'Jena Six' Teen Mychal Bell Back in Jail

[RamboLiberal]

Source: ABC News

A teenager at the center of a civil rights controversy is back in jail after a judge sentenced him on charges that were pending before the attack that put him in the national spotlight, his attorney said Thursday.

Mychal Bell, who along with five other black teenagers had been accused of beating a white classmate, went to juvenile court Thursday expecting another routine hearing, said Carol Powell Lexing, one of Bell's attorneys.

Instead, after a six-hour hearing, state District Judge J.P. Mauffrey Jr. sentenced him to 18 months on two counts of simple battery and two counts of criminal destruction of property, Lexing said.

He had been hit with those charges before the Dec. 4 attack on classmate Justin Barker.

"He's locked up again," Marcus Jones said of his 17-year-old son. "No bail has been set or nothing. He's a young man who's been thrown in jail again and again, and he just has to take it."



Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=3720533

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Those suckers down in LA are sure determined to keep this kid in jail and give the finger to those protesting!

[Bitwit1234]

1. I just clicked on to CNN and it was on the front page

I think that is absolutely horrible. These people there are the worst racist in this country. In fact the whole damn south is. When the Civil Rights Law were passed in the 60's, the south, once wholly Democratic turned to being called Dixiecrats but voting republican. Then the republican party courted them and the racist S.O.B. turned republican, because blacks were given rights. That's the problem with this country today. They would rather support these bunch of republicans who have ruined this country for everybody, than to give a person their rights. But that's one of the things bush did. He appointed all those racist right wing judges. Because the ones in office followed the rule of law and not what bush and the republicans wanted.

I think they should not stop with freeing Seigleman in Alabama. They should get all the records, send the damn crooked judge to jail, along with rove's buddy and probably his boy friend, and the Alabama senator Sessions too.

I don't understand how you can have three people, one who did less than the other two get tried and convicted and the other two, who accepted more money and more bribes went free.

[soothsayer]

2. Jeezus, they are as brazen as bush.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

15. turds of a feather. . .

[Reno.Muse]

3. LA seems to be cursed with their own racism and hatred.

This is outrageous. I am ashamed of this country.

[sasquatch]

4. 18 months for a fist fight???

:argh:
Someone needs to perform a seance and see if we can't resurrect John Brown or William Tecumsah Sherman.

[CRF450]

8. Uh, wasent "property damage" their too?

[sasquatch]

10. Yeah that too

:wtf:

[Coexist]

24. what property damage?

[Pastiche423]

5. Time served should be more than enough!

Damnit!

[EFerrari]

6. What a shameful travesty.

I am ashamed of this country.

[Baby Snooks]

7. I wonder...

I wonder how long Louisiana would last if every African-American left and took the tax base with them?

[sasquatch]

11. LSU football would definetly suffer

[CRF450]

9. Why are we sticking up for a teen who comitted two crimes before the Jena 6 happened?

I dont like what happened in the Jena 6 situation anymore that yaw do but these are prior crimes he's committed that fits the 18 month sentence.

[BklnDem75]

17. Why are we hearing about this a year after he was sentenced for

the first Jena 6 trial? Is this 18 months on top of time he already served? This judgment looks like a direct reaction to the Jena 6 mistrial. Does his past not entitle him to fairness?

[0007]

23. Why don't you show us a link that describes Mr. Bell's wrong doings, eh?

[BronxBoy]

26. A couple of things

First of all, he was originally sentenced to probation which he had been serving uneventfully until this mess started.

He was charged tried and convicted of this crime in a process that was suspect to say the least. A few minutes on Google will illuminate you on some of the problems with the case. He was tried and convicted as an adult, that's the important point of this discussion.

His case as appealed and his conviction was thrown out. the Appeals court said it should have been dealty with as a juvenile matter.

The same judge who had his case overturned has now violated his probation because he was involved in the fight at school, a fact that is disputed by quite a few people and a charge that, at least legally at this point in time, he is absolutely innocent of.

So please tell me what transgression now dictates that he serve 18 months?

[Wcross]

12. Self delete.

[Wcross]

13. Violation of probation?

He was sentenced for violating is probation from an earlier incident. He supposedly violated his probation due to the school fight which landed him in jail. Seeing he was kept in jail for such a long time due to the trumped up charges, hasn't he done enough time already for violating his probation?

[BronxBoy]

14. This absolutely ruined my morning....

And it gets worse.

The parents now have to pay $600 plus dollars a month to pay for his incarceration! And the father was "fired" from his job this week. This judge is a straight up prick

This is no longer about even try to administer justice. It's about administering punishment to those who challeneged the institutional racism in that town.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

16. not the judge as much as the prosecutor.

[BronxBoy]

21. Nope

The judge is just as guilty.

During bail hearings after the adult charges were thrown out, Bell's attorneys became so frustrated at the judge's frequent interjections that he had to say that he was confused because he felt he was argung the case with the judge and not the DA

No he's a real prick.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

22. that I did not know. damn

or as they say down south,

dahaym.

[Speciesamused]

19. Why are there no senators or Congressmen doing anything?

 Our politicians should be ashamed. Letting this happen. 
They all should be held accountable when voting time 
comes around. They are right when they say these people are
being punished because they stood up to the racist people 
who run that town. It is blatant like our current
administration robbing the American people of their lives.

[BronxBoy]

20. Conyers..

is supposedly going to hold hearings and an investigation starting next week

[Mozcram]

30. YAYYYYYY!

That is terrific, a glimmer of hope!

[Supersedeas]

18. hardly a hero

[Coexist]

25. hardly a hardened criminal.

[Alpharetta]

27. So explain his dad's statement n/t

[pitohui]

28. maybe this kid should stop hitting people

in my humble opinion i'm not interested in what color you are but if you keep hitting people you need to go away

battery is hitting people, folks, it's not nice and you wouldn't want it happening to you

[Mozcram]

31. You are absolutely correct: people should not hit each other but

the point of this conversation and of the case is not an argument about whether hitting people is good or bad, whether it's nice, whether people want it happening to them, or whether it deserves punishment.

You allow yourself to ignore all of the damning facts of the case (which, if you are not aware of them, you can find online) in saying something like that.

There is no excuse for an intelligent person to ignore the glaring inequalities and
say of a kid, "he should go away" - probably meaning away to prison. Well, if the DA
had gotten his way, Bell would have gone away for a good part of his life.

If you look at what is behind your "innocent" comment, you find that you are, in fact,
interested in what color he is. If he were white, you would never callously dismiss the case as a simple one of right or wrong, without concern for the sentence, or for the terrific examples of unfairness and excess surrounding this case.

A high school student charged with murder for a school fight, facing 25 years in jail?
You've got to care about it, regardless of color.

But you should care especially because of color... the context of this is racism, institutionalized and otherwise.

[Mozcram]

29. This makes me so sad

The level of racism in this country (perhaps in others as well) is such that officials
feel they have the right to do things like this even when the eyes of the nation are
upon them.

(never forget the Katrina response)

Again and again I encounter the ideas that blacks imagine racism where none exists, and
that WHITES are the ones victimized. Many people are willing to believe that when
wrongdoing occurs, we should not defend the accused but trust the system to take care of it.

Again and again (there are hundreds and hundreds of examples of this) excessive punishments are meted out, kids are tried as adults, defendants are convicted and sentenced without sufficient evidence, police beatings occur, and the words of defense are given less weight than those of the police or a ruthless prosecutor (as in this case).

Much of the time the process is fair, and this is great, but for a kid to be in jail on trumped-up charges to make good on a prosecutor's threat to blacks at the school (I can end your life with a stroke of a pen), even just this ONE INSTANCE, it is too much. Lives are too precious.

There is a widespread belief (though at this particular time, outside of internet comments, it is kept under the surface) that black lives are less important that white lives, that blacks are inherently more criminal, and that there is no racism problem, that blacks cause the problems then blame them on whites.

We have some serious talking and healing to do.

And to the man(or woman) who in these comments says that Mychal Bell is no hero:
it is not an issue of his heroism. He messed up badly, a couple of times. The issue
equality of justice, or even just equality.

We must know and treat our fellow human beings are equals!

[tom_paine]

32. The New BushieTotalitarians are unconcerned with screwing the people

Anyone can see that virtually ALL segments of the Imperial Subjects of Amerika are 100% powerless, scared, apathetic, and generally tyrranized misinformed and disinformed.

You will see this increase at every level, especially against the weak and powerless, but also increasingly to the White Enemies of the BushPutinist State, as well.

Race becomes less and less of a protecting factor, when opposition to BushPutinist is the new "gold standard" of how someone is treated by the law enforcement system.

We are all n****rs to the Bushies.