do you say that?

[Pavulon]

27. Because no testimony of fact

links him to hanging a noose. So other than his race nothing gives his attackers motive as the story is presented so far. Unless he did some thing to provoke a beating by multiple people he is a victim of a crime. That would be accurate no matte what color his skin happened to be..

[NOLALady]

16. I agree

"A many on one beating is a serious crime here, justifies use of deadly force in this state."

My only problem is that I can't for the life of me figure out why the same mindset does not apply to the Black child who was severly beaten (by many) at the party.

[Pavulon]

24. It applies by me..

any one black, white, asian, etc deserves the law behind us. If a black kid was beaten under same circumstances his attackers should be charged.

The fact that they were not does not make this beating less serious. It makes the fact that the others were not charged stand out.

[Maribelle]

3. The parents of the white students, the school staff, and the white students should be ashamed.

As a white mother, I cannot understand why these people allowed this to happen in this day and age. This type of racism should not be tolerated. Shame on Jena and shame on the DA.

[xchrom]

8. nooses in a tree -- hmmmmph --

there should be NO charges in this case.

where's teh department of homeland security?

that was a threatening act -- a terrorist act -- and an act to provoke violence.

[Kingshakabobo]

22. This case is another reason "hate crime" legislation makes sense...

Crimes like this are meant to terrorize and intimidate certain segments of society - when justice is denied, revenge crimes and vigilantism will happen - sooner or later.

[bamacrat]

19. Anytime a group of people beats one person they should go to jail.

One on one is a fight, six on one is attempted murder.

[hayu_lol]

20. The school board showed what they were and are...

they solved the problem by cutting down the tree.

The placement of the nooses could have been used as a means of bringing the student body together and learning from the experience.

What was learned instead was that racism and hatred is alive and well in this little crook in the highway in Louisiana.

[Nevernose]

29. Wasn't this in Harper's or Mother Jones recently?

I bought both at the airport a couple of weeks ago, and I can't remember which one...

[Socal31]

30. Sorry to say, but you can hang a noose or confederate whereever you want.

You are a fucking moron, but you still dont deserve to be almost killed. The reverse-racism here makes me sick. So they should have been let off completely? Ignorant people, championing the cause of equal rights, making ludicrous and hypocritical posts on here. Disgusting.

[NOLALady]

32. It seems to me

that the fight was not about the noose. It seems the cafeteria fight was a spillover from the fight at the party.